Jess Pryles returns with more meat science. She is a live fire cook, the founder of Hardcore Carnivore, and the author of Prime Cuts, a 288 page guide to choosing, understanding, and cooking meat with more than 100 recipes built cut by cut. She holds a Graduate Certificate in Meat Science from Iowa State University and judged Food Network’s Pitmasters. This time she gets into the parts chefs argue about: what to call a cut, how to salt it, and how far to cook it.

Her case starts with the menu. London broil is a preparation, not a cut, and Delmonico has no standard definition, which is how a kitchen can invent a name and get away with it. Then she explains why picanha, duck, and lamb eat poorly when served too rare, and why a chef should cook a duck breast properly instead of asking the guest.

• How an equilibrium brine works, why her recipe adds sugar for balance, and why red meat is harder to brine than pork or chicken
• Dry brine versus cure: why she says salting a steak overnight is a dry brine, and the parts per million math behind her bacon calculator
• Why she likes tri-tip around 138 degrees, and why she believes resting a steak is mostly carryover cooking

André Natera and Jess Pryles cover who Prime Cuts was written for, the steakhouse menu she wants to see with more breeds, grass-fed beef, picanha, flat iron, and hanger, who should decide how a steak is cooked, why curing salt is pink and what happens if the math is wrong, and what to do when a guest says safe chicken is raw because it is pink near the bone.

Guest

Jess Pryles Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jesspryles/

Hardcore Carnivore Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hardcorecarnivore
Prime Cuts and signed copies: https://www.hardcorecarnivore.com

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/

Christophe De Lellis is chef and partner at Mamani in Dallas, a French restaurant with an Italian accent that earned a Michelin star in 2025, less than two months after opening, and kept it in the 2026 guide. Before Dallas he spent 13 years at Joël Robuchon Las Vegas. He arrived in 2010 as a cook who could barely speak English and was running the kitchen as executive chef by 27. He still asks what can come off a dish before he asks what can go on.

The Robuchon kitchen he walked into was nothing like the Paris bistros he came from. Asparagus peeled with a paring knife, micro arugula dressed by rubbing oil between the fingertips, a ruler for the brunoise, and a cook counting the dots on a plate. He says he was hooked right away. Then the executive chef left, his mentor asked if he was ready, and the answer he got was no, you are not ready, but you are going to have to be.

• How a chicken jus built from 180 pounds of wings, water, and shallot, with no salt, becomes about 70 percent of the sauce on his meat dishes
• Why he removes an ingredient before he adds one, and why he says better sourcing fixes half the problem
• How a duck dry aged for 14 to 19 days becomes one dish that blends French and Persian cooking, with the breast in an orange sauce and the legs as kebab

André Natera and Christophe De Lellis cover why he walked out of a finance program on day one and went to cooking school in Paris, the visa call that came in the middle of a Tekken game, the year he left Robuchon to work for Shawn McClain at Sage at Aria, how a random message from Brandon Cohanim brought him to Dallas, why Mamani is à la carte with 100 seats instead of a tasting menu, how he balances a menu, why he does not want servers telling the chef’s story, and which station he says is the mark of a restaurant.

It ends where every episode ends, with the Mount Rushmore, plus the line he would build with Joël Robuchon on the pass.

Guest

Christophe De Lellis Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christophedelellis/

Mamani : https://www.instagram.com/mamanirestaurant/

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/

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.