I am all in again. How let's just do.
Luke Steiner with Scott Patterson an iHeartRadio podcast, Hey.
Everybody, Scott Patterson, I Am on and Podcast one eleven productions. iHeartRadio Media, iHeart Podcast one on one interview with the one and Only rock O Dispirited. He has starred on numerous television shows. Most recently, he received two stars from The New York Times as chef of the critically acclaimed Standard Grill in New York City. He is a James Beard Award winning chef, an author of fourteen count on fourteen books, including three number ones New York Times bestsellers. Welcome Rocco.
Hey, thank you so much, love love being here. Thanks for the great introduction. I think we're up to fifteen books as of March. Nice and thank you so much. Nice to be here.
Take us back to the start, rock O, when you went.
Back to the start, back to the start.
Culinary school. Given how many chefs are self bought now these days, right, would you still recommend culinary.
Yes, it's very different. So would you say that self taught includes learning via Google and YouTube? Yeah? Okay, so yeah, so a lot of chefs are teaching themselves how to cook now just by watching chef's cook on YouTube and Google. It's a great way to learn, you know, visual. I'm a visual learner and worked well for me as a kid.
But for me as a kid, visual learning meant you had to go work in a restaurant, pay your dues, and you know, burn and cut yourself every day and work that twelve hour shift so that some guy would feel bad for you and teach you a few things. And you know what, it's a great way of learning. It certainly worked for me, and cooking, you know, change my life for the better. I don't regret a minute of it. But I love that you can go on YouTube now and learn how to do anything, absolutely anything.
You can't learn how to act though. I don't think you can learn how to act by watching a YouTube video right.
No, no, no, And too many people try yes work out for them.
You can get a lot of people don't understand it's a real skill. I'll tell you a funny story. I worked with Nancy Banks, who is you know, somewhat well known acting coach, because I was so nervous on live TV. I had to learn how to act, but play the part of myself, and I used a real acting coach who worked with major stars, and at the time she was working with a couple of actresses from Sex and the City, you know, like a big time acting coach, and you know, it is just getting them to pay
attention to you is difficult. Much. Let's take you on. And you know, she put me through a number of exercises and scenarios and we would create you know, mock Today show sets and have people play Al Roker and Katie Kurk and go through all this just so just so I could feel comfortable being me in a room and or on live TV, which is obviously very different than being in a room.
Yeah, you know, that interview situation, that scenario is very nerve wracking. It really really that's you know, that's the toughest part of the job. The acting comparatively is like, Okay, you know, I'm trained for this, let's go. You get some nerves every once in a while because yeah, you know, you want to deliver the big emotions or whatever. But yeah, you go on these big talk shows. It's like, yeah, you.
Have to be you, yes, exactly, to be you and you and you need to be as funny as the character they wrote for you, or it's interesting or is good looking, or its charming, you know, and that's that's it's all order, because they're good writers out there, you know.
Luckily, luckily or maybe unlucky for us, we're we're always playing ourselves and you know, the charming host of the and the guy in the room is making and everyone feels good. Which is also a very difficult role to play because I don't know if you know this, but most chefs like to be in the back of the house, quiet, with their heads down. We like to focus on the work, you.
Know, right, Sure, let's talk about growing up. What was your favorite dish?
Sure? Yeah, So I grew up in Jamaica Queens, which is one of the five boroughs of New York City, in a you know, like an Italian American household that was at like level nine point eight every day, you know, with the Italian the bad Italian dialect, screaming at top tops of lungs, going to the live chicken market, you know, crazy crazy Italian farmhouse lifestyle in the middle of New
York City. This is in the seventies, and you know, so this this incongruency was very severe because outside of my house was New York City, right, which was as modern as anything got. And then inside my house we're living like in the eighteenth century. We had rabbits and chickens in the backyard. You know, this is wild stuff, but it was, you know, it was filled with a lot of love. It was filled with a lot of
great food. And so I was, you know, introduced and fell in love with great food at a very early age. I didn't realize what was happening until I started to need to work. You know, when I say need to work, I wanted to buy the new pair of pro Kids with the two stripes, and those are nine to ninety nine at the time, so you know, my mom would put me through it to get a pair of those, and she's like, you still have soles on your feet, but you don't need new shoes. There's still soles on
the bottom of your existing shoes. That was that was the measurement if you still had sold you know. So basically, I was told at an early age, if I want to upgrade my lifestyle, I'd have to go out and work. So I ended up working in restaurants. Best thing that ever happened to me, and at eleven, I started working in the pizzeria for fifty cents an hour, and all the Italian ice I could eat was the best job
I think to this day that I've ever had. Was amazing because when you get to eat all the Italian ice you want, or when you're in charge of serving Italian ice, you have access to the blue Italian ice. The blue Italian ice is the bubble gum flavored ice. It is the best Italian ice there is, and there's never enough of it. I don't know what your experience is with Italian ice, but the blue it's hard to get.
I like cherry cherry, okay, lemon lime or cherry cool.
Yeah, so there was always lemon, the yellow, right, there was the blue, and there was the red, the cherry. So there's a lemon, bubble gum and.
Cherry right right right.
And Sal was the guy who hired me, and you know, I learned a lot from him. He's a great guy. Great guy.
Yeah. Yeah. You think being a great chef is mostly born talent or did you pick up these skills over time?
Great question, Yeah, a little bit of both. I think, like most things, it's a little bit of both. There are some natural, naturally occurring gifts that you need, which is like, you gotta like people, and you gotta like to cook for people. One of my cats wants to say, Hi, you gotta like to cook for You gotta like to serve people. You can't be bitter about the service to other people, right, You got to find that you know
perfectly in line with your core value system. And if you love you know, cutting your finger and burning your hand and lighting your hair on fire and cooking something and walking it out to your table to serve someone, then you know the job is perfect for you. And I can tell you from birthual experience it's a very fulfilling role and a great way to feel a lot of love for the public and a great way to exercise, you know, the mind, body, soul, hand skills, brain skills.
There's a lot. There's a lot going on and cooking it's very very interesting and multi sensory.
Yeah, it really is a people business, isn't it. I mean you really have to love, you know, making people happier and giving them that great dish and going out and asking did you love it?
Yeah? You got you gotta love comping stuff too, right, I'm sure, you've never asked for it, but you gotta love comping stuff. Oh my gosh, you don't like it, Okay, I'll take it off your check. You got to be able to say that very easily and very convincingly.
Tell me, what's your favorite story about comping. Who's the most famous person if you want to bust them that you had to comp.
Famous people don't ask for comps. No, they're usually very gracious and yeah, they usually tip very well, and they're very gracious, and they ask you to cook whatever you want. Many of them. There are some that are, you know, allergic to gluten and dairy, and they don't realize that pasta is all gluten. There's some funny stuff happening out there, but you can't make me name names. You can't make
me name names. One of my favorite celebrity cooking experiences was with Robert de Niro, who came into Union Pacific and asked for Dega Station's like, make me a Dega Station menu. That's when you leave it up to the chef, you know, you just chef goes crazy and he fell asleep during the meal. It was amazing. It was amazing cooking for him and so heartbreaking. But then I found out from his lady friend Grace, that he had, you know, narcolepsy or something. She's like, don't worry, do he does
this everywhere? It's not you, it's not you. I was like, Oh, the chairs too comfortable? Is it too serene and quiet in here? Yeah? But he was super generous. He came back a lot is, you know, very generous with tipping, really appreciated great food, would let you cook whatever you wanted as low maintenance as they came wonderful.
So what's the one ingredient that we don't all should be using more of in are cooking to bring out flavor?
Butter? Every butter. You can't be afraid of butter. You should go out and buy as much grass fed butter as you could afford and put it in everything, on everything if you want food to taste good. And then the next one is salt, as much salt as your heart and palate can handle. And then MSG is another way to really boost flavors is essentially powdered seaweed, So
don't be afraid of it. It's you know, it was obviously maligned in the seventies and a lot of people claim that that was, you know, a part of a you know, anti Asian thing. I'm not sure what the truth is, but turns out that real, real, naturally occurring MSG, which is essentially dried seaweed leaves, is totally fine and doesn't is not harmful at all. Okay, but you know, here's a little secret. Go get dashi powder which has pombu and bonito flakes in it.
Let me let me ask you this question. Yeah, so you published a cookbook in the last year. Was that always a big dream of yours to get a cookbook out there with your name on it.
Yeah. So, my dad was a carpenter who wanted to be a lawyer. He was an intellectual, you know, who grew up during the war and depression in Italy, who really had bigger ambitions. So he came to America hoping he would become a lawyer and write books. That was always his dream. He was the kind of guy who borrowed books and self studied his way through high school. You imagine a person doing that today, borrowing books, not even buying books, not even library, going to friends and
borrowing books. And so his dream was to write books and be a published author, and so, you know, as a proxy for my dad, it was a dream of mine. It wasn't the dream for me, because the dream for me was always running a restaurant, opening a restaurant, being the chef. But I remember asking my dad about it when the opportunity came up, and he was like, you have to do it. The most important thing you can do is to write about what you do and tell people what you do and share what it is that
you do. Because it's one thing to do, it's another thing to be able to tell people why you do it, how you do it. And he really, you know, he really infected me with the writer's bug, and so it was a great moment for me. And you know, fifteen books letter later, I can tell you it's you know, probably my favorite part of our business as chefs. Now we get to do a lot of different things with a lot of spokes in our wheel. We get to do you know, TV and live appearances and cooking restaurants
and obviously social media craziness and write books. And writing is great because it's the only time we can memorialize what we do. You're lucky you get to you get to be in a film, or TV show, and it's there forever. You can't erase it, right, it's whether you like it or not, it's there forever. But for us, we serve a meal and it's eaten and it's gone forever. So writing a book is a way to mitigate that for us. Right, So it is, it is. It is a great time.
Yeah, favorite memories of cooking, favorite, favorite memories, favorite memories.
So it's pretty gruesome one. But it's cooking in the backyard with my mom, my uncle, my grandmother. And it was a big lesson for me because it was the day I realized that our our pets were also our food. But I remember tasting these foods that my grandmother was grilling that were formerly our pets and realizing, how, you know, how delicious this fresh food was. That I was young enough to be horrified by what was happening and old enough to appreciate how great, you know, having fresh food is.
So that's a pretty big memory. And I remember my grandmother let me turn the meats on the grill, and of course I assumed they were chicken, and they weren't. There were other things, other things that you might have named, you know, And so that was pretty good. My grandmother is in most of my great memories when it comes to food. She was it could have been, you know, a stand up comedian kind of character. Did you have a grandmother like that?
No?
Funny, though mine was so funny. We don't have another funny person like that in our family anymore.
No, God, who was a funny person in our well? I guess it was my dad. My dad. My mom and dad together were actually pretty funny. They were they were great storytellers. Yeah, we had a couple of jokesters in my family.
And Mira and Ben Stiller, by any no, not that that funny. That Can you imagine growing up with those those people as your parents?
I worked with you, did I worked with one of the No, no, the daughter the daughter? Oh okay, yeah, I knew the daughter and I worked with her, and I think we're in an acting class together. And oh wow, Yeah she was very funny. Not surprising, I'm sure.
Yeah. So either they laughed a lot at home or they were in tears all the time. I'm not sure, right exactly? So, lots of lots of favorite moments in cooking. Another one is when my mom would make bread and she would give me the little scraps that didn't make it into the loaf. And for some reason, this crazy woman let me fry those scraps that was barely tall enough to reach the stove. That's not the first thing you teach a kid how to fry in hot oil, but she let me do that. And you know, I
never burned myself, thankfully. Can you imagine how having your kid walk up to a stove with a pot of frying oil and throw you know, she would make me. She would say, shape it however you want, and I would make little dinosaurs and you know, cows and horses, and then we would throw it in the you know, ready to flame out hot oil. It would immediately fry and brown. And then she would while it was hot, she would douse it in honey or powdered sugar. Is
so good. It's fried dough, you know, right right right, bunnel cake.
And so in this episode a road Trip to Harvard, Laura l I takes your daughter Rory on that road trip to go visit Harvard University. She's what sophomore in high school, but she wants to go to Harvard. Do you think you think it's worth trying to pack meals for a road trip or just hit the drive through on the way.
Well, you're talking to a guy who was raised with semi literate Italian gangsters, you know. For so we always had meals packed. We had we didn't have meals. We had elements of a meal. We had a piece of parmesan, We had hunka parmesan red jihano, a piece of caci carlo, which is the big ball of mozzarella that they hang from the ceiling in the garage. You know, you don't know what it is until they open it one day
and you realize it's cheese. They take a silk ro soad from the ceiling of the garage, covered in mold, and they throw all that into a bag, you know, not plastic, and then my mom would grab a knife and some bread, and that was normal life for me. So and I have to say that those were, you know, to this day, the best road dishes I ever had. I remember being very embarrassed by it, but then when
we were hungry, it paid off. You know, when we were hungry on the side of the road and we had food and everyone else was looking for a McDonald's, it paid off, so definitely. Always always a good idea to pack food. I'm gonna say yes, always a good idea to pack food, never a bad idea to have food. Handy.
Let's let's create or you create the perfect drive through menu. What would be on that menu?
Drive through?
Drive your car, drive through?
Yes, okay, so hot fried chicken, ready to eat, hot fried chicken, pizza for sure, cavear bump, cold champagne, uh cold, good champagne, Moet level minimum. Wow, yeah, you want to come on this trip? Yeah? Maybe a little? We should, Yeah, we should. You know, in Italy, I think they're called what are they called in Italy? The roadside gas stations with the like three star Michelin food, the auto Gazetto or whatever. I'll think of it in a second, but
they already existently. Apasta bar would be nice with some fresh.
Uha amatri chana or carbonara, or the one with just butter and parm fredo.
Have you ever planned a road trip around specific food stops restaurants.
Oh? Yeah, absolutely yeah. So when I went to the Culinary stupid Ma. You had to drive through a place in Connecticut that's famous for some great pizzerias and so a pizza is one of them. And so whenever I go that way for whatever reason, there's usually a stop there. But I basically, I would say, plan most things around the food stops that are going to happen, you know, so I'll pick I'll pick routes based on, you know, what restaurants I know are on the way, or what
butcher shops or seafood markets are on the way. And you know, certainly in Italy they're always thinking about food and their next meal and what they have to buy to supply their you know, resupply the provisions in the house. So they're always working around, in and around food stops. And it's a great way to live, great way to live. And those are skinny people, by the way. The people that think like that right there are the ones that
have to stop at McDonald's because they didn't plan. Those are the ones who are eating too much.
Any particularly I mean, I mean, I'm sure you're biased to Italy or New York, but any particular countries that you've taken food excursions on that you particularly love, I would recommend absolutely.
Thailand was an early one in my chef career, about twenty years ago. I remember going from a sort of you know, first year college student to a graduate student in a few days in terms of spice, because they, you know, the spice in the food, and Thailand is so at such a high level that you have to get used to it really quickly. And I remember my body physically convulsing and meat sweats and all kinds of
crazy things happening. But the food was so delicious that me and my two other chef friends just loved it and just kept going and kept pushing forward, and you know, basically built that entire trip around which street vendor, which restaurant we were going to go to next. There's so much food in Thailand, and all of it is so good and so fresh. It's still, you know, still basically a farming society, so everything they eat is is raised, you know, locally, and fresh you know, that week, that day.
So Thailand's good. If you're gonna build, if you're gonna build a vacation around food, Thailand. Bangkok Hang Mine a great one. We didn't make one stuff that was a little strange where we ate a snake. Uh. They made us eat the green vial first with soju and then they sauta the meat and then they fried the bones. It was crazy. I'll never do that again. Don't ever do that.
If someone suggests that, say, no, what kind of snake was it?
You know, you know, a poisonous one. I remember it was alive and it was very poisonous. They needed an expert snake handler.
Oh my goodness. Yeah. And why did you feel compelled to eat it? There was some kind of pressure on you to eat this.
I was just going with the flow. My friend I was in Thailand and it was you know, it's a it's a favorite. It's a heavy favorite for all taurists. I'm sure I saw it on TV. I saw Anthony Bourdain do it on TV, probably you know, or Andrew Zimmern, and I thought, I gotta do that.
I gotta I gotta have a snake. I gotta eat a snake.
At one point, and they kept telling you it makes you strong, makes you strong. I still don't know what they're talking about. But didn't make me strong, made me queasy. All right.
Last question, if you were to come into Luke's diner, okay, we would you order?
Oh that's a hard one. Remind me what did Luke Stander serve other than sass and beauty and a lot of sass. So so for me, a couple of classics in the diner world are a no frills burger that's basically a burger and a bun and you're done. Patty melts or a tuna melt. This is a piece of rye with you know, overly mayonnaise, tuna salad and some you know American cheese melt it on top. Great, great combination of flavors. I think a shake is important to
be able to get at a diner. And then when you're just sick of the world and you're tired of people's opinions and you don't care what's trending, an omelet, cheese omelet. You should be able to get a good cheese omelet and a diner for under ten bucks. That doesn't exist anymore. I don't know what's going on near you, but by me and New York diners don't even aren't even around anymore. So, but a great omelet, a great omelet.
Needs to be a revival.
I think, yeah, for sure, is there a Luke's diner in real life? Should we open one?
We could talk, Let's talk.
It's got history it's a known quantity.
I mean, you know, I've just been trying to do that for twenty five years. But let's let's talk about it.
You never know when you've met the right person.
You never know, you never know. So the standard grill is still going strong.
Yeah, everything's going well, still going strong. I am Oh. I want to tell you about a thing that I do that I never talk about because it's a very word of mouth thing. But I wrote a book called The Pound a Day Diet in two thousand and nine. Did very well, and for the book, my publisher said that it's a great title, but we don't believe you. You got to prove it that it works, because losing a pound a day is based on diet science. But it's you know, it's hard to do and hard to prove.
It's based on the science calorie deficit. If you reduce people's consumption thirty five hundred calories a day, thirty five hundred calories egal to one pound of fat. So the science was, if I can get you down to something below, you know, thirty five hundred calories, you would lose a pound a day. And most Americans eat four thousand and seven thirty calories a day, so it leaves leaves you about twelve hundred and fifty calories to work with. So
I put twelve people on the diet. It worked ninety eight percent success, and I've been doing that diet for
those people and more ever since. So I never talk about this because it's you know, it's very private, personal and word of mouth y. It's a little expensive, but I want people to know that I do that, and then I'm still very active in the health of wellness space because they haven't because COVID kind of disrupted everything, as you know, and it disrupted the health and wellness business side of my business and where it's back and strong, as strong as ever.
Did you ever consider going to Miami?
I have many times.
Yeah, Like like a lot of a lot of chefs did a lot of restaurants during COVID. After COVID, they were like, we're out of here.
Huh. Yeah. There are two problems for me. One is that I'm you know, born and raised, intrepid New Yorker and I'm under the delusion that I won't be happy anywhere else. And I know that's not true, but I'm you know, still, I still believe it and I need you know, I need someone in Miami to make an offer, create an opportunity, you know, something, something right, right. I'm down there every year for soby. This is the big food festival. Have you been to that? No, you should come,
you should come. Okay, that's every year in February. Oh nice out Beach Wine and Food Festival. It's the biggest in the country. Sixty thousand people attend. Yeah. So I go down there every year. I talk to people and nothing's ever materialized. But you never know, I don't know. The night is still young.
Well, thank you so much for company.
Welcome.
This was this was very very illuminating. And I'll be in touch, you know, and you have to come back on you please promise. The great gusts we didn't even even get into it really very much. But there's a lot more here, a lot more meat on the bone here anyway, Rock Oh, thank you so much. Everybody, go buy the Standard Grill in New York City if you want one of the best meals from one of the best chefs in the world. Rock Oh, thanks so much. And that's going to wrap it up here. Thank you, everybody.
Keep the downloads coming, keep the cards, and letters coming the best fans on the planet. Where you lead, we will follow Stay Sicket dot j. Hey everybody, and don't forget. Follow us on Instagram at I Am all In podcast and email us at Gilmore at iHeartRadio dot com.