Curtis Stone Unplugged: TV Stardom, Michelin Stars, and Cooking with Heart

TRANSCRIPT

Kirk Bachmann: Hi everyone, I’m Kirk Bachmann, and welcome back to The Ultimate Dish. Today, we have an extraordinary guest – a true culinary star who’s made his mark on the global stage. Joining us is Michelin-starred chef, restaurateur, author, and culinary entrepreneur, Curtis Stone.

Curtis started his culinary journey at just 18, working at the prestigious Savoy Hotel in Melbourne, Australia. By 21, he had moved to Europe to hone his craft under the legendary Marco Pierre White for eight years – an experience that shaped his future success in Los Angeles.

In 2014, Curtis opened his first solo restaurant, Maude, in Beverly Hills, receiving immediate acclaim. Maude earned its first Michelin star in 2019. His second restaurant, Gwen Butcher Shop & Restaurant, shared that honor with its own star in 2022. Curtis recently expanded his culinary empire by opening Woodend at Maroma in the Riviera Maya, which earned recognition in the Mexico edition of the Michelin Guide.

Beyond his restaurants, Curtis is a familiar face on television, having appeared on shows like Take Home Chef, Top Chef Masters, MasterChef Australia, Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend, and Crime Scene Kitchen. He’s also the podcast host of Getting Grilled with Curtis Stone and host of Field Trip with Curtis Stone on PBS.

A New York Times bestselling author with six cookbooks, Curtis is not only a chef but a successful entrepreneur with his Kitchen Solutions cookware line on HSN. Recently, he was honored with the Medal of the Order of Australia for his contributions to tourism and hospitality.

But Curtis’ impact extends beyond the kitchen. Through his #Commit2One initiative, he dedicates himself to charitable causes like ending childhood hunger through the No Kid Hungry campaign.

Curtis lives in Los Angeles with his wife, actress Lindsay Price, and their two sons. We are thrilled – I am thrilled! My wife is thrilled – to have him on the show today to talk about his journey, his passions, and what’s next on the horizon.

Let me take a breath and welcome you. There he is. How are you, Chef?

Curtis Stone: Hi Kirk. What an introduction, mate. Thank you so much. It’s very nice.

Kirk Bachmann: Right? It’s all you! It’s all you. I have to say that we try to fit our guest bios into one page, typically, in our episode outlines, but Noelle, our producer, messaged me and said, “That’s quite literally impossible.” Your accolades are endless. Wow! I’m speechless. Honored to have a tiny piece of your precious free time.

Where are you? Can you set the Stone a little bit? (See how I did that?)

Curtis Stone: I’m at Gwen Butcher Shop and Restaurant here in Los Angeles. We’re in Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard. I just live down the road. Close to home.

Getting Grilled

Kirk Bachmann: Fantastic. Fantastic. I love it. I love it.

I’m really excited to delve into your world a little bit more, but I wondered if we could kick off today talking a little bit about your podcast, Getting Grilled with Curtis Stone. I’m here in Colorado. I’m a big fan of Lindsey Vonn. I’m a big fan of skiing. I’m a big fan of your podcast. As someone who likes to talk to folks as well, I was so moved. One, the setting is just really casual. It’s comfortable. There doesn’t seem to be a script; it’s just chatting. But I was just so touched that there were a couple of moments where you could tell that you were just really almost emotional in your chat with her when she’s talking about her mom and such. So congratulations on that. What a great inspiration the show is for me.

But I’d love your elevator pitch, if you could. How did it start, what’s the vision, and how do you find time for that?

Curtis Stone: Oh, thank you so much. I’m so glad to hear that you like it. We were talking about all of the different shows that we get to do as chefs. I said, “I would love to sit down with some of these incredible people that dine in my restaurants.” That’s how we kicked off the idea. We sort of initially had thought about it that it could be something that lives in the restaurant. Then eventually, we said, “You know what? I have a little farm out in Malibu. That’s a pretty cool setting, too.” We’ve got a beautiful kitchen. So I said, “Why don’t we invite the guests out there?” That’s basically it.

We have a different celebrity in each episode. I sit down and talk to them about their life and, of course, we open a bottle of wine. At some point, [we] go into the kitchen. I say there’s no point in inviting a chef over or coming to see a chef if they don’t teach you something in the kitchen, so I always ask them in the pre-interview, “What’s the one thing you want me to teach you in the kitchen?” But we also do something a little sneaky. We get the producer that talks to the celebrity and say, “What’s the one thing you would never eat?” We always know that. Then I tell them it’s also my job as a chef to be able to make anything delicious. I’m going to take that thing that you don’t like, like sea urchin or chicken livers – like Sebastian Maniscalco didn’t want me to cook with. So I then make a dish and I encourage them to give it a shot. That comes with mixed responses. Some of them love it. Some of them remain strong as to how much they dislike that ingredient, but it’s a whole lot of fun.

Working and Learning with Marco

Kirk Bachmann: I love it. It’s really natural. I’m sure the wine helps a little bit, takes the edge off. It sure does. We’ll talk about your latest launch in just a moment.

You worked with the gentleman over my shoulder here, Marco Pierre White. I’m a fan. I’m a fan of yours. I’m fascinated by the story. Super, super quick story. I was in Dublin maybe ten years ago with my wife, and I was telling her the story about Marco Pierre White and the books that had come out and all of that. I looked across the street, and sure enough, Marco Pierre White Steakhouse had just opened up. We had no idea. We got lucky. We got a reservation the next night. That’s the menu that I framed when I came home.

Could you walk us through and all the students that will listen to this, what are some of the key lessons that you learned when you were working with him?

Curtis Stone: I, like so many kids of my age, one of my first cookbooks was “White Heat,” and certainly my favorite. I remember reading about Marco and reading [about] the intensity that existed in that kitchen, and the detail that went into all the dishes that he was serving at Harveys, which was his restaurant at the time. I just fell in love with the concept of being in a fast-paced environment like that where the pressure was real. It’s almost like joining the military or going to train for a team that was winning the premiership every year and saying, “Can I handle it?”

Then I just got super lucky. I walked through the back door of his restaurant. I naively packed my bags from Australia and set sail for London, expecting to go and work for him. Bizarrely, it worked out. I look back at it, and I think, “What are the chances?” But I did just walk in the back door of his restaurant, and got lucky, and got a job that day. I spent the next eight years in a basement in some part of London with him. I worked in three of his restaurants: Quo Vadis, the Cafe Royal, and the Mirabelle. A little bit of time at the Oak Room, too.

It was just a really, really fortunate time to be there because it was when Marco was on fire, literally opening restaurants in different parts of the city, producing some of the world’s best cuisine, and doing it with all the intensity that I’d hoped for. I was lucky enough to be his apprentice and work with him for a long period of time. It was crazy. Marco was nuts in those days. It was beautiful at the same time. I couldn’t thank him enough for the intuition and knowledge that he passed on to me and the trust he put in me. I eventually was the head chef of one of his restaurants. And that was really special.

Kirk Bachmann: Has he come to dine with you in California?

Curtis Stone: He doesn’t get to Los Angeles very often, so no, he’s never eaten at one of my restaurants, which is a bummer.

Kirk Bachmann: Isn’t that something?

Curtis Stone: Yeah. I know. We still keep in touch, and I see him from time to time. He’s a busy guy, and my life’s pretty intense as well. It’s seldom we’re in the same place at the same time, but when we are, we certainly make the effort.

Kirk Bachmann: That’s wonderful. Can you reflect on how those years as a young cook, chef, with Marco influenced your craft as a professional chef?

Curtis Stone: It’s really interesting. I think about this often. Now I’m a father to my own children, and then I’ve got a bunch of culinary children. When you’re the chef of a restaurant, you see the guys that come and work for you as your kids in many ways because they’re quite often very young. I’m only 49 years old, but I probably, on the scale of everyone who works in restaurants, everything from 18 and up. There’s a lot of young guys in there, so you feel like a bit of a mentor in some ways to them.

The thing that I learned the most from Marco is talent is something that you can learn. A lot of people talk about a gift, or being gifted or talented, and some people are naturally predisposed to certain things, in my opinion. But I do think when it comes to food, yes, you have to have a good palate, and that’s important. But even that’s something that you can train and something that you can develop.

I saw Marco work incredibly hard. The amount of dedication that he had for his craft, and the amount of passion that he had – no one could work as hard as Marco. I remember learning that very young when I was there, and knowing that your work ethic was everything. That’s how you proved yourself, and that’s how you earned your spot, I guess, in the kitchen, so to speak. I still keep that with me. I still work incredibly hard, and I try to foster that in my kids and the people that work with me. The harder you work, the more you learn, and the more you learn, the better you become. It is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, I guess.

On Mentors and Trends

Kirk Bachmann: I love that. You said, “Talent is something you can learn.” I’m totally stealing that, by the way, but I’ll give you credit. I’ll give you credit.

You mentioned the word “mentor.” Do you believe that it’s important for young people, not just even cooks, to have a mentor, and – to take it a step further – what should someone look for in a mentor, in your opinion?

Curtis Stone: That’s a great question. Yes, you need mentors. Not just one; you need many. I think that whenever anyone asks me, “What should I do? I want to get into the business,” I always start with, “Well, what do you want out of the business?” Because there’s a lot of different things you can get. For me, it was all about fine dining. It was all about pushing myself creatively and learning technique, like any great tradesman or skilled worker can do.

That was what was really important to me, bu6t that doesn’t mean that’s important to everybody. We do have a big industry. I work with food stylists. I work with home economists. I work with catering chefs. I work with fine dining chefs. I’ve only ever worked in that bubble. There’s nothing wrong with broadening your horizon, but I think the more accurate you are at defining that early in your career, the better off you’ll be.

Then your next choice is, what kind of restaurant should I go work in, and what kind of a mentor do I want to go and find? And it might not just be the head chef; it might be the sous chef. It might be a pastry chef. It might be another line cook that you’re cooking next to. I’m doing an event this weekend for a thousand people with a guy, Richie, who also worked for Marco. We were side-by-side line cooks, and we’ve worked together for the last twenty-something years, twenty-five or -six years. We’ve always been mates. He’s a mentor to me, and I’m probably a mentor to him. It doesn’t just have to be someone who has a lot more knowledge than you that you look up to. It can be someone that you’re in the trenches with, but I do think choosing the right kind of restaurant or hotel or event kitchen that is right for you, that’s very important.

Kirk Bachmann: Really good advice. Chef, in your opinion – it’s a tough question – how has the culinary landscape changed since you started, and a better part of the question is, what trends really excite you today?

Curtis Stone: It’s changed so much. I grew up in Australia. We had all of these great European chefs that would work in Australia. They’d come over, and they had the big jobs. I worked at the Savoy, and there was a chef named Ehrenfried Barth. What Chef Barth would always say was, “to be any good, you must go work in Europe.” At the time, it was very true. A lot of the great gastronomy was coming out of Europe. That’s what I did. I packed my bags and went to Europe.

That’s really changed. It was probably the same for America twenty or thirty years ago where a lot of the great chefs in the United States weren’t from the United States. That’s certainly altered. As young chefs have traveled and gone abroad and learned different skills and techniques, they’ve taken them back to their home countries. We have fantastic Australian chefs now, and there are incredible chefs that were born here in the USA that might not have gotten all of their experience here, but they’re now leading the way and teaching people different things that are very United States-oriented.

I think that the world has changed vastly. We used to think of a cuisine, and you were either a French chef, or an Italian chef, or a Japanese chef, and that’s kind of all out the window. We do learn different techniques from different cuisines and different cultures, and we apply them to food across the board. I think that’s really beautiful.

I think as far as trends go, there are always trends. We’re always looking for something new in food, like anything else – like in fashion or architecture or whatever it is that we’re talking about. I think we’ve gone through this world of experimentation. We saw molecular gastronomy really explode a couple of decades ago. Then we brought it back to grass roots a little bit, and it was all about organics and growing beautiful quality ingredients. Fermentation became a real trend. Live fire became a trend, cooking on a live fire.

It’s very interesting, because you talk about something like live fire, which we practice here at Gwen, and we’ve been doing it for ten years. People talk to me about it becoming a trend, and I’m like, “Well, it’s been a trend for thousands of years because we’ve literally cooked over a live fire since man discovered fire. That’s when we started cooking on it.” Food does continue to evolve and change, and that’s the beautiful part of it.

Excellence in Restaurants

Kirk Bachmann: Really well said. Well said. I think we need a whole week to delve into all of the accolades and all of the story, but I’d love to talk a little bit. You’re sitting at Gwen, so let’s talk about that a little bit. Celebrating the third consecutive year of receiving a star, Michelin stars. Congratulations.

I’m curious. I know you’re incredibly humble, and I hate to put you on the spot, but what does that recognition mean, not only to you, but to your team and to your family?

Curtis Stone: It means the world. It really does. I think, ultimately, you do this for your guests. We come into work all day, and it’s quite an interesting thing that we do when you break it down. My guys are in the kitchen from nine o’clock in the morning. We work all day, and then we serve somebody something on a plate, and they eat it. And they eat it, and it’s gone in twenty seconds, or however long it takes to stick that thing in your mouth and enjoy it. We spend the whole day for that moment. There’s no greater feeling than looking out to your guests. That’s why I love open kitchens so much because you can see the experience unfold in front of you as a chef. Watching your guests really enjoy devouring the food that you created is really rewarding.

Then, to be recognized by someone as independent as the Michelin Guide is fabulous. Yes, I came from that old school of working in those restaurants, and that’s what life was always about. Can you get the second? Can you get the third? Those restaurants that I worked at in London were certainly celebrated in that way. There’s different kinds of restaurants. You can open up a very gastronomic restaurant with a limited number of tables and do just a tasting menu, and it’s all very controlled. Or we’re sitting at Gwen. We serve 140, 150 guests. To retain a Michelin star in this environment is, of course, a lot harder than one that’s very controlled. You really do have to be on your game.

I say to people, it’s the difference between having a hit of tennis with your friend and not keeping score to going and playing a competition where there are people watching, and you’re being independently judged, and you either win or you lose. That’s the difference. One is more exciting. One is more invigorating. And when you win, one’s a lot more rewarding. Of course, the fear of losing is also a lot scarier. I love keeping score. I love being told where we’re at, but of course, it is all for our guests; that’s the whole reason we do it. But it’s nice for the recognition as well.

Kirk Bachmann: It’s all for the guests. I absolutely love that. Gwen was recognized as one of the world’s best steakhouses. Again, congratulations. Chef, I think you’ve already spoken to this a little bit, but what sets the dining experience at Gwen apart from a different restaurant?

Curtis Stone: We say it is a three-tier approach. Our job is to find fantastic, quality product. We work really closely with ranchers and farmers. We understand a lot about the animals that we’re buying. Quite often, we buy whole animals. We’re very particular about the kind of protein we buy. We work with an incredible rancher out of Australia, David Blackmore, who produces, in my opinion, some of the best Wagyu in the world. We’ve got local grass-fed, local grain-fed. We bring in Australian grass-fed product. That procurement is extremely important because you’ve got to start with a great product.

The second tier is what we do with it when we get it. We keep a dry-age room here on premise. We’ve got a forty-foot dry-age room, and we monitor its relative humidity. We monitor the temperature, of course. We have ultraviolet light in there. What we’re looking for is a particular kind of bacteria growth on the beef. We actually dehydrate it, so we intensify the flavor, and then we also add flavor through the mold. And then of course, we trim all of that off, and we end up with the steak. That sort of butchering and caring for the meat, the aging process, is also just as important as procuring a great quality ingredient.

And then it gets given to the chef. We’ve already done two really important things before the chef even gets their hands on it. Then, of course, as the chefs, our job is to cook it to perfection. The way we do that is we cook over a live fire. We’re even detailed about the kind of wood that we burn because that will give a different type of flavor. If you’re going to burn a hickory or a mesquite, you’re going to have something really rich. We go for something a little milder, so we burn almond, which happens to grow locally here in California, which is fabulous because there’s a great story there. We’re not bringing the wood in from too far away. Peach wood is also really nice. It burns hot. It gives us the temperature we like and a mild smoke. That cooking and resting process [is] another thing that’s really important.

I do think that level of care is super important. You might look at a steak and go, “Well, anyone can cook a steak,” and that’s true. But I think when you go into all that detail, putting a steak on the table can be a very different experience if you get a little nerdier on it.

Kirk Bachmann: I’m curious: I love the commitment there, the three steps. Do the chefs in your organization have the ability to provide their feedback, too, in terms of how they’re seeing the reaction [to] a certain type of product that ends up in their hands?

Curtis Stone: Absolutely. We get together our chefs and our butchers together all the time. In fact, the first thing we did as a restaurant just before we opened, I took the entire team – even the front-of-house team – out to a farm. We did a farm slaughter. We killed a slightly older sheep, and then we butchered it. We broke it down. I thought it was really important. We’re a butcher shop; we make all of our own charcuterie. Of course, we cook this beautiful quality meat.

I thought what was really important as a team was we understood the value of the product that we cook with. The truth is, when we serve meat, we take a life to do that. I think that it’s important to understand and respect that. It was a really humbling day. I don’t think there were many people in that team that had experienced that, even the butchers. A lot of the butchers hadn’t experienced that. To go out there and to do that and watch that whole process from start to finish, I think, gives you a real appreciation for what we do as a trade. Also, to then butcher it and care for that meat, and to know that where their meat came from, how important that is, that cycle of life. Also, appreciate it. The last thing that you’re going to do, someone who has lived that experience, is going to be wasteful, over-trim something, throw something away, not respect it, overcook it. I think that sort of philosophy still really runs deep in what we do. The chefs and the butchers having a really close relationship is very important.

A Pie is Like a Hug

Kirk Bachmann: So the cycle of life. I absolutely love that. Last week, we had a local butcher/farmer come in with about a quarter of a steer. He probably had about three hundred pounds. It was really moving to me and the students to hear the story of that animal. He described the pasture. He described this one particular apple tree that was on the back of the pasture. Then when he started breaking down the animal, you could see the color and the richness of the fat that came from these apples. I think it’s really important. Thank you for sharing that.

Let’s get back to Los Angeles for a minute. What inspired you, Chef, to bring the Aussie – as they say – pie culture to Los Angeles?

Curtis Stone: You know what? It was completely by accident. We, like everybody, went through this hideous time during the pandemic when we had to close our restaurants. Suddenly, you turn around and are like, “Oh my God! What am I going to do? I’ve got over a hundred employees.” And we don’t call the people who work with us “employees,” we call them “teammates” because that’s what they are. We’re all in it together. We are teammates.

We got together and said, the last thing we want to do is say to people, “You know longer have a job, so good luck. Go figure it out.” Which, sadly, was the reality for a lot of people in our business. We sat in a big circle, and I said, “What should we do? I need your help. I need your input. We’ve got to be creative. We’ve got to figure it out.” At that time, a lot of people were doing little markets in restaurants and doing deliveries. We’d started making some things and delivering to people’s homes.

Somebody called out, “The world needs a hug.”

Then somebody else said, “We should make pies.”

I thought, “A pie is a bit like a hug, isn’t it?” You give somebody a pie, and it’s like a big bowl of love. You’re showing someone that you really care about them, and you thought about them. Of course in Australia or in Britain, we make great meat pies. We do chicken and beef. We do rabbit, and we do beef shin. We have all these different kinds of pies.

I said, “Let’s dive deep. Let’s make some fantastic pies.” So we started making pie crusts from different types of fat. Of course, with the butcher shop, we had lots of access to lots of excess tallow and fat, so we started making some pretty cool pie crusts. Then we started braising different meats. Of course, we made sweet pies as well. Americans love sweet pies, so we made tarts and apple pies and all that good stuff. We turned Maude, our little restaurant in Beverly Hills, into a pie room. Who knew, but the Americans love meat pies! They love sausage rolls. They really like what we make down there in Australia. We got very busy. Of course, it wasn’t a bakery by any stretch. It was a little fine dining restaurant that we had turned into a makeshift bakery. Some days we’d open the door at ten o’clock in the morning, and we’d be sold out by 11:30. We just got into the habit of baking all of these pies.

Of course, when covid came and went, we reopened the restaurant. People kept emailing me, saying “How do I get the pies? I want the pies.” We ended up getting our hands on a big bakery. We’ve got a six-thousand-square-foot bakery now. We’ve just finished redesigning that. We now have a pie room. We make all sorts of delicious pies and breads and viennoiseries, and it’s been a lot of fun.

Kirk Bachmann: I love it. I got another quote out of that: “A pie is like a hug.” Totally stealing that as well.

You mentioned the pandemic just briefly, chef. Do you have any thoughts on what role comfort food plays in society today, particularly post-pandemic?

Curtis Stone: Look, it’s so important, isn’t it? Food gives you a feeling. If I say to you, “I set the table and there’s caviar and lobster and champagne on the table,” immediately, you feel a certain way. You feel like you need to be dressed a certain way, and you feel like there should be a certain type of music playing. There’s formality that comes with it. Likewise, if I said to you, “I made a lasagna. Come on over,” you might think of a glass of red wine or a fire burning. You think of comfort food, right. You think of being comfortable. They’re very different. Food is very emotive, and it can create lots of different feelings.

I think when we go through the kind of thing we’re going through right now – we’re struggling with the cost of living. People are cutting back because their mortgages are costing more money. The inflation’s been crazy, so prices have gone up. We do search for comfort. We do want something to make us feel warm and protected. We do want to make something for someone, nurture them. That’s what being a chef is. You’re cooking something for somebody else. You show them love. You’re showing them kindness, and I think that’s a beautiful thing.

I think comfort food is more important than it ever has been, actually.

Getting Into TV

Kirk Bachmann: Yes. I agree a hundred percent. If you don’t mind, we have a little bit of time left. I’d love to talk about your thriving television career. I’m sure that many of our students aspire. “I want to do that.” The one thing we can or can’t talk about that I just want to use as an asterisk is, it’s a lot of work. There’s so much work that goes on behind the scenes that people don’t see. You make it look easy. Your wife makes it look easy on the big screen. I want people to realize that. Not everybody can do this.

We’ve interviewed many folks on the show and many have said that they were really never seeking that. They were not looking for that in their career. It was almost serendipitous. Like you said earlier, right place, right time. I’m curious, chef, was that the case for you, or was eventually being on the big screen on your road map when you were younger?

Curtis Stone: It’s really interesting because I’ve always answered this question the same way which is, No, I wasn’t looking for it. And that’s the truth. I remember being in the UK, and there was the Good Food and Wine show in Birmingham. A bunch of chefs got invited down there. I was a chef running a restaurant at the time. I’d never done anything in the media. I got invited to go down to this event and do some cooking demonstrations, like so many people.

I can remember, on one side of the bar – this is after the show – there was myself and Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White and a bunch of chefs. There were a couple of other great chefs there that had Michelin stars and were restaurant guys. On the other side of the bar, there were all these famous faces that were chefs but were all sort of TV chefs. I can remember standing there and thinking, “Thank God I’m on this side of the bar. I never want to be over there. I’m very happy over here with the real chefs.”

But the truth is, I was seeking recognition. I can remember first becoming a head chef and thinking to myself, “Oh my God, the next review that gets written on this restaurant, my name will be on it. My name will be on the bottom of the menu the next time we print the menu, and it goes out the front.” I can remember back before I had a cell phone, going and getting a disposable camera and taking a photo of the menu hanging outside the wall.

I think if I told you I wasn’t searching for some kind of recognition, I’d be lying to you. I think that it’s a natural thing to seek. You work really hard, and you want to do a good job, and when someone tells you you’ve done a good job, it feels good. If somebody prints it or puts it on a screen, then it feels even better. Maybe subconsciously, I was looking for it, but I didn’t think it was.

I got a phone call to do a show called Saturday Morning Kitchen or Saturday Kitchen on the BBC in the UK. It was Australia day, and they wanted me to do a hangover cure, because obviously the Aussie’s have got a reputation for being big drinkers. It was me and another guy, Ben O’Donoghue, another Aussie, who was also living in London. We did that segment, and then a few weeks later, we got a call from a producer saying they had this idea to do a show about two Aussies who lived overseas, and were coming home to Australia, and surfing their way around the country, and cooking up delicious dishes along the way. If you get a phone call and someone says they want to pay you to surf and cook your way around the country that you were born in, hey. Show me someone that doesn’t want to do that.

Kirk Bachmann: I’m in. I’m in.
Curtis Stone: I jumped at that opportunity, and then surely, one thing just sort of led to the next.

Kirk Bachmann: I heard through the grapevine, or I read, that your team is now preparing for – since you mentioned surfing – Beach Life Music Festival down the road there.

Curtis Stone: There in the South Bay. Yeah.
Kirk Bachmann: South Bay.

Curtis Stone: It’s a cool music festival. We’re going to cook. We’ve got a thousand guests coming. I mentioned Richie before…

Kirk Bachmann: That’s that. Yeah.

Curtis Stone: He’s out collecting the wood for it right now, actually. We’ll be setting up and prepping. We’re making a thousand hot dogs here today. We’re going to emulsify all of the hot dog mix and then smoke them later on today. It’s exciting, doing big events like that.

We started an event company both here and in my hometown of Melbourne about five or six years ago. It’s grown pretty substantially. It’s fun doing those big events. I really enjoy them.

Kirk Bachmann: I’m curious in terms of when you have big events like that – and I think you answered the question – you have a whole event staff just for that. You’re not pulling folks off the line for that.

Curtis Stone: I used to. It was pretty brutal because the restaurant would suffer and the event would suffer. We’ve established a team now, and that’s exactly what we do: we take our own team down. Of course, they get really used to doing bigger numbers. We do big stuff, like the SAG Awards, and we do small things like backyard barbecues as well. Being organized, having the right equipment and the right kind of team, it’s all very important.

Changing Lives with Chrysalis

Kirk Bachmann: That’s fun for the team, too.

It’s pretty obvious in our research – and Noelle does incredible work digging into all the details – it’s pretty clear that giving back holds a really special place in your heart. I’m just curious: I watched the video where you brought Byron Taylor and Darrell up to the stage for the Chrysalis organization. Can you talk a little bit about how important giving back like this is to you and to your team and, again, to your family?

Curtis Stone: The way I see it is we’re cooks. We’re blue-collar workers. We work hard. We work with our hands. We’re on our feet all day long. It’s very, very important to look after each other. Our business is a tough one. It doesn’t mean it’s not rewarding. It doesn’t mean it’s not satisfying. It doesn’t mean you can’t make money. You can. It’s a great business. It really can be a really satisfying, wonderful career. When you do achieve stuff in this business, then you do have to take care of the people around you.

Chrysalis is a really interesting organization because what they do is they try and get people back into the workforce that have fallen out of it. Some of those reasons might be incarceration. Some of them might be homelessness or just being down on your luck where people find it hard to get a job. I met that organization about a decade ago. I thought to myself, “You know what? We have some jobs that absolutely anyone can do, washing dishes for instance.” If you’ve got the grit and determination, you can make it in this business. It’s also a business that as you slowly build up your skill level, you can climb the ranks.

I hired my first Chrysalis employee probably eleven years ago. Darrell Stevenson is his name. He’s still with me today, as is Byron. Those guys, they both came out of hard times. You imagine coming out of jail. You change your mind in jail. You’ve got to do the right thing from now on. You want a different path in life. Then you go to your first job interview, and they say, “Where did you work last?” And you say, “Well, I was in jail, and I’ve been in there for a couple of years. I changed my life.” You quickly get crossed off that list is what a lot of people find. You don’t get a call back. As hard as you try, if you can’t get a job, what do you do? You probably go back to your old ways.

We had some real luck with some of those guys that came through from Chrysalis. Maybe it wasn’t luck. Maybe it was that we created a good environment for them, and we showed them the right way. We taught them the value of hard work. Byron Taylor now looks after my farm. He worked with me as a dishwasher and a back-of-house manager. He’s now a property manager for me. He looks after a farm, and he does all sorts of farm work that I’ve been too scared to do. He drives tractors, and he deals with snakes, and he does all sorts of crazy stuff. He’s a great guy. Darrell is still with me. He’s a back-of-house supervisor. He looks after a team. He’s got the keys to my restaurant.

To think these guys have made decisions and changed their lives and are meaningful contributors to society when once upon a time they were looked on as problems. I think it’s a wonderful organization. I can’t say enough great stuff about them. That’s who we’re working with this year, and I couldn’t be prouder to do it.

Kirk Bachmann: Thank you for sharing that. Really appreciate that.

It goes without saying that our students and our viewers are in awe of your work, as am I, and as is my wife, Gretchen, by the way, if I haven’t said that already.

Curtis Stone: Hey Gretchen.

Be Prepared to Work

Kirk Bachmann: Thank you for that. I was going to ask that next. Chef, you’ve traveled the world. You’ve opened successful businesses. You’ve mentored countless people. You’ve been on television. You’re always evolving as a chef, clearly. I’m curious. No pressure, but from a mentoring perspective for students, how can young culinarians, young people today, keep pushing themselves to improve and to grow, and keep on the journey to wherever that journey may take them?

Curtis Stone: I’m very envious of young cooks today because when I grew up, if you wanted to learn somebody’s recipes, you had to go and work there. You had to spend your time. At some point you’d be flashed by with a recipe card that you might be able to scribble down those notes, but effectively, you needed to learn from working in those restaurants. There was no internet. No one put their recipes in books back then, especially the great chefs.

These days, most stuff you see is online. You can learn incredible techniques from googling it. Now, just because you read it doesn’t mean you learn to [do it.] You’ve got to do slightly more than read it. You’ve got to try it, and then you’ve got to practice it, and you’ve got to perfect it. You’ve got to continue to improve the process.

I think learning a skill is as simple as working for somebody or researching something and trying it yourself. You can work on your days off. You can work from home. You can work in great restaurants. You’ve got a lot of options. I think just being interested is the start. If you’re genuinely interested, and if you genuinely chase it down, that’s all there is to it. I think most people want to teach. In our business, it’s not easy to find good people.

Let me tell you something. If you’re someone that wants to learn and [are] prepared to work hard, you’ve got a job. You’ve got a job with me, or you’ve got a job with anyone like me because we’re searching for those people. They’re not easy to find. Our job does demand a lot of the people that work in it. Don’t be scared. I said I was naive early on, but maybe it wasn’t so naive to go and knock on Marco’s door. Because even back then, thirty years ago, he also was just looking for people that wanted to keep their heads down, work hard, learn the trade, and follow through for him. If you do that, you go a long way.

Come knock on my door. Come walk in my back door, and I’ll be more than happy to meet you.

Chef Curtis Stone’s Ultimate Dish

Kirk Bachmann: That was half the battle, right? You knocked on the door, and someone opened it and welcomed you in. I absolutely love that.

Chef, the name of our podcast is The Ultimate Dish, so the final question is always the toughest one. In your mind, what is the ultimate dish? It could be a memory. It could be several courses. I bet I know what you’re going to say.

Curtis Stone: Look, for me the first time I experienced white truffles was when I was in Europe. I can remember going into Marco’s kitchen and smelling it for the very first time. We had this white truffle delivery. I’d read about them, and I’d seen them in photographs, but in Australia, we didn’t even have black truffles in Australia unless they came over in cans. I can remember walking over and just smelling this truffle, and just thinking, “Oh my God! It’s one of the most unbelievable smelling things.” Of course, as a young cook, I was not allowed to taste it, but it smelled absolutely fantastic.

Giorgio Locatelli had a restaurant in London. I can remember saving up my wages and going and dining at Giorgio’s restaurant just to try his white truffle tagliatelle. I’ll never forget the taste of that dish. It was so simple: fresh pasta, handmade of course, tossed with some butter and water emulsion, and then white truffle shaved all over it. I can still taste it today. I love cooking with truffles; it’s my favorite ingredient to use. We did menus just around it at Maude where we’d do the entire month. We’d cook with a dozen different dishes all with white truffles in them. Whenever I get access to them, I cook with them. I want to share that with everyone because, wow! It is such a special experience.

Kirk Bachmann: Absolutely wonderful. We have never had anyone bring up white truffles as the ultimate dish. I’m going to go find my purchasing manager here in a minute and see what he can dig up for me.

Chef, we have so enjoyed your time. We appreciate [you] taking time out of your busy day. Continued success and luck and love. If you need students, we’ll get you students. We’ll reach out to your people and see if there is any place in your kitchens for you. Thank you for joining us.

Curtis Stone: Thank you so much. Lovely chatting to you, and good luck to everyone out there in our business.

Kirk Bachmann: Thank you so much, chef. Thank you.

And thank you for listening to the Ultimate Dish podcast, brought to you by Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts. Visit escoffier.edu/podcast, where you’ll find any materials mentioned during the podcast, including notes, links and other resources. And if you can, please leave us a rating on Apple or Spotify, and subscribe to support our show. This helps us to reach more aspiring individuals ready to take the next step toward their dream careers. Thanks for listening.