Operator Corner Archives

Part One: The Renaissance Man

Read all parts in this series: Part Two | Part Three | Part Four

Chef John McCarthy is the living embodiment of a renaissance man. He’s been a lawyer, chef, consultant, and artist.

John began his professional career as a lawyer, only to later realize his true passion. He left his legal career to attend the French Culinary Institute. Upon graduating from FCI (top of his class), he went to work for Chef Wylie Dufresne at wd~50 in New York City. John is a certified sommelier and an authority on sake. He has lived and traveled in Asia extensively and is highly accomplished in Asian cuisine.

His first restaurant, The Crimson Sparrow, was a critically acclaimed spot in Hudson, New York. The next restaurant, Oka, was a Manhattan restaurant serving John’s interpretation of Japanese izakaya fare.

The pandemic forced John to delay plans on new concepts. He has transitioned to serving as a foodservice consultant, as well as further developing his growing popularity as an abstract artist.

In this interview, John sat down (virtually) with his old friend, the late Chef Barry Yates. John shared his thoughts and opinions on the devastating effects of COVID-19 on the restaurant industry, and the challenges facing operators in large population centers. During this December 2020 discussion, he offered us a frank and honest look at the reality of the industry during these unprecedented times.

It’s good to see your face!

Yeah, it’s been a while.

You don’t look any different.

Yep, still fat. [laughs] Never trust a skinny chef, right Barry?

Yes, that’s right. [laughs]. Did you have a chance to look at our other Operator Corner posts?

Yes. It’s fascinating to me because, you know, I was using your products back in 2008, I guess would have been the first time. And we had CVaps in The Crimson Sparrow from day one, from 2012 until we closed it in 2019. We had three different ones at one point. We had what I think you called the Silver Edition, which was the box. That was our workhorse. And then we’d gotten another one that was really industrial, that I think was primarily a school version. And then we also got one of your prototype counter models.

Yeah, the Pod.

Yeah, we tried to use that from time to time. It was more of an experiment. We liked the size of that one [laughs]. My point is, looking at the models now, it looks like they are Ferraris compared to what they used to be. I feel like I used dad’s ’56 Thunderbird. Which isn’t bad. They were phenomenal. I could expand upon it all. It’s amazing to see where you are now, you know. In terms of functionality, I’m sure, is much much better. They also look sleek and really well designed. I just wanted to say that out front.

I loved The Crimson Sparrow in Hudson. What kind of building was that before you got it?

It was about 150, 160 years old. It was initially a house. Then off the back side of it, up where my office was, there was another sort of entryway into the building. It was primarily a horse carriage repair shop. They had a pulley system. They would pull the carriages up and work on them up in the top. And then, it slowly, at the turn of the last century it became a bakery. We actually had the sign, and some of the script, the coins. It was called Rose’s Bakery. And in fact, one of our rooms was basically built out of the oven. That middle room. And then it became a Maytag repair shop for a while. Then it was an antique dealer’s sort of house and showroom. And then we took it. But it was actually two buildings. The one side was all The Crimson Sparrow, with living quarters above it. And then the other side we had leased out. I sold them all in 2019.

One part of the building was a full, open kitchen. Had huge glass, that sat behind the actual Crimson Sparrow restaurant. And there was a courtyard in between the restaurant and the kitchen. And I can’t tell you how cool it was to sit in that courtyard and watch everything that was going on in that kitchen.

The windows, I think were 18 feet wide by 6 feet tall. That actually was the garage. The cool thing about that garage, and why we decided to put the kitchen there, was that we found that the garage had drainage in the floor directly out into the street and city sewer. And we were like ‘wow, we could put a kitchen in here and just hose down the floor every night.’ It turned out that that portion of the property, that garage, was ceded to 746, which was the address for our building, from the building next door, that was on the corner. The reason there were drains in the floor was that the building next door used to be an Edsel and Packard dealership, and that’s where they would pull the cars around and wash them. We got really lucky with that. We built the kitchen in there, full gallery kitchen, with Jade ranges and the CVaps, all stainless. Big stainless hood. And on the roof, we actually put an herb garden and produce garden.

It was one of my favorite restaurants, outside of the fact that it was your food, it was just totally cool.

It was fun.

It was right in downtown Hudson, historic Hudson. It was just cool.

It was fun while it lasted.

I had some of my most memorable meals there. I hate that it’s not there so I could go to it again.

That’s where I met Mr. Winston [Shelton].

Yeah, it is! I got Winston there once, didn’t I?

Right on.

Read Part Two: The Challenges Facing Restaurants in Big Cities

Part Two: Big City Restaurant Challenges

Read all parts in this series: Part One | Part Three | Part Four

Asset vs. Lease

Hold on a second. That’s something that we haven’t touched on in our other conversations. Give everybody a little bit more insight into what you just said, ’cause I think that’s one of the most important lessons I learned early in my restaurant career. Talk about asset versus lease, and what it means in New York City.

Sure. Even before the pandemic and the lockdowns, we were seeing a tremendous flight of younger, talented cooks and chefs leaving New York City. It wasn’t for want of venture capital to invest in restaurant creation. It was more they were looking for the stability of a restaurant. You can go back to your home in Washington, or Minnesota, or Indiana. And just because you leave New York City doesn’t mean that you all of the sudden forget how to cook fine dining or innovative food. You need to be sensitive, obviously, to the market that’s there. I think that New York, Chicago, and Los Angles are a bit more receptive to it because you’ve got a larger group of people who are into cultural activities, and there’s a vibe movement afoot.

But that being said, a young 30-something chef decides he or she wants to open a restaurant, you’re looking at, say 1000-square-foot restaurant. You’re looking at rent somewhere around 17 to 19 thousand dollars a month. You add on the insurances, you add on the city…we’ll call it a regressive tax, the DOH inspections; the fines; the compliance. You’re looking at a nut that is incredibly huge. Throw in in the fact that a liquor license in the city will cost you…lawyers and everything else…around fifty to sixty thousand dollars, not to mention appearances before the community boards, and fighting with the SLA [State Liquor Authority]. So, your initial investment – build-out, furniture, we’ll call them the tangentials – you’re looking at a million dollars, minimum. And even more, if it’s a new build-out, not an existing restaurant space.

Now there are spaces that you can get away with things that are cheaper. But when you’re paying almost $20,000 in your required three months’ rent, first, and security, and then the first and last. There’s a hundred grand out of your pocket.

Chefs are Leaving Big Cities

Maybe it was the lawyer esthetic in my head. I thought, if we’re going to do this, taking into account the failure rate of restaurants, we want to have some kind of parachute should it not work. Even if it does work – say for example for seven or eight years like The Crimson Sparrow – at the end of the experience you have an asset that’s increased in value. So, we looked in a 20, 25-mile radius of my house upstate, probably at 40 or 50 properties. We settled on one in Hudson. And by the grace of God and good old capitalist greed, the building increased in value almost 75% when we sold. We also had all the things that were in the facility that we sold to the next buyer as well. But that allowed us, if you take into account the yearly depreciation, the write-offs for taxes, salaries pulled from the property, and then you’re able to lump a big sum on your four or five investors and get them, if not whole, even a little bit more – it’s a zero-sum gain with other people’s money. So, we did very well. And it’s a model, I think, that is becoming much more popular as these urban centers become much much more difficult.

Until the larger metropolitan areas start viewing restaurants as an asset to draw tourists and income, instead of a revenue source for fines and levees, and things like that, I think there’s going to be a continued look for places that aren’t eight, ten million people. Maybe I discussed it with you or Mr. Winston, the great chefs in Kentucky. Ed Lee is down there. You don’t need to be in a large urban center to be a success.

I don’t know if we were rationalizing it, but we were doing a lot of research. If you look at the number of franchises that are in the United States that are not located in any of the big northeastern cities and that their multi-million-dollar operations, it just brings you to the conclusion that it’s not a path of least resistance. It’s not a fear of doing business in New York. It’s simply financial. Couple that with a lot of these younger chefs that were leaving even before the pandemic. It’s also a lifestyle change. They can go back to where they grew up. They can go back to a community that they know. And they can give back to that community the things they’ve learned in NYC and LA and Chicago. And be very happy with cooking, making money, servicing their community, and being part of that again.

New York City

I think New York was a wonderful place. I think it’s gonna go through a decade of very, very difficult times. But I think there is something to be said to finding first peace in place, and then pursuing what you want to do. Just because you live in Peoria, Illinois doesn’t mean you can’t fly to Japan, and go to Spain and bring back what you’ve learned. There used to be an obsession to be in New York or Chicago or LA, or even Atlanta. I think that has passed, at least from what I’m seeing and what’s happening. There’s still a desire to be in New York, but again, if you’re not in that pipeline of available capital it will be incredibly difficult.

I’m an adviser to the New York Japanese Restaurant Association, run by some very experienced and well-known Japanese restauranteurs in New York. We set it up as a 501C6, which allows us to do lobbying and other activities. One of the main things that we saw at the beginning and outside of the pandemic and lockout was the difficulty the restaurants were having in paying their rent. And in fact, it’s only gotten worse.

The last survey from the New York City Hospitality Alliance showed that almost 70% of the restaurateurs are not meeting their rent. Now the difficulty comes in looking at it from a business perspective. The landlords are, almost to a person, unwilling to negotiate, renegotiate, or give breaks on rent. Now there are anecdotal examples of landlord slashing rent, or putting it on the back end of the term of lease, or taking up to 10% of your gross sales, which is the limit under the state liquor authority. Almost across the board, the landlords have not budged. Which means that someone that’s paying $15,000 a month for rent is trying to make that nut solely on delivery, takeout, and only for the last month – 25% capacity. Evidence would suggest that’s nearly impossibility, if not a complete impossibility.

The reason for that, if you want to have a discussion about the economic pipeline, is that the state and city have done zero to alleviate the property tax burden on landlords. Couple that with the fact that Morgan Chase and other banks that hold mortgages on these properties want their cut as well. And there’s been no relief on the mortgages. So, you know, everything rolls downhill, from a lack of action by Congress on the Restaurants Act, any direct help to landlords and restaurants. So, as it continues to flow down, everyone’s looking to the last man standing, who is unfortunately the restaurant operator.

And the one with the least capital.

There’s no capital. And as they’re all standing on the shoulders of each other, the one getting crushed is the restaurant operator. And until there is a, well at this point they’ve had ten months to come to Jesus and say ‘we understand you have no income. You can’t service your rent, which then means we can’t service our property tax burden or pay the bank. Therefore we’re gonna go into default.’ And I’m not saying all landlords are that way. There are some multi-billion-dollar real estate conglomerates. We’re talking about a lot of the smaller buildings in what most people would consider the quaint areas of, say, Manhattan – brownstones. Those are typically somebody that’s had a building in their family. They may rely on one or two buildings to actually be their income. But there’s been nothing to adjust it.

So, as we come to the end of the pandemic, we’re hoping that restaurants will soon be able to open up, with a vaccine, etc. Although we believe that soon Cuomo’s gonna announce an elimination of the indoor dining at 25 percent. [Governor Cuomo subsequently did suspend NYC indoor dining.] But as we come out of it, if there is no adjustment on the economic realities of rent in New York. We’ll be at 70% vaccination and everyone’s got their papers and cards, and everyone’s gonna be healthy, and there will never be a flu case again. I don’t think the rent is going to adjust. So even though this may have been an opportunity…I don’t want you to say opportunity because it means taking advantage of it, but if there were a time that rent was going to readjust or adjust itself in a downward fashion that would hopefully, after a travesty like this, result in the promotion of more entrepreneurial activity due to the availability of property and the access allowed by lower pricing seems to have passed us by. That’s my, well…you know, near illiterate economic view of what’s happening. But the realities are there.

I think that’s a pretty good understanding at observation. I’m glad you shared that with us, so we can share it with others.

This is based solely on my interaction with existing restaurant operators who are hoping to pull out of this and stay in there. One of the bigger things to come out of this that I think is going to affect the entire restaurant industry is the actions of the insurance companies. Most insurance policies did not include business interruption coverage, or if they did it had to be a physical damage to a building. There’s legion lawsuits out there trying to get business interruption coverage. But I will tell you, we’ve been in this cycle almost ten months now, this means that on a year-to-year basis, the new insurance policies are going to contain the most onerous and heinous exceptions to viral, bacterial, and other food and airborne diseases. And what’s being a big concern is that these policies are so restrictive that they’re actually removing the policies’ foodborne illnesses from coverage. So, restaurant operators are very aware what the impact of the COVID is, beyond just you know avoiding COVID and getting a vaccine.

There is going to be a ripple through this industry on so many levels, not to mention the fact that insurance rates are going to skyrocket. Just typical response of the insurance industry. But these are things that we’re dealing with on a micro and macro level at the New York Japanese Restaurant Association, in conjunction with another great group called the New York City Hospitality Alliance, who really take the point on a lot of these issues. But that’s what we’re doing. We’re trying to help these restaurant operators deal with the day-to-day issues that come up, in terms of restrictions, regulations, lockdowns. But also trying to anticipate what business considerations they need to take into the equation to ensure that they’re gonna make money.

So, based on your experience there with the associations in New York, and knowing that these ripples are not just in New York, it’s across our whole industry, right? Are you aware of any super PAC or hospitality associations that are going to say, ‘we’re one of the largest employers, as an industry.’ Do you see anything coming in the future or in the works now that are going to get better representation for independent operators?

The National Restaurant Association is one of the largest groups out there. The New York City Hospitality Alliance, like I said, is another great. We have another New York State Restaurant Association. There’s a lot of associations. I think the difficulty they are all having, and that we have all had, is that there is a logjam in the Congress. And when one side is fighting for a billion dollars and another one is fighting for 1.6 billion dollars, for some reason they can’t come up with a solution. Only those who are truly in need and vulnerable are the ones held hostage. And frankly, you know the Restaurants Act, which is the one act that I think is really going to be beneficial in that it provides direct payments to restaurants and workers, has been stalled. And if we look at what’s going on today and probably until the January 19^th, there is slim to no chance that that’s ever going to be addressed unless there is a concerted effort to take care of the restaurants.

Now the actions of the mayors and governors in New York, Massachusetts, and California should highlight the situation that these restaurant operators and workers really need now. And hopefully someone is going to take notice. There is some hope for the restaurant operators. I think if you look at how…I’m not going to say it was shortsighted…how optimistic the PPP program was. That provided loans to restaurant operators, allowed up to 20% of it to be used for something other than salaries. But if you applied back in March or April, that money is already been expended. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a second round of the PPP. That program is basically extinguished. So, we were optimistic in March. We’d get through the summer and PPP money, and you’re back up and kicking for summer or late summer, early fall. It just didn’t work out that way. So, we’re in a situation where right now there’s no money in the pipeline to help these businesses and help these operators and entrepreneurs. It’s really an abject failure of everyone involved – President, Congress, whoever you want to blame, that there’s not been a view to helping one of the largest small business sectors in the country.

So, with all that said, I think it brings me to two more questions. One, as somebody like yourself, or myself, or other chefs, or other restaurant operators, or even people who like to eat in restaurants, what can we do to help that out? And then also, let’s just assume that something is done that gets our industry back on track. What does that look like when we’re back really operating and open?

So, a couple of things. One, I would urge everyone to contact their reps or senators and push the National Restaurants Act. This needs to be done ASAP. Number two, I’m a bit cynical about it, because I think my lawyer mind kicks in. Even if the restaurant operators and workers were to get money through the restaurants act, you have a group of mayors that is arbitrarily and without constitutional authority locking down businesses, telling them they cannot operate. So, if you give these businesses money but you tell them they can’t open, you’re essentially perpetuating pain.

Restaurants Are Singled Out in the Pandemic

I’ll point out that in New York City here, restaurants seem to be the low hanging fruit of resolution. Meaning, if there’s an uptick, all of the sudden it must be restaurants. Let’s shut them down or restrict their capacity. In New York there is a demand, I mean a very public demand for data. Because as of yet, we’ve been shown no data that transmission is caused and/or is rampant coming out of restaurants. In fact, to the contrary, restaurants are conducting business in a way that’s probably the safest out there, meaning plexiglass, ventilation systems, air circulation, measures that were taken, people wearing PPE all the time during the interaction. So, there is absolutely no evidence that the restaurants are the cause (meaning that you have to shut them down).

Now I’ll point out in Boston they’ve actually got the data. Boston has shown that point four, point four – less than half a percent of the transmissions identified came out of restaurants. Yet they’re not allowed to operate. In California you have a governor shutting down outdoor dining. If I can’t even bring the outdoors…I’m not sure what’s left for me. A judge in California has just shot down that edict.

The problem we’re seeing and, the problem you’re having…this comes from my lawyer brain…is that if this were a law passed by the New York Assembly, or by the House or Senate, groups out of the states, you could challenge it as an unlawful law. I don’t wanna get too political but these edicts and fiats by mayors that seem to change every two or three weeks leaves you with no judicial recourse in an appropriately time-sensitive and exigent fashion to get yourself open.

I’ll point out anecdotally Governor Cuomo shut down churches in New York. The Catholic Diocese appealed to the Supreme Court and won. Cuomo dismissed it as irrelevant, because he said that at the time the church was in an orange zone, and now they’re in a yellow zone. So, the facts don’t apply. So, we’re left with these governors and mayors doing what they wish without constitutional recourse. It’s been a very frustrating experience for those people that want to challenge authority, but there’s nothing to challenge because it’s being done in a very cavalier fashion.

Sorry for the diatribe. I think what we’re left with is hoping that there is going to be money put on the table for restaurant operators and workers, with a corresponding…not to be too cynical but we’re entering winter in the Northeast. We’re looking at flu, we’re looking at any other any other number of possible contagions. It’s not likely that we’ll see the light of day until spring again. They’ve extended outdoor dining in New York, but I’ll tell you that their restrictions on seating capacity, heating, which heat lamps and propane you can or can’t use. It’s onerous. If it snows more than 12 inches all of these restaurants are being required to break down all of their outdoor setups and semi-permanent structures, move them inside, let them plow, and then move them back out. I’m not sure that there’s going to be a stampede rush to a three-quarter paneled in the street in February when it’s 4°F outside. What we’re facing is a very very difficult situation, speaking as a New Yorker. We don’t have the conditions for outdoor dining that say LA or Dallas, or San Antonio have. We are in a completely different situation. Frankly, I’ll just say, we need help. We need help in a big way.

Here’s where the restaurant operators get frustrated. For example, Governor Cuomo several weeks ago, said “we’ve seen an uptick. So, what we’re gonna do is put a curfew on indoor dining at ten o’clock,” meaning a couple of things. One – is this a suggestion that the virus only attacks people at 10:01? The other thing that he did was required people to be moved out of the restaurant. Well, guess where they’re going? They’re going to probably what they consider illegal gatherings, either apartments or other spaces. Couple that with the fact that he also stopped to-go and delivery of alcohol after ten o’clock. I do not understand that one. If you’re looking for people to go home, if I can take a bottle with me and finish my conversation with my dinner guests in my apartment with a bottle of booze, so much the better.

They’re making these rules up without any…I’ll call it justification or rationale. If you think about it, in New York if you’re going to put a curfew on a restaurant at ten o’clock, and they don’t usually open until six, well guess what? More people are going to show up at the restaurant between six and nine. To get their eat on. This is where we get into this circular kind of frustration. We, as a restaurant group and as a restaurant community are trying to abide as best we can. I guess it’s the one opportunity we have to be part of the collective to get through it. But whatever they’re doing, they have done, doesn’t seem to be working in terms of the overall infection rate, so we’re left with trying to hold as best we can.

I hear the frustration. I feel it. I’m anxious to get this up on our website so we can show some support to everybody.

Read Part Three: Japanese Culture and Cuisine

crimson sparrow CVap hudson John McCarthy new york oka

Part Three: Japanese Culture and Cuisine

Read all parts in this series: Part One | Part Two | Part Four

I’m gonna switch gears totally on you. I know from my personal experience with you, your passion for Japanese culture. Tell us a little bit about what you have done, not only related to food, but just in general, and why and then talk to us about Japanese food culture.

I lived in Asia when I was a younger guy. I was in South Korea for three and a half years. We traveled pretty extensively through Asia. Japan being one of the favorite places I’d ever been. As you look back, those experiences had a huge impact on you at the time, because it was when I was 13…14, until I was almost 16…17 years old. It’s during that time when you really start, I wouldn’t say appreciating food like in a very haughty kind of way. But your impressions of what food you like really kind of take hold. I’ll point out that at that time, in the early 1980s, they didn’t have McDonald’s in South Korea. So, I didn’t eat McDonald’s, for years. The first time I got to eat it was on the Ginza in Tokyo. I remember, I think it might be one of the first stops, like look man, it’s been it’s been a year or two, like we need to get down with a Big Mac.

You start to appreciate in a very different way living within that culture what you like and don’t like. It was a very interesting experience, and I took away from that a deep appreciation for the food cultures of Asia. So, when I started cooking professionally, I sort of fell in with a lot of the elements that I really appreciated about Asia, started making their way into my cooking.

I think it was the first year we had The Crimson Sparrow, we decided we’d take a couple of weeks off. So, I decided to go to Japanese friend of mine, a Michelin-starred sushi chef, and ask him if he would just let me work in his kitchen for a couple of weeks, in New York. Funny story…I asked him during dinner, he just looked at me and said “no.” I was like, ‘well, that’s kind of a bummer.’ Then he went downstairs, and he came back about 20 minutes later and said “look, I don’t want you working here. I’m gonna send you to Japan to work with my master. Let’s get drunk.”

So yeah, went to Tokyo to work in his master’s restaurant. I think it was like four weeks. Lived with one of the sushi chefs. I’ll tell you, one month of doing that routine really gives you an appreciation for how hard it is on sushi chefs in Japan. The experience of getting up at four in the morning, going with the chef to Tsukiji market, buy fresh fish and coming back and butchering on a line with all the other chefs. Eating breakfast with them, and then getting ready for lunch service. Cleaning for lunch service. Taking a one-hour nap, then coming back for dinner service. Wiping the whole place down, having some drinks, getting up four hours later. I mean, you do that six days a week, it is a brutal existence. But it’s incredibly eye-opening. You build on things. We were able to do pretty much anything we wanted to do at The Crimson Sparrow. The menu became more Japanese ingredient-driven. It’s not traditional Japanese

One of my favorite dishes that you served me is still on my mind was a charred carrot dish. What was that, and where did it come from?

So, we were at the time cooking a lot of pork belly. We would have a lot of pork fat left. So, we were trying to make the carrot taste like a barbecued hot dog. We would cook them…how did we do that now? We would cook them, and then we would hard char them. Then we dehydrated them for about four hours. And then we would put them in a bag with pork fat and vacuum seal it. And then we would cook it a little bit more, and it would rehydrate. And then we would obviously serve. I think we served that with…I can’t remember…I think it was a yeasty sauce, ’cause it was supposed to be like the roll or something. That was an involved process. It was quite a few steps. A couple of people were like “hey, why’d you ruin this carrot by vacuum sealing it with pork fat?” I was like, ‘this person will never be my friend.’

We tried to do different things. We had the ability to do it. Interestingly, Crimson Sparrow was interesting on several levels in Columbia County, New York. One is, we were the first to have a HACCP license. We were also, I think, one of the first restaurants that Open Table took keen interest in. I think there are 75 or 125 restaurants now on Open Table in Columbia County. There are a lot of forward-leaning, pioneering, leading things. It’s never easy being the first. The second usually has an easier go of it. Just ask the Donner Party, right? If you’re the first you’re going to put up with a lot of, not frustration, but heavy lifting. But we were able to do things like that.

Getting back to how CVap worked in those early days. When we opened, we had six cooks in the kitchen. Slowly, as attrition goes, we were slowly down to four, maybe three cooks. Basically, what we were doing was readjusting the manner in which we were preparing food, and serving food, and altering the menu design. We went to a full…well, we were doing an ala carte dining. And then about eight, nine months in, I think it was, we said “look, let’s put up a tasting menu.” Because frankly, people didn’t know how to order off ala carte. Maybe that was my fault. But we put up a tasting menu. The first weekend say we did 150 covers. 148 would be the fair number this ordered the tasting menu. We kind of looked at each other and said “well, we’re a tasting menu restaurant.”

We were offering two different levels of tasting menu, one was shorter, one was longer…had more ingredients: obviously more expensive. Incorporated some things like truffles and foi gras, things like that. What we saw was, as we lost a cook, we would just change the manner of preparation. CVap was a big part of that. Because some point, if you’re pulling two or three dishes off the fish station or meat station, you no longer need a second cook, you just adjust your preparation to use the CVap to fill the cook’s position. So, it actually got down to three cooks. Meat, fish, and a pastry chef. And then each of us would rotate, take care of various amuse-bouche. We’d alternate by week, or two weeks, and would take on the pastry when we lost the pastry chef. At one point it was me and one other cook. We did that for almost a year, serving a sometimes 13 course tasting menu. We were able to do it. And it’s primarily due to the way that we were preparing, serving, cooking, holding, and being able to get food out in a very timely fashion. I think I told you that before, CVap was critical.

Read Part Four: Working with CVap, and Painting for Pleasure

Chef John McCarthy crimson sparrow japanese John McCarthy oka sake

Part Four: John McCarthy CVap and Painting

Read all parts in this series: Part One | Part Two | Part Three

When you think about CVap itself, and you did tell me that…you absolutely credit it to being able to do this.

I think I brought you and Mr. Winston back, and I said “look, it’s me, Matt, and see that CVap? It’s named Bob.”

So, what about CVap do you think allowed you to do that?

Well, we were serving, I think, food that visually was very appealing. Also, incredibly delicious. The way we were doing it is, we were able to approach it from the perspective of, if I can have one cook, or myself, prepare the garnish for the dish, the protein can go into the CVap for a set period of minutes or time, or even longer. Just hold it there. Then I don’t need to worry about the second or third pan on the pickup. And if you’re able to do that, you’ve now freed yourself to take care of one, two, maybe three other dishes that need to go out in the course of the service, to set up again that particular course.

And that’s the way we ran that restaurant for several years. It’s somewhat difficult, because you’ve got to make sure if you’re using it for several applications, whatever setting you’re using that CVap for, that it’s going to apply to both. Otherwise, you’re going to have a wall of CVaps. That may work for the Culinary Institute of America, but we’re a restaurant. We were able to do it successfully.

Cool, cool. This has been very interesting. Through your career, and I mean both as a lawyer and a chef and restauranteur, consultant. Who were your mentors? How did you find them?

Well, in terms of CVap, it was always a fascinating machine. When we got to The Crimson Sparrow…I can’t remember how I came to run into Tony Martino. I don’t know how that came about. But between you and Tony, that’s where we got most of learning and information about the CVap. Because like I said, we were very fascinated by it. We didn’t want to spend the $25,000 for the combi ovens. We thought this was a better application for what we wanted to do anyway. And, you know, CVap…you and Tony were incredibly generous with your time. And you also had a great deal of information about recipes and cooking. But I remember at the time a lot of the recipes we were given were really large industrial kind of school menus. We had to kind of extrapolate a little bit, do a little experimentation. We also had the HACCP license so, things that we could do…sous vide we could also do in the CVap oven.

So, in terms of CVap, it was you and Tony and the folks right there. Because I’ll tell you right now, I didn’t know a lot of people who used them. It was only after, I guess we’d been open five or six years when I went to one of the Star Chefs, and I think there was a whole presentation about CVap. People were like “wow, this sounds great! Where do you get it?” At that time, I’m not making it out as ancient history, we were finishing up the last corner on the wheel. It was a situation where there wasn’t a whole lot information…and I want to make this sound right…not a whole lot of information out there for standalone restaurants that were interested in the technology. It was a different application that was driving Winston at that point.

I think since then, now you have all these chefs and people talking about how they use it, the best application for it. There’s much more information. So, I think in terms of trying to proffer to a younger chef or a restaurant owner ‘hey you ought to look into this machine.’ There’s a lot more available information to actually see it being done. I think we did a video in the early, early days of Crimson Sparrow about how about we used the CVap cooking octopus. We did an octopus dish; I think it was a kimchi romesco.

We did that video, I think…I haven’t looked at that video in a long time. If you look at that video, I don’t think we have the shelves up in the kitchen. But yeah, those are the types of things that I think…we were learning along with running the restaurant.

I would go one step further; I’d say we were learning with you as well, because I’d been using it for years, and doing all types of cooking with it myself and the fashion that you’re talking about. But the focus of Winston’s business really was chain oriented, like you said. And also, school and institutional type cooking. So, when we started working with you, we saw things that we’d not seen before because the things you were doing with it hadn’t been done before. And then, all of the sudden it’s like there was an explosion. Now there’s not a serious chef, I don’t think, that doesn’t know what CVap is and what they can do with them.

Exactly. It’s incredible how it’s become part of the equipment lexicon in restaurants. I’ve got a lot of ideas I’d like to share with you. One of ’em, I just wanna make sure you understand…we did really screw some things up, foodwise. We got one of those industrial machines with the juiced fan. I remember, there as a time, we tried to put pheasant in it. We made the best pheasant jerky you can imagine. I mean, there was no rulebook. I don’t know that Mary Monroe High School in Bel Air, Maryland is cooking pheasant for the kids.

So, we were trying to learn with you guys. And that was the whole point of the exchanges. We found that one of the coolest applications…we found that for our pastry program…muffins, cakes…man, it was magic and incredibly easy and almost, I wanna say, almost failsafe. Unless, like, in the last ten minutes of cooking you got drunk and slipped into a three-hour nap and woke up, I mean, you couldn’t screw it up. It was really, really a great application for it.

I know you did a lot with custards and eggs well.

We were doing a lot of things in the CVap. Particularly fish. I mean salmon, and it made a fine dining restaurant’s preparation of salmon completely easy. There were no overcooked. It came out perfectly warmed in the center, pink and unctuous and delicious. Those were things that, again, not only did I save on labor costs, I didn’t even have to teach someone out of culinary school or a restaurant “hey look, don’t hammer the salmon!” It made life much easier.

What is your favorite fish, and why? And then, what’s the secret to good sake?

Ah, sake. So, in terms of a fish, I eat an extraordinary amount of fish. I’ll tell you what I don’t like. I don’t like salmon.

I’m in the same camp.

It’s too oily, I just don’t like it. Orange and red meat fish, I’m not a fan of. I prefer things that have crispy skins, like sebring, things like that. Then my other favorites are things like clams, squid, octopus, I’m a big fan of that texture. It’s got a good chew to it. I prefer that if we’re going to say “hey, let’s eat some seafood.” I prefer that, or like a shellfish. In terms of sake, if you can’t have a sake advisor, a san, whatever term you want to use.

We had an extensive sake menu at The Crimson Sparrow, and later at Oka, and a couple other restaurants. But sake is another one of those things, it’s incredibly delicious, incredibly fascinating cultural aspect of Japanese cuisine and dining and izakaya culture as well. But it’s really up to the taste of the drinker. There are sakes that are inherently light. Maybe a bit sweet. There are ones that are really ricey, and then some that are very bold, very forward in their flavors. You have floral types, and you have aged sake. There’s a myriad of different types of sake. If you were to pin me down and say, “what is your favorite sake?” My flavor usually tends toward Junmai Ginjo. Junmai is a rice brew, it has no added alcohol to it, and then the ginjo indicating the polish rate, which is less than 60% remaining after they’ve polished the rice. I find those to be a nice balance of rice, florality, also mouthfeel. It’s really delicious.

We were doing beverage programs at The Crimson Sparrow that incorporate it. It was another one of those situations where in the beginning we were offering a full wine pairing, and we found that incorporating sake added a different adventuresome element that diners seem to really appreciate. I will tell you that one of the benefits of serving sake as part of your beverage program is that the waste rate on wine is horrendous. You open a bottle of wine, you go through it, then you have to open one more bottle to get through the service. And a day or so later you got to dump it, or use it for some application in the kitchen, hopefully. Whereas sake, the shelf life is long. In a successful ongoing restaurant operation, you should have zero sake waste. So, if you look at it the perspective of 50% of your beverage drains are sake, you hopefully cut down on your wastage, anywhere from 30 to 50 percent. We loved that aspect of it. More, we appreciated the fact that sake has what wine will never have, which is elements of umami that helps the whole experience, and helps the dining experience.

You were asking me about restaurants in New York. And the startup of a restaurant in New York is incredibly expensive. One thing that I was thinking about in anticipation of our talk today was even before the pandemic, it was becoming increasingly difficult for restaurants to recruit cooks. For whatever reason. People don’t want to be in the kitchen. Don’t want to cook. Don’t wanna put in the hours, find that there’s more money out front of house. Whatever the case is.

So, before the pandemic, and this has been going on for a while, I have been bouncing the idea of a restaurant that would incorporate one, two, three different CVaps, which would allow a kitchen to be run on a skeleton, like we talked about before. But because there are aspects of CVap that provide other cost savings…namely, it doesn’t need to be hooded. So, if you’re looking at the construction of a restaurant, and you’re looking at a ten-foot hood, you’re looking at a hood that’s incredibly expensive. However, if you’ve got elements of your equipment, namely a CVap, that can then be slid under a counter and have more workable space, you can now have a six-foot hood, or a five-foot hood. You have just cut the major cost in your kitchen design in half. It also takes care of the labor issue, to an extent, in that you’ve got a unit that can not only on a large format basis prepare the food, during serve it can serve to hold things or reheat things that you can make for an easy pick up.

Those are the things that, I think, as we were looking at spaces in New York, we were looking to design smaller spaces with heavy influence or heavy intention on the sake and shōchū beverage end of it. And then saving money on the kitchen operation by eliminating the need for six chefs or five cooks and a dishwasher. We were looking at an operation that could be run by one or two people.

The thing that I would recommend to anyone is look into the CVap because of the variety of applications, both from browning, searing, capacity, poaching capacity, steaming…it goes on and on and on. As opposed to “I gotta have this conventional convection oven, I’ve gotta have this whole line.” You can replace a whole line in one piece of equipment.

As we come out of the pandemic, I think we’re going to see a reversion back to smaller restaurants. I think the days of the 400-seat meat packing bazaar (and I mean both b-a-z-a-a-r and b-i-z-a-r-r-e), I think those days are gone. Because if this revists us, you’re back to 50-person capacity in a 400-seat food hall. I think we’re going to see a return to airier, lighter, smaller spaces that can absorb an impact. If that’s the case, then chefs and operators really need to readjust their thinking to how they can save on equipment, but also labor. The way that they need to smartly do that is to consider multi-application machines like CVap. That is the way that you get around a lot of these issues. It’s going to take a corresponding adjustment, sort of a re-calculation of how they prepare food, what food they prepare. Find innovative ways to simulate and/or achieve the same textures and flavors they did before with other applications. But that’s where we’re gonna be post-pandemic. I think that’s one of the important things, in a city like New York, particularly, the multiple application uses of a machine that basically slides under your counter and quietly does the work that two cooks could do.

Man, I couldn’t have asked for a better advertisement there!

I looked at three different spaces and basically, we were lining them out to be CVap kitchens. It would have been fun, but we’ll see what post-pandemic holds.

This is something that everybody else doesn’t know. A lot of people don’t know this, but you’re a pretty well-known artist. Tell us about that.

A lot of people know me…I don’t think they know me as an artist. I started painting a couple of years ago. I still had The Crimson Sparrow. You know, you find things in life that you really, really enjoy doing, and that’s one of ’em. I paint every single day. I have had a great sort of mentor guiding me through and kind of giving me the encouragement that I think I needed. His name is Paul Hunter, he’s an incredible artist. He is very, very well known.

I’ve sold some paintings. Just recently I’ve been picked up by a very large Japanese gallery in Tokyo. Also, a couple other opportunities have that popped up. So, things you force in life usually end up not working out, things that you pursue because you enjoy them, you find it to be a healthy outlet usually lead to things that are beneficial or opportunities that you really never knew existed or you never imagined taking advantage of.

So right now, I’m just really enjoying it. Let’s face it, outside of trying to help people through very difficult times it’s a way to, one decompresses, kind of forget about all the nonsense that is going on, but also the hope that it will lead to something financially beneficial and also make my life a little bit better. I’ve really enjoyed. If you want to check it all out it’s on Instagram at @Sparrow_Suzume_art.

There you go! So, it’s all about flow, right?

You just gotta go with the flow. Particularly nowadays. People say, ‘oh, you’re doing this consulting, you’re taking money from people that really don’t have it.’ I’m not crazy about it myself, but a lot of my consulting is well below market average, and in many cases, it’s free. It’s the idea that we’ve got to get together and help each other and get people through this. Yeah, it’s not to take advantage of them and not to parasitically benefit from their trying times.

And what we’re trying to do, not to make it sound too heroic, we’re trying to save an industry and people within it who have set up their life around this. In some cases, generationally. These people need our help. It’s incredibly difficult to hear these stories. You think I’m frustrated. Thankfully, when this broke, I had just got out of my last restaurant deal, and so I don’t have a restaurant right now.

I’ve got that figured out, and it’s in the future, and it’s in Louisville. It’s a sake bar – art gallery.

Let’s buy some horses too.

Maybe a sake and bourbon bar or something.

Throw some shōchū in there too, some of the barrel-aged shōchū. It tastes like bourbon. My encouragement would be…there is something to be said for helping other people. And if you own a restaurant and you’re floundering, and you don’t know what to do, ask another restaurant owner. Ask someone for help. I mean, call me if you want. But also, if you’re holding water if you’re doing well, help your neighbor. If you know someone who’s in trouble, someone in dire straits or on the skids, call them, reach out to them. Nobody in this industry should be left alone at this point. Not only from the perspective of financial health and business health. We also need to take care of people’s mental health. There was mental health and addiction in the industry long before the pandemic. I can almost virtually assure you 101 percent that it hasn’t gotten better during the pandemic.

So, people really need to take care of each other, to help each other, and need to offer. You know, sometimes we want to tear down the competition, beat the competition. There’s no competition anymore. This is six people in a floundering boat. We need all pails on deck, and people really need to help. If you’re not helping, you’re part of problem.

What a beautiful message to end this on. John, I appreciate your friendship and your time.

Chef John McCarthy crimson sparrow japanese John McCarthy oka sake

Part Four: Finding Balance, Chef Deb Paquette

Interior of Chef Paquette's Etch Restaurant

Read all parts in this series: Part One | Part Two | Part Three

We were talking about the craziness of this business. Do you have any advice on how to achieve a work/life balance?

Balance? I don’t know that that word means.

Finding Balance...

You say there’s no such thing?

Oh balance! That’s when I ride my unicycle! I still ride it. It’s funny to see a 64-year-old kid on a unicycle with her arms waving about! But then, that’s me!

Balance is letting your husband go fishing when he wants and hang out with his man friends at our local bar, and hoping he has the best time ever! He is the mayor of the bar, just so you know! I work too much, and he very rarely complains (I did just say rarely!). We see-saw!

I must use the word balance 20 times a day. Much of my time is working on the food for a new restaurant and all the recipes MUST balance. I have quite a few sauces and fun stuff on the plate, and each item has to taste great by itself and together…balance. A good cocktail has perfect balance. Casamigos has fabulous balance.

My advice on balance with work and life…place priorities on what is most important for you and your love ones. Don’t abuse your brain or your body! Let a sense of humor be your BFF! If you get unbalanced, go to the ocean. Don’t drink Jägermeister!

Taking a Break

This year I achieved a momentous work/life situation…I actually did not change my vacation with the hubby three times this year! Something always comes up in the workplace, and this year I should have changed it, but we got people in place. I will be slip-sliding in 30 SPF with a sippy cup full of balanced juice all the way to the beach!

Where are you going on vacation?

We go to this place in Florida where there’s like, no stores. It’s just this little peninsula that’s below Tallahassee, on the Gulf. Called Alligator Point. It’s just houses, beach, and shrimp season. Late summer is when we go to the beach, when it is bikini season for those over 60! Ernie fishes and shrimps. I walk a lot and read. Happy hour is whenever we like, and Ernie seems to like my bikini!

Ernie really wants to move back to the water, real bad, and he has for years. He has the ocean in his blood too. Ernie grew up in Eastham, Massachusetts, which is the narrowest point on Cape Cod. He grew up being a surfer boy, and a fisherman, and a scalloper.

Do you pickle shrimp?

I have pickled shrimp for menus but not at the beach…it’s gumbo time for us! But since you mentioned it, I think I will grab some vinegar and herbs for the trip. I am counting the days until I see Nashville in the rearview mirror!

It seems to me that you like Nashville. You’re not from there, and you’ve not left there. What is it that you like about Nashville? And what is it that you think is goofy about Nashville? Or am I mistaken, and you just don’t have anywhere else to go?

I am a Fort Lauderdale gal. The ocean runs through my veins! I left when I was 25, and I brought all those sunspots right along with my suitcase!

Oops, time for a story…when Ernie was 18, he worked on a scallop boat. Drags were out on the boat, and they were all playing cards on the lower deck. He went up top to pee off the side of the boat. A swell hit the boat and it was “bye now”- he went over the side! He kicked off his new boots and saw the lights of the boat disappear. (Scary!) Someone still in the card game realized Ernie was taking longer than normal. Cards down and up they go, and no Ernie. Ern has one of those monster-loud whistles, and he began the call for survival…or “get me the hell out of this cold-ass water!” Up came the drags and he saw the lights…luckily the boat lights!

Why Nashville?

Well, I need to get back to the Nashville question…deviation is good, right? I love Nashville, and the big trees. If I cannot have the ocean in my backyard, trees are the winners. They bring peace to my crazy life. I also love the southern charm (I have mastered nine southern dialects). Tennessee is beautiful, the economy here is good (except the red haze!), and the restaurant scene is fabulous!

The goofiest is the crazy amount of bachelorette parties going on. We are (or were, before COVID) the number one city for girls to become the debutants of Fireball, Jägermeister, and vomit pales. It is crazy! The summer uniform is the same for all: cowboy boots, tank tops, wedding sashes, and shorts that have a zip code in the crack of your ass. Lovely.

There is something about southern folks. Rules of respect and hospitality are passed down from generation to generation. It is in their blood (right next to whiskey!). You can feel it and you can see it. Good people, and not so good people, still shake your hand, look you in the eye, and ask you how your mama’s doing. “Yes sir” and “yes ma’am” are heard and listened to more than mating tree frogs! And if someone says, “well bless your cotton socks” it means they care about you!

Will I leave Nashville? I really love it here. Our home is 28 miles from Nashville, and is surrounded by lots of woods. My house gives me peace knowing there is a big couch and a sleepy husband waiting for me after a 13-hour day. One son lives down the street, and the other son in Massachusetts. That isn’t far, is it?

I do have places, friends, and family to go and see. Maybe one day I may move, as long as my couch fits in the car!

I think you gave me the answer. You found a place that had people similar to you.

Yeah, most likely. Why do you think I am in the restaurant business? We are perfectionists, most of us are ADHD, drinking is a sport, music is a necessity, laughing is a prerequisite, and you must have a pet (or pets). Plus, we all like really good food!

Don’t most of us seem to surround ourselves with people who have similarities, (like political parties – ha!)? One has to find comfort and resemblance. I just want to be around people who play nice (and drink nice) with each other. There is a strong gravitational pull to people who make me laugh. Fun folks help me to find the funny in me! I make life-long friends with the people I most laugh with! Don’t you?

Barry, I am leaving you with another short story…this is a few years ago when Ernie and I had our restaurant (yes, another Ernie story!). He was the manager on duty, and a gentleman with a party of five called Ernie over to his table. This gent wanted Ern to open a $150 bottle of wine and pour him one glass. Ernie apologized and said it was not feasible for us to do so, and explained why. The gent was persistent and was told he would need to purchase the whole bottle. Nope, he only wanted a glass. Mr. Ern said, “I am sorry, but this is our house rule,” and returned to the host station. Five minutes went by, and the bad dude approached Ernie. He looks at Ernie and says, “you know what…you made me look like and a*$hole in front of all my friends.” And Ernie replied, “sir, I don’t think you need any help with that!” The gent quietly left, with a tiny crack of almost a smile, and sat down.

Now you see our similarities…balance.

I know what I’m gonna do next time I’m close to y’all. I’m gonna go find his little bar and hang out with him.

It’s fun. It’s nothing but laughter…that’s why he goes. They just laugh, drink beer, and laugh and drink more beer, and laugh. You know, laughter, it’s the chicken soup.

chef Chef Deb Paquette deb etch paquette

Part Three: Giving Back, and CVap® in Chef Deb’s Kitchen

Read all parts in this series: Part One | Part Two | Part Four

Our conversation with Chef Deb Paquette continued.

You brought up that you’re part of the Waste Initiative in Nashville. I know that you’re very, very involved in Second Harvest.

Yes, the Waste Initiative is supported by the James Beard Foundation, and we are a test city for what we can do to create solutions in dealing with waste in our community. We have groups and individuals networking to provide education to reduce waste, not only in restaurants, but waste in homes, grocery stores, office buildings. Go to your Google box and read about what you can do to help your community reduce waste.

Part of our responsibility as restaurant people is to work with charities which help people in need. Whether it is food, socks, prosthesis, or a Christmas present, these are people who live in the same cities we work in.

I have been involved for years in helping Second Harvest since I moved to Tennessee. The past eight years, I was part of Taste of the NFL, which was an organization of chefs, one from each NFL city. We would show up at every Super Bowl weekend, and provide food for a huge patrons’ party the night before the Super Bowl. The party had a big admission fee, and proceeds would be shared with the food banks in each chef’s city, as well as all of us raising funds locally. Each year my company gave a dollar of every sale of our cauliflower appetizer as our part in helping Second Harvest. In the past eight years we have donated $100,000. Isn’t that fabulous?!

What is it that makes you that way?

You know how a doctor takes the Hippocratic oath? In this glorious industry we take the hospitality oath. It is not just an oath to yourself, but an oath to the people who support your business. We are leaders, born to give, encourage, love, and support.

It’s interesting that you bring that up. You know, we are in the hospitality business, we are there to be of service. But I find very few people understand the complexities of putting a plate of food in front of them.

Do you mean the complexities of getting the food from the back door to the table? Yep, it’s the work that makes it all worthwhile. When you spend the day talking to salesmen, checking in food, teaching a line cook their craft, burning a sauce ‘cause you were telling jokes to a customer, or calling your husband to be sure there is beer in the fridge, chopping a hundred pounds of onions, tasting 30 sauces, yelling at your CVap dude, and putting out the best special ever…I don’t want a client to know all that sh*t. Just sink into your food and Zen out! Let us do the work, and you just enjoy.

Why did you buy CVap? What have you learned since you’ve had it? Do you still like it? Would you buy another one?

I learned about CVaps from my friend Ashley Quick. He loves them. I began the research, and now we have one in each restaurant. It was a bit intimidating at first, but then, so am I…hah! The best equipment for short ribs and octopus, and holding fried chicken!

You have to understand that whole humidity thing. My husband used the weather as an example, and then it all clicked (he’s much smarter than me…I am the smart ass!).

I do love that little rain box! As we say in the south, “it cooks stuff up real good like”. I like that I can cook overnight and see beauty in the morning! (My husband also says that about me!) And yes, I would buy another…after COVID-19 season is over!

My pastry chef does not use the CVap much. Maybe we need some more training classes?

Tell her, if she wants to call me up, you know I’ll be happy to help her.

So, Barry, How about a road trip? Isn’t time you planned a trip to Nash Vegas?! Lots of good bourbon going on here! We would love if someone from Winston would come play show and tell, and please bring lots of pictures and samples! I’ll bring the crayons!

I will definitely let you know when I’m coming through town. And I would love to work with any of your folks. And I’ll tell Corey that he’s invited as well. Corey just got married and I don’t think he’s going anywhere for a while, except the bedroom!

We would love to see him! Isn’t there a new CVap on the market? Will it fit in your back seat? I remember when I was a test pilot for the CVap drawer. Did you ever get it to work? ‘Cause we sure didn’t…is it in a graveyard?

I hear you have some competion…Edgar at UG made his own rain box, didn’t he?

He did. The last time I came to see you, I also went to see Edgar. And I was giving him a hard time about it.

He knows how to build anything.

He’s a pretty interesting cat, in and of himself.

Just another wacky dude who loves what he does. He owns a pizza joint now!

Read Part Four: Finding Balance

charity chef Chef Deb Paquette CVap deb paquette

Part Two: Working her way up

Read all parts in this series: Part One | Part Three | Part Four

Tell me about Chef Paquette. How many restaurants do you have now? How many have you had over the years? Which ones were your favorites? Which ones were your worst?

My first job, in my 20s, I just got out of culinary school, and went to New York City to work in a macrobiotic restaurant, which was probably the coolest job ever! I was working with a bunch of the coolest shrubber heads ever! All the kids that worked there were into acting, singing, dancing, and partying! It was the kind of restaurant where we’d sit around the tables, end of night, and smoke weed and drink coffee. What an education! One year later I went back to Florida, to get another degree in Restaurant Management. I felt that I needed to get a degree to prove to people that I was serious about what I was doing, even though the management degree did s*%t for me. [laughs]. Hey, I learned how to fold a hospital corner on a bed.

During my stint at FIU, I worked in a Danish restaurant in Ft. Lauderdale. Another great education. After FIU, I took a job at the Omni in Ft. Lauderdale, working banquets. I traveled to Nashville when I got a job as a banquet chef, and settled into becoming a resident of Nashville.

In 1997, I opened a restaurant with my fabulous husband, Ernie. We had that baby (and ball and chain) for 13 years. Her name was Zola’s, where the food was a “bastardization of global cuisine.” (And my food still is). It was a great ride until we put a sign on the door in 2010 that said, “GONE FISHING.” I have so many wonderful guests who are still coming to dine with me at Etch and Etc., where I am a partner and owner. Of course, this was my dream job. I had no bad jobs!

Were you and your husband together through your whole culinary career? When did you meet him?

Yes, I have been with Ernie 38 years and in the biz for 42. An amazing man who accepted what I do for a living and gave me the love and understanding to continue my career.

That story I told earlier, about working at the Omni, well that was where we began. I actually dumped another dude ‘cause Ernie was the nicest boy I’d ever met, and what a smile! And really tall! AND…he was almost 20 (I brought out the cradle…I was 25!). We married in ’84, and soon had two boys, Race and Croix.

Since I was the workaholic worker bee, Ern had the majority of raising those p*ckerheads. Ern had his own job, and was able to get homework done, coach soccer and inline hockey, and had to be the bad cop! Of course, I was the good witch! Ern did a fabulous job!

If they come back to visit you, you didn’t do too bad.

Well Barry, you would have to ask them that! I remember when the youngest called his dad “tripolar,” …now they are best buds. We went through all the normal kid/parent crap, but now that they are 31 and 33 and have completed and accomplished their 30s, they are the best…and Ernie and I are thrilled they are bought and paid for! Our lives are in a good place. The restaurant life has been good for all of us!

Tell us a little bit about Etch, and about Etc. Why Etc.?

Our downtown restaurant was going to be called Echo, due to being surrounded by the reverb of music all around us. Holy moly, there are a million businesses using the name echo and as to not cause trademark issues, we changed the name to “etch.” Very cerebral…ha! I want to leave an invisible etch on people, which keeps them returning to our restaurant. Etch seats about 180 guests, has a bar, a party room, and an open kitchen with a chef’s counter. We just had our 8th anniversary! We have a great team of people, I am so proud of, running the show. They work their asses off!

Our smaller restaurant is etc. …the continuation of etch. Etc. is in a great neighborhood and is greatly supported by guests who have been eating my food for 25 years. We seat 66 inside and 25 on the patio. Similar food, and always great service!

“Bastardization of Global Cuisine” [laughs], is what I call my style of food. I love the culture, history, stories, and flavors of so many countries! I enjoy developing recipes that I feel are representative of a cuisine, but not always authentic. I have fun!

All of your menus have always had that global twist. I never really asked you, why?

We did have one really good Spanish restaurant back in the day, but it didn’t last. People just didn’t know a lot about Spanish food, so they were scared to eat there. This was the 1980s. The only people cooking on TV were Julia Child and the Galloping Gourmet. Homemakers were not aware pomegranate molasses, harissa, tamarind, and what to do with beets besides pickling them. I wanted to change that. I purchased so many cookbooks, and began a grand journey. Paula Wolfert, Colman Andrews, Diane Kennedy, and Madjur Jaffrey were, and still are, my favorites. Big cities seemed to have the upper edge on dining, and it just took a while to make a move south. When the Food Network entered every home, it created change that encouraged me to really take a big step outside the box and live on the edge!

You’re very cerebral. What would you be if you weren’t a cook?

Oh, I would more than likely, probably, be in landscaping. I have to have color in my life (like my hair!). My house is a giant color wheel. Tons of color. My kitchen counters are red. My back yard is full of anything that brings butterflies and bees and hummingbirds. Landscaping and gardening are a natural for me. Hard work and color! We work on composting, sharing vegetables, teaching. I’m also part of the Nashville Waste Initiative, in which I want to educate kids, and their families, to be more resourceful and be kind to their country.

And getting your hands dirty.

Dirty hands are healthy! I spend time with my flowers daily… (we call that therapy!).

I also forage chanterelles…anywhere from 75 to 150 pounds a summer. Is it summer yet?

How long have you been a gatherer? How important are local, indigenous ingredients to you? And how do you incorporate it into what you do today?

The husband and I have been foraging for 30 years. Local folks call them “sods.” We still do not know why! Our babysitter was frying them one night when Ernie went to pick up the boys (this was in the 1980s). That was the only way they knew how to fix them, and once Ernie realized they were morels, he got the scoop on where to find them. That next night we feasted, a sauté pan full of “dry land fish” with lots of caramelized onions! We never found enough morels to supply our friends, but we now forage plenty of chanterelles to sell to a few restaurants. We also pickle and confit a good deal of the chanties, so we can enjoy eating them year-round. YUM YUM!

I love using local products, at home and job. Supporting farmers is an important part of giving back to the community. Thirty years ago, I had three farmers in all of Nashville. Now we can choose from 30 to 40 exceptional farmers. I live outside Nashville, and in the middle of an incredible amount of local produce, meats, flowers, artists, and of course, grits, who bring their goods to our farmers’ market each weekend throughout the summer.

To keep all the pollinators happy, I supply the yard with indigenous flowers and herbs. Ernie is the veg gardener and the builder of our almost-finished greenhouse. The greenhouse is made of all recycled wood and windows, and should be done in a few months. Early mornings we enjoy our coffee observing bees, butterflies, and birds buzzing in and out of the morning dew.

I’m in the middle of pickling Heaven or Hell, whichever way you want to look at it, right now. I’ve pickled just about everything but chanterelles. How do you do it? What’s the brine?

We try different things, just like you would any other pickles. Spicey, herby, sweet…Ernie likes to try his hand with different brines. We will use apple cider vinegar, or sherry vinegar, or white balsamic. He likes ‘em sweet and I prefer savory. Roasting the chanties prior to pickling makes for some really tasty flavor bombs! Refrigerator pickles are our thing, canning is too messy! Ernie is notorious for introducing neighbors and friends to our plethora of chanty pickles.

Read Part Three: Giving Back, and CVap in Chef Deb’s Kitchen

chef Chef Deb Paquette CVap nashville paquette

Part One: Working with Good People, but Wanting to be Better

Read all parts in this series: Part Two | Part Three | Part Four

Chef Deb Paquette is truly one of a kind. A 30-year fixture in Nashville, she’s a renowned female chef in a male-dominated field. She became the first woman in Tennessee to qualify as a Certified Executive Chef, after graduating from the Culinary Institute of America, .

She is exuberant and unfiltered. When we approached Chef Paquette about inclusion in our Operator Corner blog series, her first question was, “do I have to act civil?” We assured her, no.

The late Chef Barry Yates sat down with Chef Paquette for a lively conversation (conducted virtually, in these pandemic days). She proved she is not only a highly accomplished chef, but she’s also a colorful conversationalist.

A Strong Woman in a Male-Dominated Field

You are a very strong woman in a male-dominated field. How did you get where you are? What kinds of things did you face? Do you have advice for other women in the culinary field? Just go, because you’re amazing!

Well, first of all, I got where I am today by having bigger balls than most men! This means I had to assert myself and realize I could not be like the lion, the tin man, or especially, not that haybale of the scarecrow…I had to be Dorothy. Determination was my state of mind and I was going to be the human sponge.

I found out about culinary school and somehow it was my calling…I am a bit crazy, a wacky sense of humor, not afraid to work, hyper, big mouth, and wore two different-colored socks. It turns out I was a perfect candidate to be trained for a professional position in the culinary field! (I did show some promise!)

The kitchen world drew the talent out of me that was just waiting to be expelled from my brain. I made the best choice ever, and those colored socks took me to places beyond what I imagined (plus a few trips to hell and back!).

Advice to Women

What you experience in your early days and what happens years down the road can be like playing pin ball. Well, that’s really what life is! Never stop educating yourself and create a great management style (mine is organized chaos!). If you do not have a great sense of humor, start listening to Bill Cosby albums, know the rules, love to clean, and love to cook!

Coping with Her Share of Toxic Men

What I faced early on was the incredible human library of people that I wanted to (and would get to) know and learn from. OMG! My first job was as a dishwasher at the “Cottontail Lounge.” This was a man bar where waitress’s uniform skirt stopped at the bottom of their butt and frilly ruffled panty things were the undergarment! The first day of my job, it was 10 A.M., and I ran into an all-night drinker, who happened to be the owner. He stumbly told me not to worry, he did not want to f***k me! “Okay,” I said and asked where the kitchen was. (He was sleeping with the only waitress that had 44 double-Ds!)

After working there for months, I knew my world would hold lots of fun, and lots of sweat! I also knew I would face other gents like “RAY,” and I would deal with it as best as I could! Food was on my horizon.

I worked with many strong men. Many were awesome, and then there were the d*ckheads. No man sh*t was going to step on my yellow brick road. There are no tragic stories, just sh*t that happens when men need to get their own way. I was not a promiscuous person, so I had no desire to put my two legs out with a rent sign on them…therefore, I never became an interest or an interesting story. Having a boyfriend, and then a husband, kept potential douchebags from advertising their stuff!

As I stated before, there were few issues with man-agers. Here is his story. Icky man wanted me to go on the road with him and open a few restaurants. I happened to get pregnant, and his decision-making process altered. Fate changed, and I lost the baby. When I returned to work, he fired me and didn’t want me coming back to work because I would likely get preggers again. I sorta understood, and I was not angry until my manager told me that the “piece of sh*t boss man” wanted to offer me an abortion so I could continue working. D*CK!!

I let this pass and realized I was not the problem!

There are Still Nice Guys

So, no one thinks I am a man basher, here’s a better man story for you. A banquet dude ran into me at 5:30 A.M. getting ready for a big breakfast. I had not put my Farrah Fawcett beach hair up under the white pain-in-the-ass toque, did not have my ugly oversized white chef’s coat on, but did have on my ugly JC Penney brogans.

He took one long look and left the cooler! I was thankful for him leaving, ‘cause I was pretty sure he was in there to play with the whipped cream cans! He went back to the banquet hall and asked all his dude pals who the new girl was. They told him there is no new girl, it is probably Deb, the banquet chef. His reply was “you mean the lesbian?” He asked me out that night, and he is now my husband! Turns out, he liked my boots!

She’s a pretty seductive redhead, just so you know.

Whoa! Thanks Barry! Don’t have those cataracts removed!

Now that we are done chatting about woman caca in the man world, let me just say that I do know quite a few love stories that came out of couples meeting on the job. Hookups with work “buddies” are sorta natural. You find certain peeps spending a bit too much time in a supply closet, or one of the hotel rooms, or maybe a locked office! And bless my mother’s ears, I just about froze in a walk-in cooler one night!

Not much else to share. In the past 20 years I have worked with, and for, many wonderful men.

That’s refreshing. I think you’re right. I have a lot of friends in the business, a lot of longtime chefs that are female. And a lot of them don’t have that to say, so it’s refreshing to hear you say that. I’m glad that’s the case.

You have to be a hard-core insider to understand that you might face problems, but you don’t have to create problems. Ya just do your job. When I was accused of being a brown noser, I’d first say, “you are full of it” and then say, “have you seen the walk-in? You’re not going to go in and clean it, because you’re f^*king lazy. So, I will clean it! And I might even get a gold star on my forehead, and you won’t!” (But I do love cleaning walk-ins!)

The walk-in has been my office on many occasions as well as my therapy room. It’s the coolest place to go…ha!

My first chef that I worked for was Ferd Grisanti. A real feisty Italian, right? One of the most lovely people in the world. He thought that if he took one of us into the walk-in and blasted us, that no one else could hear. Right? It didn’t matter if it was one of his own kids, or one of us; when he said, “we’re going to the walk-in,” we knew we were in for it. But the whole kitchen heard it too. It was pretty funny.

After years of cheffin’, some of my past employees come into the back of the kitchen and ask my cooks jokingly, “has she taken you to the dining room with a glass of water?” The joke was that if I have a glass of water in my hand and called you to the front of the house, there was a good chance somebody was in trouble! There was some truth to this!

Speaking of the walk-in, it’s terrible to say this, but when I get really frustrated, I call it the Helen Keller. I go in the walk-in, and hold my arms up high, and grab my fists. Put all the pressure from my brain and body into my fists, hold them above my head, and I squinch my eyes as tight as I can and silently scream. I know that’s cruel, but I’ll tell the kids, when you’re upset, you’ve got to go into the walk-in and do the Hellen Keller as hard as you can for ten seconds. And when you’re done, your life’s better.

Read Part Two: Working Her Way Up

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Part Four: Andy Husbands- Advice for Beginners

Andy Husbands' restaurant is a barbecue lover's dream

Read all parts in this series: Part One | Part Two | Part Three

Part Four of Our Continuing Interview with Barbecue Pitmaster Chef Andy Husbands

Andy Husbands, if you were encouraging someone to start a restaurant, what would you tell them?

Use professionals. That is a business planner, an architect, a lawyer, and not your cousin. Use somebody who actually writes restaurant leases. Someone who actually designs restaurants. I know that your friend’s sister is really good at designing, but if she hasn’t designed a restaurant before, you don’t want her making mistakes on your dime.

Money Costs Money

The one thing you have to understand about opening a restaurant, at least in my scenario, is every dollar I spend costs me $1.25. You’ve got to pay that money back, unless it’s your money.

Every dollar you spend is going to cost you something. So you have to be very judicious on what you spend your money on. That’s part one. Part two is don’t spend any money. If it was me, and I was redoing it, starting today, I would find myself a pizza place that was going out of business. And try to keep the equipment they have. I would spend the bare minimum. And I would reinvest. Now I know that people dream of having a fancy restaurant. I get it. And they want to spend two million dollars. I guess that’s just not my path right now. But, you know, it’s hard. People think that everyone’s going to love it. The reality is, that’s not true. Not everyone’s gonna love it. Sorry. I would just be cautious.

Talk about that a little more. I try to tell people, if you go into this thinking you’re the best cook in the world and everybody’s going to love your food, you just don’t understand people. Our tastes are as diverse as our skin colors. How do you deal with the fact that everybody might not like your barbecue?

Ha ha, there are lots of people who don’t like my barbecue. One time I was called to a table, and they were like “did you guys make these collards? They taste canned. They’re awful.” And I was like “okay, let me get you something else.” I gave them something else. I go to the next table. They were like “did you make these collards? They’re the best collards we’ve ever had.” It’s like music. If you want to open a restaurant, and you want to think about yourself, ask this question. Why would everybody like your food? Because it’s like writing a book. Why would anybody read your book? Like making music – why would anybody listen to your music? Why are you so great? I think you have to be honest with yourself.

Your Restaurant is the Best Restaurant Ever, Until You Open the Door

What’s crazy is – your restaurant is the best restaurant ever, until you open the door. And when you open the door, and Yelp starts coming in… It’s tough. You’ve got to be strong, mentally tough, and you’ve got to say “okay, we’re going to do this.” Run your team to win. On the flip side, you’ve got to be honest, and you’ve got to go “not everyone’s going to like me.” And that’s okay.

Own It

When they don’t like you, try to fix it. Maybe you can, and maybe you can’t. If you go right now to our Google reviews, I can tell you that 99 percent of them have been responded to by me, personally. Every Google review, I respond to. That’s not somebody else responding, that’s Andy Husbands. It is important for me to know what people are saying. It’s important for me to interact with them. And when they don’t like it, they’ve had a bad experience, I’ll own it. Own your mistakes. Because you own your wins. When you get that Beard award, you’re like “woohoo, I got this because of me and my team!” But when you get that one-star review on Yelp or Google, you have to say, “I got this for me and my team!” You don’t get either-or.

We All Make Mistakes

We all make mistakes; we’ve got to own them. Try to have more wins than losses. It’s what you need to do. Sometimes chefs get in their own way. We use a thing called Upserve. Love Upserve. They give you data on all your customers, through your credit card sales, through your POS. Likewise, they also do our processing. I can look at this thing called the magic quadrant. Not so much for my barbecue restaurant, but for my old restaurant. I could see dishes that people order, but don’t order again when they come back. Even though you may love it, that dish maybe needs to go.

What you want is a dish that people come back for. That’s what you need to understand, is that just because someone ordered it, it means you wrote a marketable menu, that’s all that means. If they order it again, if they order it multiple times, then you’ve got something.

That’s the same thing with you guys [Winston]. You guys have a good pitch. You pitched me at that Sleep No More thing, and talked about it, and I’m like “okay, good pitch.” And you brought me down there – great. But unless it really worked, and I really liked it, I’m not going to order another one. I keep ordering more CVaps.

Talk a little bit about CVap. Why do you think it’s good? What has it done for your business?

It changes the rules. I know it helps on labor. It helps on cooking. The style of restaurant that I do doesn’t use CVap to 100 percent advantage, like Tony Maws when he had Kirkland Tap & Trotter. He would take a whole pork loin, a marinated bone-in pork loin, and hold it in a CVap at about 130°F. Pop off a double chop, grill, and out it goes.

What does that save? Time, which is table turns. Labor, because it doesn’t take that long to cook it. And my understanding is it shrank 7%, instead of 14%. Over years those little percentages, they do add up.

A Just-Cooked Barbecue Experience

Now for Smoke Shop, what it does for us is it enables us to offer a just-cooked experience. That is really what we want to have. You know, as a pit master who comes from the competition area, we are cooking it, we are timing it, and we are serving. And we’re cutting those ribs, and we’re giving them that just-cooked experience, besides all the other junk that we’re doing with it, but that’s what we’re doing, right?

There’s no better barbecue than the barbecue that’s pulled out of my pit and rested. And then served. That is what, with CVap, we’re able to do, with the level of browning, we’re able to keep that crust on the outside. The salty, peppery, sweet, whatever rub we’re using. Yet keep that meat so juicy and perfect, that it’s that just-cooked experience. By the way, if you use that tagline, I want some points on it. That is pure gold I just came up with right there. CVap, the just-cooked experience.

What does Chris Hart think about the barbecue coming out of a CVap?

He believes in it. Both he and I have talked about owning a barbecue restaurant. Before I found out about CVap, I don’t know how long you’ve been around, but I was like “meh, I don’t want to do it, because I don’t want to have some silly barbecue coming out all dry, out of some silly hot hold thing with a water pan at the bottom that just like, pfft, comes up from the bottom [waves hands and fingers to imitate steam rising]. But he loves it. He comes in and checks us out all the time.

You guys must be a major thing in the barbecue world. Everywhere I go, it’s mainly CVaps being used. I think people who know are fans. The people who need to know about it is burgers. That’s the number one thing people order. We know this. Anyone who’s serving lots of burgers should have a CVap full of just 120°F burgers. Sear it, out it goes.

Follow The Smoke Shop BBQ

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Part One: The Renaissance Man

Part Two: Big City Restaurant Challenges

Asset vs. Lease

Chefs are Leaving Big Cities

New York City

Restaurants Are Singled Out in the Pandemic

Part Three: Japanese Culture and Cuisine

I’m gonna switch gears totally on you. I know from my personal experience with you, your passion for Japanese culture. Tell us a little bit about what you have done, not only related to food, but just in general, and why and then talk to us about Japanese food culture.

One of my favorite dishes that you served me is still on my mind was a charred carrot dish. What was that, and where did it come from?

Part Four: John McCarthy CVap and Painting

Part Four: Finding Balance, Chef Deb Paquette

Finding Balance...

Taking a Break

Do you pickle shrimp?

Why Nashville?

I think you gave me the answer. You found a place that had people similar to you.

I know what I’m gonna do next time I’m close to y’all. I’m gonna go find his little bar and hang out with him.

Part Three: Giving Back, and CVap® in Chef Deb’s Kitchen

Part Two: Working her way up

Part One: Working with Good People, but Wanting to be Better

A Strong Woman in a Male-Dominated Field

Advice to Women

Coping with Her Share of Toxic Men

There are Still Nice Guys

Part Four: Andy Husbands- Advice for Beginners

Part Four of Our Continuing Interview with Barbecue Pitmaster Chef Andy Husbands

Andy Husbands, if you were encouraging someone to start a restaurant, what would you tell them?

Money Costs Money

Your Restaurant is the Best Restaurant Ever, Until You Open the Door

Own It

We All Make Mistakes

A Just-Cooked Barbecue Experience

COOKING AND HOLDING

FRYING

EDUCATION CENTER

SUPPORT