Chef's PSA Podcast

André Natera | Chef's PSA Media
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The no-nonsense chef podcast for culinary leaders. Chef's PSA with André Natera gives cooks direct insight into kitchen management and what separates the pros from the rest. Featuring conversations with James Beard Award winners, Top Chef champions, and Bocuse d'Or competitors, we reveal the Michelin standards and discipline required to build a serious career. Weekly mentorship for BOH pros who want to GET CHEF BRAINS. https://chefspsa.com

  1. 3d ago

    Why Chefs Keep Paying for Buildings They'll Never Own? Sarah McIntosh Ep. 225

    Paid partnership with Toast. This episode ends with a sponsored bonus segment on menu pricing, built on data from Toast's Menu Price Monitor and their free Menu Checker tool. Check your menu against the market → https://biz.toasttab.com/us1XN Sarah McIntosh is the chef-owner of epicerie in Austin, open on Hancock Drive since 2012 and running 450 covers on a busy Saturday. She came out of Louisiana, cooked at Bouchon and Ad Hoc, and has spent 20 years in and out of the Austin industry. Last year she flew to Argentina to cook alongside Francis Mallmann. None of that is why this conversation matters. She is one of the only chefs in the country who has worked out how to own the dirt under the restaurant instead of renting it. In 2008 she bought a house on the east side of Austin for around $219,000 at under four percent interest. Her payment was $600 a month, less than the apartment she had been renting. She still lives in it. It is paid off. During the pandemic it crossed a million dollars. That single piece of math is why she now structures deals where she owns the property and the business, and why when a developer offered her a percentage to recruit tenants for a project down the street from her restaurant, she turned it down and asked for ownership in the development instead. - The ownership structure she learned from Sam Hellman-Mass: buy the property, borrow against it to build, and the investor's money is protected by an asset that outlives the restaurant - What to actually look for in a lease, in her words: MEP, tenant improvement money, triple net, CAM, percentage rent, and why a landlord covering mechanical, electrical and plumbing is the signal that a deal is real - How she writes a proforma on purpose at 60 to 70 percent of what she thinks she will do, in three versions, with someone hired to pick it apart Andre Natera and Sarah McIntosh cover why most chefs put a million dollars into a building they will never own, the difference between leasing and buying when you have no backers, the brokerage math on a commercial deal and why she refuses to get a license, how a 20 year network produces deals that never hit the market, paying 100 percent of staff health insurance instead of raising wages and the staff revolt that followed, being quick to fire before a one person problem becomes a five person problem, and why her empathy has grown to the point that she now hands the firing decision to her team. It ends with the only award she says she needs. Butts in the seats, 450 of them on a Saturday, and a restaurant that is making money Sarah McIntosh on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/sarahmcgrams/ epicerie on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/epicerie_austin/ epicerie → https://epicerieaustin.com Follow Chef's PSA on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/chefspsa/ Bonus content sponsored by Toast.

    Why Chefs Keep Paying for Buildings They'll Never Own? Sarah McIntosh Ep. 225

  2. Oct 2

    They Said His Restaurant Would Fail. 21 Years Later, He’s Still Here. Abraham Salum Ep. 224

    Abraham Salum has one rule he wishes every restaurant would adopt. A friend of his makes everyone pile their phones in the middle of the table before dinner starts. First person to reach for theirs pays the bill. Nobody ever touches their phone. That same instinct for reading a room runs through the whole conversation. Salum opened Salum in Dallas 21 years ago on a block his own realtor questioned and a commercial broker publicly predicted would fail. He ran into him years later. The broker told him he had taken his foot out of his mouth a long time ago. Why he banned the words no problem in his restaurant and trained every server to say my pleasure insteadHow servers at his restaurant made more money in 2020 than they did the year before, even as the restaurant itself brought in 40 percent lessThe exact leverage he used against an insurance company after a flood to make sure his servers still got paidAndre Natera and Abraham Salum cover growing up between Mexican, Lebanese, Italian, and Spanish grandmothers who all wanted to feed him, running 300 staff across seven restaurants in Cancun by his mid twenties, the kitchen design mistake from opening night that he is still working around two decades later, a storm that punctured his roof and shut the restaurant down for four and a half months, and the two year process of writing his first cookbook, A Spoonful of Everywhere, a project he kept completely secret from his own business partner. It ends where every episode ends, with the Mount Rushmore. Guest salumrestaurant.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/salumrestaurant/ https://www.instagram.com/asalum/ Links Lead Like a Chef App: https://studio.com/apps/andre/leadlikeachef Get the Books: https://chefspsa.com/books Shop Chef's PSA Merch: https://shop.chefspsa.com/ Get Episodes Early on Substack: https://chefspsa.substack.com/ Follow Chef's PSA on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chefspsa/

    They Said His Restaurant Would Fail. 21 Years Later, He’s Still Here. Abraham Salum Ep. 224

  3. Sep 25

    Nick Walker, Are Your Line Cooks Still Loyal To You? Ep. 223

    Nick Walker is an FSR 40 Under 40 chef who oversaw the James Beard nominated Meridian and now leads 11 Whiskey Cake locations across Texas and Florida. He started in a kitchen at 15, under the table, and cut his thumb open on his first real shift when a slamming office door caught his hand mid cut. They poured kitchen whiskey on the wound, duct taped it shut, and he finished service. Why he believes a cook can cook food, but a chef has to manage people and run the numbers, and why so many talented chefs never make that jump The line he still thinks about from a mentor who caught him publicly berating a cook over garnish, telling him to be the sous chef he always wanted Why he says followers do not equal dollars, period, and what actually separates a viral line cook from restaurant success Andre Natera and Nick Walker cover what kitchen culture looked like before HR existed and why some chefs still cannot accept it changed, the real staffing crisis behind restaurants paying 28 dollars an hour and still coming up short, the formula behind a menu item that actually sells versus one built for a chef's own ego, and why Brussels sprouts and hamachi keep showing up on every menu in the country. It ends where every episode ends, with the Mount Rushmore. Guest @chefnickwalker Links Lead Like a Chef App: https://studio.com/apps/andre/leadlikeachef Get the Books: https://chefspsa.com/books Shop Chef's PSA Merch: https://shop.chefspsa.com/ Get Episodes Early on Substack: https://chefspsa.substack.com/ Follow Chef's PSA on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chefspsa/

    Nick Walker, Are Your Line Cooks Still Loyal To You? Ep. 223

  4. Sep 18

    Tim Laielli, 1.4 Million Followers, and Next Level Chef. Does He Call Himself a Chef? Ep. 222

    Tim Laielli will not call himself a chef. He is clear about it every time someone assumes otherwise, including his own father, who is one. Eighteen months after posting his first cooking video, Tim was on set cooking against professional chefs for Gordon Ramsay on Next Level Chef. He built Bare Food Tim, over a million followers, without ever working a line, and he explains exactly why. His father worked two jobs his whole childhood and told him constantly not to follow him into restaurants. Tim listened, then found a way to work with food anyway. Three things worth hearing straight from him. Why he thinks most chefs make content for other chefs instead of the person actually watching, which is usually a tired parent looking for dinner ideas, not a technique lesson. The real numbers behind brand deal income, and why capping sponsored content around 10 to 20 percent is the difference between monetizing and losing your audience's trust. And the two paths he tells struggling restaurants to choose between when they want to go viral, an oversized showstopper dish or full personality driven content, because trying to do both at once usually does neither well. Andre Natera and Tim Laielli also get into the friction between chefs and content creators, why lighting matters more than the camera you shoot on, which dishes reliably perform online and which never do, and the moment Tim realized the platform had started driving him instead of the other way around. It ends where every episode ends, with the Mount Rushmore. Guest Bare Food Tim on Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/barefoodtim/ Links Lead Like a Chef App: https://studio.com/apps/andre/leadlikeachefGet the Books: https://chefspsa.com/booksShop Chef's PSA Merch: https://shop.chefspsa.com/Get Episodes Early on Substack: https://chefspsa.substack.com/Follow Chef's PSA on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chefspsa/

    Tim Laielli, 1.4 Million Followers, and Next Level Chef. Does He Call Himself a Chef? Ep. 222

  5. Sep 12

    Matt Lambert: The Church of Michelin, the Modern Tasting Menu, and What's Actually Worth It Ep. 221

    Matt Lambert earned a Michelin star at The Musket Room in New York in four months, a goal he'd given himself three years to hit. He describes what followed as treating the star like a religion, the Church of Michelin, and says he's never felt that emotional high again, chasing it in different forms for years after. Why he thinks the tasting menu has lost the plot. The moment he realized every chef on Instagram was making the same tart with a different color, and what he did about it Why moving back to New Zealand after New York hit him harder than the original move to America ever did André Natera and Matt Lambert cover 75 Hard and the 30 kilos he lost once he finally started taking care of himself, winning a major international chef award a week after his brother's funeral and feeling nothing standing on that stage, the moment his own chef de cuisine's face told him he didn't want to be the best anymore, why hospitality matters more than the food itself, and building Return in Auckland as his own answer to what The Musket Room used to be. Guest @chefmattlambert @return_restaurant Links Lead Like a Chef App → https://studio.com/apps/andre/leadlikeachef Get the Books → https://chefspsa.com/books Shop Chef's PSA Merch → https://shop.chefspsa.com/ Get Episodes Early on Substack → https://chefspsa.substack.com/ Follow Chef's PSA on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/chefspsa/

    Matt Lambert: The Church of Michelin, the Modern Tasting Menu, and What's Actually Worth It Ep. 221

  6. Sep 4

    What Working for Jean-Georges Actually Taught Him About Running a Kitchen Bryan Caswell Ep. 220

    Bryan Caswell has cooked inside three very different kinds of rooms. Jean-Georges Vongerichten's kitchen in the early 2000s, where he learned that a quiet, organized kitchen beats a screaming one. Seventeen restaurant openings of his own, roughly half of them his own concepts, from Reef to his new restaurant Latuli in Houston. And, less known, rooms full of policy people deciding how the Gulf actually gets fished. Why he thinks the redfish fishery is in the best shape he's seen in his career, and why almost nobody outside the industry knows itA real proposal for cutting aquaculture's biggest cost problem in half, using something shrimp boats currently throw away for freeThe specific menu-writing rule he still uses today, learned running R&D inside one of the most systemized restaurant groups in the country: count every move a dish takes to plateAndré Natera and Bryan Caswell cover what it was actually like working under Jean-Georges before he was a household name, why talent alone breaks the moment a chef has to build a kitchen from nothing instead of running an established one, the Gulf Coast bycatch program he pioneered at Reef that's now industry standard, why he hasn't touched red wine in a sauce in over two decades, and his return to Houston with Latuli, his first restaurant of his own since Reef closed. It ends where every episode ends, with the Mount Rushmore. Guest @wholefishLatuli Houston Links Lead Like a Chef App → https://studio.com/apps/andre/leadlikeachefGet the Books → https://chefspsa.com/booksShop Chef's PSA Merch → https://shop.chefspsa.com/Get Episodes Early on Substack → https://chefspsa.substack.com/Follow Chef's PSA on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/chefspsa/

    What Working for Jean-Georges Actually Taught Him About Running a Kitchen Bryan Caswell Ep. 220

  7. Aug 28

    The First Latina to Beat Bobby Flay Breaks Down Her Real Numbers Ep. 219

    Rosana Rivera runs three businesses under one roof: a bakery storefront, a wholesale bread program, and a catering and events company called Gatheria Studio. Most operators would guess wholesale wins on volume alone. It doesn't. Catering does, by a wide margin, sometimes 30 to 40 percent margins in a good season, more than either of the other two combined at the bottom line. She's also the first Latina chef to ever beat Bobby Flay on television, and the casting process that got her there is worth hearing before you ever get a similar email yourself. The one piece of advice from her producer that won her the Beat Bobby Flay episode, and how she practiced her signature dish for exactly the time she'd be givenWhat it actually costs to open a restaurant right now, and why the number most people quote is too lowWhy she runs a monthly AI audit on her own online reviews, and what it caught in her matcha program before it became a real problemAndré Natera and Rosana Rivera cover why most influencer marketing for restaurants doesn't move the needle, whether kitchen robotics are actually worth the investment, the one ingredient that wrecks her food cost every single year no matter what, why a bakery's margins are thinner than most chefs assume, and the full breakdown of why her events business outperforms both her storefront and her wholesale account. It ends where every episode ends, with the Mount Rushmore. Guest @chefrosanarivera@chefandthebaker Links Lead Like a Chef App → https://studio.com/apps/andre/leadlikeachefGet the Books → https://chefspsa.com/booksShop Chef's PSA Merch → https://shop.chefspsa.com/Get Episodes Early on Substack → https://chefspsa.substack.com/Follow Chef's PSA on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/chefspsa/

    The First Latina to Beat Bobby Flay Breaks Down Her Real Numbers Ep. 219

  8. Aug 21

    Eduardo Osorio on Moving From LA to Dallas and Becoming the City's Hottest New Chef Ep. 218

    Eduardo Osorio moved to Dallas from LA less than a year ago. Then Kent Rathbun, Dallas royalty, ate at Meridian and posted about it, and the walk-ins started within days. It's the kind of endorsement that doesn't happen for just anybody. He's built a career on adapting fast. Restaurant Daniel in New York, where a chef corrected his micro-green prep on day one and made it clear there wouldn't be a second warning. Eight months in Jeddah, cooking out of what was essentially a shipping container in 130-degree heat, where he learned the hard way that crossing your legs the wrong way gets you slapped. And now Meridian, where he's building a kitchen that runs on almost none of that old pressure. Why he thinks LA took ten years to build its dining scene and Dallas will do it in three or fourWhat actually happens when you build a kitchen with no yelling, and why his team is more surprised by his calm than anything elseThe brown butter trick behind his now-signature cornbread, and the one ingredient nobody expectsAndré Natera and Eduardo Osorio cover the guest chef dinner series that's turned Meridian into a clubhouse for Dallas's next generation of cooks, the difference between LA, Vegas, New York, and Saudi Arabia kitchen cultures, why his sous chef of fourteen years just walked away from cooking entirely, the influencer economy and why a bad review travels further than a good one, and what it takes to run ten restaurants and two burger concepts at once without losing the plot. It ends where every episode ends, with the Mount Rushmore, and the phrase his entire kitchen shouts when a table sends back a compliment. Guest @chefeduardoosorio https://www.instagram.com/chefeduardoosorio/ Links Lead Like a Chef App → https://studio.com/apps/andre/leadlikeachefGet the Books → https://chefspsa.com/booksShop Chef's PSA Merch → https://shop.chefspsa.com/Get Episodes Early on Substack → https://chefspsa.substack.com/Follow Chef's PSA on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/chefspsa/

    Eduardo Osorio on Moving From LA to Dallas and Becoming the City's Hottest New Chef Ep. 218
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4.9
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About

The no-nonsense chef podcast for culinary leaders. Chef's PSA with André Natera gives cooks direct insight into kitchen management and what separates the pros from the rest. Featuring conversations with James Beard Award winners, Top Chef champions, and Bocuse d'Or competitors, we reveal the Michelin standards and discipline required to build a serious career. Weekly mentorship for BOH pros who want to GET CHEF BRAINS. https://chefspsa.com

Information

  • Creator
    André Natera | Chef's PSA Media
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    225
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © André Natera | Chef's PSA Media
  • Show Website
    Chef's PSA Podcast

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