Greg Cohen: What do you create?

Curtis Duffy: We try to create an experience at the restaurant which should go beyond just the food experience. Having the four pillars that represent the restaurant's fundamentals: the wine service, the service in general, and the ambience. Those four elements which should not outshine one or the other. 

When do you do your most creative work?

Let's just talk about how we conceptualize a dish. It'll start with the ingredient. We start to talk about the three supporting elements to that main ingredient. But also with those three elements, how can we utilize those three elements to their fullest?

Do you begin with the end in mind or do you let it kind of evolve organically?

We've always begun with the ingredient focus. Once we have those three supporting flavors, you can start thinking about the end result. From the first initial tasting, we taste it and then we either take or add ingredients or methods or we're usually taking away to balance the dish out.

Where do you find inspiration?

How do we remain open to creativity or inspiration? A lot of people say to be able to look through the eyes of a child again, because it's so pure and raw. They see things brand new for the first time. My daughters were blowing the dandelions in the wind. Then they pop the top off of it and then they see it's hollow. They're like, “You could use this as a straw.”

What role, if any does feedback play in your creativity?

I think being confident as a chef has allowed me to not be concerned about somebody's opinion on my food. If I put a dish on the menu and 15 people tried it, and there were 15 different opinions about it and I listened to 15 different people tell me how it should be, and I started changing it 15 different ways, what foundation do I have as a chef? And what does that dish ultimately look like at the end?

What do you think different creative fields have in common if anything?

I think of music first and foremost as having different parts of the band have all these ideas. How does it all come together as one song? Think of that as a dish where the bass is the meat and the drums are the vegetables and neither one of them can outshine one another. They all have to play together.

I've read that you like motorcycles and tattoos and dark, loud, intense music. How do these things permeate your culinary life?

Some people look at my kitchen and it's super quiet and it's white and elegant. The juxtaposition is there are certain things that I love in the kitchen that cannot change. That is the quietness, that is the intense focus of what we do every day. Everything else is a distraction. I need that loud music. I need the motorcycles. That's my release. That's how I clear my mind.

Greg Cohen: We'll start off with questions about you personally and your projects and your habits. What do you create?

Curtis Duffy: We try to create an experience at the restaurant which should go beyond just the food experience. Having the four pillars that represent the restaurant's fundamentals: the wine service, the service in general, and the ambience. Those four elements which should not outshine one or the other. 

When do you do your most creative work? And why do you think that is?

Let's just talk about how we conceptualize a dish. It'll start with the ingredient. That ingredient gets written down on paper. We start to talk about the three supporting elements to that main ingredient. But also with those three elements, how can we utilize those three elements to their fullest? That's where the creativity starts, is getting the product in hand.

How much of your day is actively spent in creative work?

I would say maybe say maybe 45-50% of the day is spent focusing on creating stuff. It's about refining the dishes that are on the menu, retasting them all and adjusting how we approach it. 

And when you're developing ideas, do you begin with the end in mind or do you let it kind of evolve organically?

We've always begun with the ingredient focus. Once we have those three supporting flavors, you can start thinking about the end result. From the first initial tasting, we taste it and then we either take or add ingredients or methods or we're usually taking away to balance the dish out.

How do you set up your environment or conditions to be conducive to creation?

I set it up the same way very consistent with how I work and the things and the tools that I need at my fingertips to be efficient with what I do. There's pad of paper, there's notebooks, there's c fold towels and knives and spoons. Having my prep list or my mise en place list ready to go every day.

How do you improve yourself now that you're in charge?

It was always a mentality of wanting to be the best. It's the smallest little things, setting my station up, making sure today my station is cleaner and tighter than it was yesterday.

What are the building blocks of your creative process?

I'm giving my guest a sense of creativity, but also a sense of familiarity to a dish.

And how do you know that a creative decision you're making is right?

The challenge is making sure that they understand that it's the guests first time ever experiencing that dish. So it needs to be what it was when it went on the menu. The challenge as a chef is to be consistent making that product every single day.

How often does the menu change at Ever?

We'll change two or three dishes at a time. Maybe a dish that we're working on now doesn't make its way to the menu. Maybe how we're handling certain things, we can take those ideas and apply them to something for the springtime.

How do you distinguish when it's time to test and try new things or when it's time to dig deeper or double down on an existing idea?

I don't wanna spend all that time into figuring out how we can get it to work if we're that far off. That idea can be put on the back burner for another time. Maybe we'll look at it six months from now and go, what the hell are we thinking?

How do you know when you're done?

I think just by taste. Do you crave more after you finish that dish?

How do you measure success?

Allowing somebody to have their voice and having that kind of see all the way through is a version of success.

Where do you find inspiration?

How do we remain open to creativity or inspiration? A lot of people say to be able to look through the eyes of a child again, because it's so pure and raw. They see things brand new for the first time. My daughters were blowing the dandelions in the wind. Then they pop the top off of it and then they see it's hollow. They're like, “You could use this as a straw.” There's an application for it somewhere, somehow.

What media like books, blogs, magazines, podcasts do you recommend for creativity?

I can't sit here and think of every idea and technique of how I would treat a certain ingredient. But just thumbing through a magazine and seeing a way a certain thing has a look to it can be inspirational. We've sat down in the past quite a few times where I bring out 15 magazines and a dozen cookbooks and I pick a random dish in there. I'd ask the staff, “What's finesseful about this dish? What draws your eye to this dish?”

When and where do your lightning bolt ideas occur?

Even though I'm not in that mindset of an architect design or somebody who creates things other than food. I also have the advantage of me looking at it differently than he would look at it. I have the outside eye where he's so involved in it on a daily basis. Sometimes when you're in it you don't see it.

What is it like to work for Chef Duffy?

My job is not to push them to be great at something. It's their job, it's their responsibility. It's my job to set the standards extremely high every day, set the tone every day, and let them chase me, chase my standards, because ultimately if they can exceed my standards, then they're gonna go on and do great things.

So what role, if any does feedback play in your creativity?

I think being confident as a chef has allowed me to not be concerned about somebody's opinion on my food. If I put a dish on the menu and 15 people tried it, and there were 15 different opinions about it and I listened to 15 different people tell me how it should be, and I started changing it 15 different ways, what foundation do I have as a chef? And what does that dish ultimately look like at the end?

What's the hardest part of creation?

Staying true to the style of food that I do for me. We also want to color outside of the lines. We don't wanna be so far out of the box that our guests don't understand what we're doing. It's always a very fine balance.

How do you make progress when you are blocked or feel like you're at a dead end?

It's leaning on my right-hand man, Lucas. It's forcing him to create and forcing him to put things on the menu.

Do you have more than one creative skill or job or hobby or interest?

I've been learning to play the bass the last six months or so. Motorcycles for me is another one, because that allows me to clear my mind.

What do you think different creative fields have in common if anything?

I think finding the idea and then the follow through of the idea. I think of music 1st and foremost, as having different parts of the band have all these ideas. How does it all come together as one song? Think of that as a dish where the bass is the meat and the drums are the vegetables and neither one of them can outshine one another. They all have to play together.

What skill or technique from a different field would you like to bring to your work?

Nine Inch Nails and Trent Reznor, watching him on stage. The way he directs his band, the way he feels and the timing. Depeche Mode had one of the cleanest stage sets that I've ever seen. Not one wire, everything was hidden. I saw Prince years ago. Just his presence in the way he orchestrated.

I've read that you like motorcycles and tattoos and dark, loud, intense music. How do these things permeate your culinary life or is the kitchen a refuge from these things?

Some people look at my kitchen and it's super quiet and it's white and elegant, yet you love heavy metal music and you love the color black. The juxtaposition is there are certain things that I love in the kitchen that cannot change. That is the quietness, that is the intense focus of what we do every day. Everything else is a distraction. I need that loud music. I need the motorcycles. That's my release. That's how I clear my mind.

So, what's your plan to get your third Michelin star back?

More important than anything else, a learning ground for young culinarians and young sommeliers and waiters to go on and do great things for themselves. I believe in mentorship very deeply.

Greg Cohen: Thank you for taking time out of your busy day to sit with me.

Curtis Duffy: Absolutely, my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

We'll start off with questions about you personally and your projects and your habits. What do you create?

What do I create? Wow. Well, we try to create an experience at the restaurant which should go beyond just the food experience, right? My job is obviously to create the food, but then how do we take that experience beyond just the food? 

And I think it's something that we've always talked about is having the four pillars that kind of represent the restaurant's fundamentals of what we do every day and how we run our business, which is having those four foundations of cuisine, the wine service, the service in general, and the ambience. Those four elements which should not outshine one or the other, should be very equal. And that's kind of always been our principle on how we dictate our restaurant on a daily basis. 

And what are you working on recently that you're excited about?

Well, it's always nice to walk into a new season if you will in terms of food and ingredients. I think every chef could probably say that they're excited for the next season to begin and to kind of see what nature brings us and what's bountiful for us coming out of the ground and how we communicate with our farmers and foragers to kind of dictate what our next menu brings about. So right now we're fully into the winter menu. We're looking, we're excited to get spring menu available. We're in Chicago where we won't see a spring until probably late May and then it'll be a short spring and then summer. 

Ok, what is your signature or what distinguishes your work from everyone else's?

Well, I don't say that I have a signature dish, if that's what you're asking, if it's a signature dish.

Or your style, your signature style.

Yeah, I've always played the idea that it is a personality cuisine. It's the cuisine that I enjoy eating. It's food that I enjoy eating. It's certainly things that are in season, and I obviously would never serve shrimp because I'm allergic to shrimp. So it has to be things that I enjoy to eat. And that changes all the time. You know, I get the question all the time. What's your favorite ingredient to work with? And I could say coconut today, fennel tomorrow, yuzu the next day. It's kind of all over the place. It just changes all the time. I can say that. I love coconut 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It's fascinating the flavors of coconut. But yeah, I don't know.

When do you do your most creative work? And why do you think that is?

That's a great question. So let's just talk about how we conceptualize a dish at the restaurant. It'll start with the ingredient and then that ingredient gets written down on paper and once it's on paper, we start to talk about the three supporting elements to that main ingredient. 

So let's just say we're picking lamb as the main focus of that dish. Then we think about three supporting elements. And then how do we utilize those three supporting elements to achieve an entire dish? But also with those three elements, how can we utilize those three elements to their fullest? So if we say lamb with tangerine, fennel, and black olive, then how do we take the fennel and execute it to its fullest ability? 

And I think that's where the creativity starts, is getting the product in hand. We can start and we can write down all the ideas on paper and we can start to implement those in the actual kitchen when we have ingredients in hand. But that's when the transformation and that's when the creativity really starts, because even though you've had fennel many, many times, every season seems to bring about a different look and a different approach. And it's definitely a different outlook on how we treat the ingredient every from year to year, from season to season. So, that's kind of where the creativity starts.

How much of your day is actively spent in creative work?

Well, with the three restaurants open now, I would say not enough. It's not as much as I would like and I think that's why a lot of the times restaurants of this caliber lean towards a Chef de Cuisine who is my right hand man, which is Lucas, and Chef Lucas is now taking the reins of what we do and implementing his creativity towards the restaurant. And we're allowing him to have his voice, and that's how it should be. 

For me to stand in that kitchen every single day and create and execute, it's great for the business. But how do we grow? How can we grow from that? I don't think that's possible if I'm in the kitchen prepping dishes and creating the menu every single day. I need the time to kind of step away and grow the business and be the brand also as a chef. So I think my time in the kitchen, I would say if you broke 100% out of the day, I would say maybe say maybe 45-50% of the day is spent focusing on creating stuff, but that's not every single day, right? There's other days that there's no creativity at all and it's about maybe refining the dishes that are on the menu, retasting them all and adjusting how we approach it. 

And when you're developing ideas, do you begin with the end in mind or do you let it kind of evolve organically?

Yeah. We've always begun with the ingredient focus as we talked about the lamb earlier. That would be the focus of it. Then once we have those three supporting flavors, then you can start thinking about the end result. But I think the end result takes its shape during that creative process. I don't think we've ever created a dish that ultimately had its end result. It's always ever changing. And we can, we could certainly have the end result on paper, but I think that's never been true for us where it's ultimately ended that way. It looks beautiful on paper and you would read it and be like, “Yeah, that's a great dish”. 

But then if you compare the two of the actual finished dish and the stuff on paper, it's almost never the same. It's always different because we taste the dish and then we really figure out what does it need from that point? From the first initial tasting, we taste it and then we either take or add ingredients or methods or we're usually taking away. Take away this, add more of this, and to balance the dish out. That's how it all becomes to a point where we have to be 100% happy with the dish before we actually go on the menu.

When you're doing your menu creation, how do you set up your environment or conditions to be conducive to creation?

Well, I think it's just having a workstation in the kitchen for me. I stand in the same spot in the kitchen, my station every day. I set it up the same way very consistent with how I work and the things and the tools that I need at my fingertips to be efficient with what I do. And if we walked into the kitchen now, you'd see my station, it would have all the things that I need to then create. There's pad of paper, there's notebooks, there's c fold towels and knives and spoons and the things that a chef would need to then make my job efficient in that kitchen. So I can be productive with what I want to achieve that day. And having my prep list or my mise en place list ready to go every day.

And before you took the helm of Avenues, you designed your career around working at places that you deem to be the best in order to improve yourself. How do you improve yourself now that you're in charge?

Well, I think it's a mentality. Even I think even before wanting to work at these great restaurants, I think it was always a mentality of wanting to be the best. And how do I do that every day? And I think that still stays true to this day, even as being an owner, I think the staff pushes me to be better every day because my job is to set the standards extremely high for them, and their job is to want to exceed my standard. 

So if I have to constantly make my standards higher and better in refinement every single day, even if it's the smallest little things setting my station up, making sure maybe today my station is cleaner and tighter than it was yesterday. Maybe yesterday got a little bit out of hand and things got not right where I wanted to be. So maybe today, I take that as my challenge to make sure that my station is super tight and I think that lends itself into the staff adapting that mentality. And I think that ultimately is how we're constantly striving to be better and constantly try staying on top of one another and allowing one another to kind of push each other to be better every day. That's kind of what it's about now.

What are the Legos or the building blocks of your creative process?

Well, I think, like we said, we talked about ingredients. That's kind of where it all starts and exploring, trying to think outside of the box to a sense. That for us, when I say, think outside of the box, I'm more… What I'm trying to say is making sure we're not repeating something that we've done before. I think that's very important for us as a restaurant. We're not trying to be the restaurant that serves the same dish every time or every year. Lamb comes around and we serve the same lamb that we did last year. That is ultimately our goal is to constantly have change and move forward. 

But also I think it's very important that for me as a chef that I'm giving my guest a sense of creativity, but also a sense of familiarity to a dish. I wanna make sure that I intellectually challenge with the food, but the guest also needs to be as well to keep their attention, but also needs to have a sense that they understand what it is. I don't wanna confuse them and think that if I give them a beet, I want them to know that it's a beet. I want them to be able to identify that. It's a beet and not play the guessing game as to what am I eating? Like, I think it's important as a chef to make sure that we give them that familiar food item, but it's also our job to be creative as well on that sense. So how can we give them a beet in a way maybe they haven't seen before or maybe it's a textural thing that they have not experienced before. That's our challenge at this yet.

What percentage of your creative time is spent experimenting?

I think all the time actually, because we're always trying to do something we haven't done before. So I think in that sense that yeah, maybe we've done certain things a certain way for many, many years and we've adapted that, which is OK because that's our cuisine, right? I mean, we do have to have fundamentals and we stand on those fundamentals to kind of build the next level for us, right? We need foundation, we need those fundamentals to move our cuisine forward.

So what makes one idea more promising than another?

I don't think that's possible for us because we've gone down that route where we've taken a dish to its full capacity where we think it's great and then we never put it on the menu or we get to a place where an ingredient we've used and let's just say maitake mushroom or matsutake mushrooms  that have such a short window of opportunity that by the time we get our dish onto the menu, the maitake are no longer available or the mushroom is no longer available. Then we have to change direction, which is challenging for us because we're not a spontaneous restaurant. We try to put a lot of thought and energy into creating a dish. And once that dish is on the menu, we try not to deviate so much. We wanna make sure that we're staying true to that dish, the initial vision of that dish.

And how do you know that a creative decision you're making is right?

Through taste and tasting and tasting again and again, really. It's like I said, we won't put a dish on the menu unless we're 100% happy with it. And that’s our challenge as a chef because we're a tasting menu restaurant. Our challenge is to keep that consistently every night and it seems very mundane from a chef de partie moment in the kitchen where they have to create that dish every day for and upwards of maybe two months at a time where that dishes on that menu. 

But they have to create that every single day and for a chef or for anybody really, that could be very boring in a sense that I gotta do the same thing every single day, five days a week for 60-70 people a night. But the challenge is making sure that they understand that it's the guests first time ever experiencing that dish. So it needs to be what it was when it went on the menu. And the challenge as a chef is to be consistent making that product every single day as consistent as they can.

How often does the menu change at Ever?

We change, well, we try to think of it as 52 weeks out of the year. Seasonally wise, obviously we know four seasons a year, but we're always changing. Not necessarily the entire menu changes all at once. We'll change two or three dishes at a time. For instance, tonight, we have a new dish that's going on. And then once this dish is on, we start working on the next dish and then the next dish and the next dish until the menu is again flipped. And we're still cooking within the season of winter time for us now. So just because the winter menu is set doesn't mean we, we just sit there, right? We still gotta change. 

And we have ideas of what we want to do for new items for winter and what we also still have to continue to think about what's coming up in the future springtime. Ok. So maybe a dish that we're working on now doesn't make its way to the menu for the winter menu. But maybe how we're handling certain things, we can take those ideas and apply them to something for the spring time. So the idea is not lost. Maybe it's just put on the back burner and we adapt those ideas or techniques or flavor profile and we push it towards something that maybe springtime is suited for, for that ingredient.

How do you distinguish when it's time to test and try new things or when it's time to dig deeper or double down on an existing idea?

Mm. Great question. I think we don't spend a lot of time on it. If it's not working, it's not working. Let's move on. I don't want to spend a lot of time. I don't wanna spend all that time into figuring out how we can get it to work if we're that far off. If it's a dish, as soon as we make it and it's not even close to where we thought it would be, I don't really want to spend the time figuring it out. Let's just move on to a different ingredient, different idea. 

I think that's easier and that idea can be put on the back burner for another time. Maybe next year we'll revisit that idea, or maybe even we've gotten to a point where we'll look at it six months from now and go, what the hell are we thinking? Like “That makes absolutely no sense.” Maybe in the moment it did, and maybe that's the reason why it didn't go on just it… There's many, many, many dishes that never make its way to the menu for a reason that some of them, we can't even explain. It just doesn't hit, just doesn't make sense.

How do you know when you're done when you're conceptualizing something? How do you know that it's finished?

I think just by taste. I think tasting it. How happy are you? Can you eat the whole thing? You feel satisfied after you eat it? Do you want more? Do you crave more after you finish that dish? I think that's when it's a win win solution for us. And then I don't think a dish is never really finished, because we can always refine and refine and tweak and do this maybe a little bit better. So there's always that involved. A dish is never complete. There's always subtle ways to make it better the next day. And the way I think, I think.

What makes a creative project successful? How do you measure success?

Well, I think the people that are involved in that creative process, if everybody is happy on the end result, I think that's a successful moment. Allowing somebody to have their voice and having that kind of see all the way through is a version of success. Meaning maybe my chef de cuisine has an idea for a course and we start working on it and then maybe it's a collaboration or maybe I just allow him to go 100% full with it and then it is a successful dish and it goes on the menu. I think that's successful. That's a version of success for me. That means that we're empowering him to think. We're empowering him to create and have those ideas and not be afraid to share them and put them out for everybody to judge it. Because that's ultimately what happens every single night. Every dish, 60 people judge that dish every single night and whether you like it or not, that's the way it is. That's part of being who we are as chefs and some people wanna call it art and that's just who we are. Everybody's a foodie these days. Everybody thinks they know food.

So where do you find inspiration?

Well, inspiration can be led from anywhere. I think the better question is how. How do we remain open to creativity or inspiration? I think we could certainly look at many different things around us to be inspired by things. It could be art. It could be music. It could be textures of certain things. It could be a lot of a lot of different things. I think it's more about how do we allow ourselves to accept those inspirational moments? 

I think a lot of people say to be able to look through the eyes of a child again, would be so special, right? Because it's so pure and raw and they don't see a lot of things the way we do, they see things brand new for the first time. And then there are my daughters… I remember when I was back at Avenues, my daughters were pretty young then and they used to give me stuff and say silly things. But those silly things, ultimately, like, I would have never thought about that in a certain way. Like dandelions and they're blowing the dandelions in the wind and then they pop the top off of it and then they see it's hollow. They're like, “Oh, you could use this as a straw.” And I'm like, “Yeah, you actually could, why not?” Why wouldn't we be? And that's why I think, having that mindset of how can we think like a child again? Yeah. Yeah. And also having that thought, having the ability to never say no. There's an idea and there's an application for it somewhere, somehow. 

I always encourage the chefs. Like, you'll never hear me say no about anything most of the time. There is certain things, of course. But if it's an ingredient or if it's an idea, like, let's explore it. You're not gonna hear me say no, but that's a bad idea. Let's not do that. No. No. Let's try it. Why not?

What media like books, blogs, magazines, podcasts do you recommend for creativity?

Creativity? I mean, any really. Chef books could be looked at through creativity. I think even the very mainstream books have general ideas and thoughts behind it. A chef can't think of everything. I can't sit here and think of every idea and technique of how I would treat a certain ingredient. But just thumbing through a magazine and seeing a way a certain thing has a look to it can be inspirational. 

We've sat down in the past quite a few times where I would bring out 15 magazines and a dozen cookbooks and I would just pick a random dish in there. And I'd ask the staff like, what visually is, what's finesseful about this dish? What draws your eye to this dish? Where's the touch to this dish like? And it gets them to think about how to plate food, how we touch food, how we creatively put things on the plate with a purpose. 

And I can't be that guy all the time that just teaches somebody to have that finesseful touch in the way a leaf looks better laying this way than it does that way. And how to get something to look certain way and I think it's up to the chefs to also branch out and kind of see like what gets them thinking. What gets them looking at a dish going? Ok, that's a very normal looking dish. But there's something about that. There's a finesse element to it and how do we see that? And it's challenging sometimes. So it is very challenging.

When and where do your lightning bolt ideas occur?

I don't know. They're so far and few in between. I don't know. I don't think of them that way. I think sometimes they're like those aha moments. Sure. Yeah. Anywhere, any time, any place really.Trying to think when the last time I actually had one of those moments. It's been a while. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I've been working really closely with the gentleman that is helping me create tools for us to achieve other things in the kitchen and having a conversation with him sometimes is those aha moments where he's trying to figure something out and we're just talking about it and then it could be just like “Yes. Aha. That's, yes. No, that's, you should do it this way.” 

Even though I'm not in that mindset of an architect design or somebody who creates things other than food. But I also have the advantage of me looking at it differently than he would look at it, if that makes sense. I have kind of like the outside eye where he's so involved in it on a daily basis. Sometimes when you're in it you don't see it. So, for me to have that outside perspective again, because I know nothing about what he does, I just give him ideas and he goes, “Oh yeah. I can do that for you” and then he does. But there's also those moments where it's like, yeah, I can sit there and we can go back and forth and I have the upper hand because I can see it from a different perspective and yeah, I think it's a great thing. So those are some aha moments, I guess.

Do you have any guilty pleasures? Like ramen noodles or Snicker bars?

Oh, yeah. Whoppers, chocolate Whoppers. Not the Burger King Whoppers. Candy is like a terrible vice for me. I love hot tamales, chocolate and anything with caramel in it. Chocolate and caramel with salt. Twizzlers are always a home run for me. Licorice in general. Candy. Yeah. Candy. I'm going for candy faster than I would go for like a bag of chips. 100%.

What is it like to work for Chef Duffy?

Oh, I think that's a better question for one of my staff. I think I'm a fair person in general. I think I'm very demanding. I expect a lot out of people, but I don't expect anything more than I would give. And I think that's true in life. I think you get what you give and I've always pushed that on my staff. It's like you can't expect to get 100% if you're giving 10% or 50%. We've got to apply our 100% all the time. And I expect a lot from them, because I want them to leave and go on and do great things. And I think there's a lot of great value of being here and working for the restaurant that we are and the culture that we've developed. I think it's very important in the way we manage the people or the way  we handle the staff. I think there's a great value in that for when they leave and go on and do their own restaurant or go on to be a chef of another restaurant or a hotel or whatever they decide to do. 

But it's the idea of being great at something and try to instill with them how to think like that, because no one's gonna do it for them. My job is not to push them to be great at something. It's their job, it's their responsibility. Ultimately it's like I'm not waking them up in the morning going, “Ok, brush your teeth, comb your hair, get dressed. Let's go to work. Let's push 100% today.” Like that's not my job. It's their job to do that for themselves. But again, like I said earlier, it's my job to set the standards extremely high every day, set the tone every day, and let them chase me, let them chase my standards, because ultimately if they can exceed my standards, then they're gonna go on and do great things because I personally feel like my standards are extremely high. 

I'm always trying to achieve something better every day and I'm far from perfect and I'm far from achieving what I want to achieve. But ultimately that mentality and that drive every day, that fire. So I think them, every day working with me side by side, I don't think they realize that until they actually leave. When they leave, then they then, and I think it hits them going “Wow. What I had, there was something special and unique.” And because that's something when I worked for Charlie or I worked for many chefs that when you're in it, it's hard and it's difficult. The restaurant is trying to achieve great things and it's trying to be a great restaurant and you as a cook, as a young cook, you don't realize that until you actually leave, and then when you leave, you go, “Holy shit. That place was so magical in so many different ways. I didn't see it. Thank God I spent as much time as I did there.” Hopefully that's what they see when they leave here is like they go, “Well, everything that I hated about it makes sense for me now.” If that has any weight to it.

So what role, if any does feedback play in your creativity?

Depends on who it comes from. I've always been a very confident chef that feels.. Yeah, I think being confident as a chef has allowed me to not be concerned about somebody's opinion on my food. And I say that in a very meaningful way, not in an arrogant way. 

Let's just say if I put a dish on the menu and 15 people tried it and there were 15 different opinions about it and I listened to 15 different people tell me how it should be or what they thought about it. And I started changing it 15 different ways. What foundation do I have as a chef? And what does that dish ultimately look like at the end? Because you start changing it for certain reasons. This person didn't like it because it had too much acidity. This person didn't like it. Thought it was not hot enough or whatever. As long as I'm happy with it, I think ultimately, that's all that matters. 

First and foremost, I have always cooked for myself. I've never cooked for anybody else, and I've stayed true to myself for it. As many years as I've been a chef and been in that position to have my own food voiced, that's always been my thought process. I've always stood behind it. You can ask my business partner, Michael. He's always the first one to say, “This chef doesn't care what you think. He doesn't care.” And it's in a very positive way of saying it. But I have to believe in myself first and foremost, so I have a foundation to stand on. If, if I didn't, then yeah, I would always be changing and listening to other people and it's, it's not a good thing for me.

What's the hardest part of creation?

Well, I think staying true to the style of food that I do for me. We have to stay within a very stylistic… It's my food. I don't know, I have a very unique style of cooking, visually and the way that I think about ingredients. I think that is we want to stay true to the ingredients. We want to stay true to the cuisine of who we are. But we also want to color outside of the lines if you will. And that, and that's kind of hard to do. 

Again, we don't wanna be so far out of the box that our guests, they don't understand what we're doing, what we're trying to achieve. So it's always a very fine balance, is a very fine line of how we approach certain things. And even I say that a lot when it becomes, when it's time to plate a dish. There's a very fine line of it looking sloppy and a fine line of it looking incredibly elegant with a purpose. And that's what we're trying to achieve. It's difficult sometimes though.

What stops your creative flow faster than anything?

Mm hm hm hm. I think just the daily grind of the business. We're feeding 60-70 people a night, five nights a week. Sometimes we have to go, “All right. Well, we need to focus this week.” Maybe we're shorthanded in the kitchen a little bit this week. So we have to focus on adjusting the menu in a way that we're able to get all the things done that we need to get done. So then maybe the creative side of it has to be put on hold so we can ultimately run a successful business at the end of the day. 

So I think the business side of it is what ultimately would stop the creativity. Or better yet, yesterday, when I said I felt like all I'm doing is fixing things around here and I have spent zero time in the kitchen today. Too busy fixing the sinks or fixing this and adjusting that and hanging a piece of wood and doing this entrance up front and everything other than cooking, which at the end of the day, that's what I love to do. But I also have to run a successful business too and a lot of that takes me away from cooking.

How do you make progress when you are blocked or feel like you're at a dead end?

Well, I think it has to, even more so in the last five or six months, it's leaning on my right hand man, Lucas. Again, it's forcing him to create and forcing him to put things on the menu. Yeah, the more he can do that, I think the better off we will be as a team, as a restaurant. Yeah, cuz there's so many, so many roadblocks that would stop that process of me to be able to stand in that kitchen and cook every single day. It doesn't make sense to me to, for me to be in that kitchen every single day. 

There's a lot of things that I need to do outside of the kitchen and to ensure that we're remaining in the public eye and remain in a busy restaurant. There's things that I need to do out there and there's charitable events that we do year round. I have to be there and be a face of it and those are important aspects of our business, not just running this restaurant and running After and Canvas. We also have charitable events that we, we love to do every year and be a part of.

How do you avoid ruts?

I don't think you can. Ruts in terms of creativeness? I don’t. It's like writer's block, right? I don't think we're creative all the time. There's sometimes I look at food and go, “Oh, I can't even think about food right now.” Which is ok. I'm sure a writer doesn't wanna go, “God, I gotta look, stare in front of a computer and think of things.” We try to identify those moments and just let them be. I can't think of a chef that would sit down every day and create a dish. Just not gonna happen. So the ruts are the ruts and I don't think you can avoid them and I think importantly is to identify them and just let them be, let them take their toll. Not everybody's gonna be able to create every single day. It's an exhausting process. It can be an exhausting process.

Can you think of a time that a constraint was beneficial to your creativity?

I know it has happened in the past, to think about it offhand. I mean, I think we're forced with it every day in the kitchen. I can say that where maybe we thought a certain way about how we pick up a dish and it's not working because of certain reasons forces us to think other way, other ways of doing that same dish. Maybe it's as simple as the where it sits in the kitchen who's picking the dish up. Maybe it's not working with that individual. Maybe that individual has two dishes back to back, which doesn't allow him enough time to then get ready for that next dish. So maybe we need to separate that dish from him and give it to somebody else in a different part of the kitchen. 

And that's kind of the reason why we designed that kitchen the way we do is because we can literally pick up any dish we want anywhere in that kitchen. We're not tied down to saying that every fish course needs to come from this station. Now, that's not the way we think about things anymore. It's how we built it in a way that we can pick up any dish we want in that kitchen and it just depends on the skill level of the person in that station and the ability to do it. Can he do it? Yes. Ok. Great. Let's give it to him.

Do you have more than one creative skill or job or hobby or interest?

Oh, yeah. I don't know about creativity but I have lots of hobbies that I love to do. I think playing music is a creative outlet for me. I like, I love music. I've been learning to play the bass the last six months or so. I've been taking bass lessons. I think that's a creative outlet. Makes you think about lots of things. Motorcycles for me is another one, because that allows me to clear my mind. If you will, there's no distraction of the cell phones and text messages and emails and staff people and talking and all of those things that easily distract us. There's none of that when you're on a motorcycle. Just wind and avoid another cars, traffic, and potholes in Chicago. But being able to get out and ride motorcycles or riding dirt bikes through the woods and the trails. All of those things are not necessarily creative, but it's a way to clear my mind that I could, I guess ultimately be creative.

What do you think different creative fields have in common if anything?

Probably the thought process that is behind it. Right? I think finding the idea and then the follow through of the idea and then ultimately the end result probably would be my first guess as to how things are all that can work together. 

I think of music, first and foremost, as having different parts of the band have all these ideas. And how does it all come together as one song? Kind of think of that as like a dish where the bass is the meat and the drums are the vegetables and all those have to, neither one of them can kinda outshine one another. And they all have to play together. It's kind of like a way I think about a dish, right? Everything in that dish needs to complement one another, play with one another, but not outshine one another to then create that one solid dish. It's kind of like a song and a band member having their own specific parts to that song to make it one beautiful thing.

You're a chef but you're a conductor.

Yeah, I mean, in a sense I don't consider myself a maestro. But yeah.

What skill or technique from a different field would you like to bring to your work?

I've been to so many concerts. And I've seen so many things that I would say, “Man, I would love to be able to do that in my kitchen.” Let's take, for instance, Nine Inch Nails and Trent Reznor, like watching him on stage, and how important it is for him to be like almost trying to achieve that perfection of everything. To the way he directs his band, and the way he feels and the timing and just for me, like everything he's trying to do is trying to be perfect with every song on that stage. 

Depeche Mode. We saw them a few months ago and the stage itself. You see most stages that have microphones and all the wires everywhere and the musicians are constantly stepping over things and Depeche Mode had one of the cleanest stage sets that I've ever seen. Not one wire, everything was hidden. Everything was black on top. It was like my kitchen, where there was a purpose for every station. That's kind of how I thought about it was like everything even though it was a stage and they travel with that every day, it looked perfect. It looked like everything had a purpose. And I'm like, man, that's so amazing. I love how clean it is. I related it to a lot of things that we do in the kitchen and how my kitchen runs here. 

I saw Prince years ago. It was a very small club, but just his presence in the way he again orchestrated. His band was like, so damn perfect. I would love to be able to have that in my staff. Like everybody on cue, on perfect note every single time. That was genius. It was brilliant.

So I've read that you like motorcycles and tattoos and dark, loud, intense music. How do these things permeate your culinary life or is the kitchen a refuge from these things?

Or is it that's the refuge from the kitchen? I don't know. I think yeah, some people will say like they'll look at my kitchen and it's super quiet and it's white and it's elegant, but yet you love heavy metal music and you love the color black and you love all these things. I guess the juxtaposition to that is like there are certain things that I love in the kitchen that cannot change. And that is the quietness, that is the intense focus of what we do every day. That's why nobody's talking. There's not a lot of conversations going on other than just food related moments, because everything else is a distraction. 

The other side of that is, I don't know, is it an escape? Maybe. Maybe I need that loud music. Maybe I need the motorcycles and the other things to, that's kind of my release, I guess. That's how I get rid of stress and get rid of... Maybe that's how I clear my mind is through those things, live music and motorcycles and, yeah, martial arts. Maybe that's how, oh, it is. That's how I get rid of my stress.

So, what's your plan to get your third Michelin star back?

Well, I think it is a number of things that need to happen. I think time is a big factor in everything. Time allows us to kind of really hone our craft. Continue to hone what we do, continue to be better every single day and consistent. And it's ultimately, I think that's what it is, is time allowing us to continue to be a better restaurant every day. And just be better and try to be better at everything every day. That's ultimately what it is. And if we if we never achieve that third star again, and it's not meant to be and it's ok. 

I think it's important that we're here 15 years, 20 years down the road. That's, I think ultimately more important than anything else is having a restaurant that's successful and a restaurant that is viable and a restaurant that is able to be a learning ground for young culinarians and young sommeliers and waiters to go on and do great things for themselves too. I think that's also a success as well. Allowing this place to be that fundamental training for them to go in and do great things. 

I believe in the mentorship very deeply. We take all of our cooks and we, we focus a lot on their growth and how they exit working at Ever is very important. So, yeah, I think time more than anything is how we achieve that third star. Having that fire to continue to wanna be better and never lose the idea that we wanna obtain that third star. That's always in the back of our head. We know we can do it. We've done it before. We know how to get there. It's just we gotta get there.

OK. And the last two questions. First one is, who do you think of when I say most creative person? 

Trent Reznor. Yeah, I think because he's gone on from just the industrial grind music that he's known for. To go on and compose some of the greatest works of art musically out there. He's been able to go and do many different facets of music and he's just not tied to one specific thing. He's done children's music. He's done music for all kinds of genres of movies, and then he does his own thing. And he's done stuff with his wife with another band. So he's all over the place. And I think that's creativity. It's easy. Well, it's not easy. 

I think it's fair to say that most people in his position could easily just be ok with doing one thing, rock and roll. That's it. That's all they do. But he's been able to do many different things, which I find a very creative way of allowing him to do things that it's not just rock and roll. And that's a tough question though. Sorry to interrupt. That's a very tough question, because I could think of 10 other people too. But yeah.

You get such a spectrum of answers. Some people say Leonardo Da Vinci and some people say only living people, Elon Musk. It's all over the map.

It could be anyone, right? It's yeah. I could go on and on, but he's the first person that popped into my head.

Yeah, that's the most honest answer then.

For sure.

And is there anyone else you could think of that you think we should talk to for this project?

Does it need to be a chef or could be anybody who has creative insights? I don't even know where to go with that question. Let's see. Hm. You're gonna have to cut this one and then retape it. I don't know. I mean, how did my name come about? Who gave you my name?

Experiencing Avenues and then following your career. Watching For Grace and just reading interviews about you.

And, well, that's a tough question. I mean, I would say maybe Grant Achatz. Maybe John Shields. He just obtained his third Michelin star. So the thought process behind that. A good friend of mine, Jeremy Wagner. He's a gentleman who's has his hands in a lot of things. I think first and foremost of his ultimate love for music, but he's done different genre music and been in different bands and very successful, but also writes horror music or horror novels. He's written my memoir. So he's kinda multifaceted, many different things. He owns a book publishing company. I mean, he's all over the place, and he's an incredible guy. So he'd be an interesting gentlemen to talk to. Hm. That's a good start. Yeah.

Oh, thank you very much for taking all this time to speak with me and answer and great insight into the creative process. Good to get your vantage point. Most of the people I talked to are visual artists of some sort. So I really truly wanted to get a top level chef's perspective and you dazzled.

Yeah. Well, thank you. I appreciate you and I appreciate you having me on the podcast, and I hope it was good for you.

It was. Thank you very much.