🎙️ EP183 — Most chefs can cook. Very few can open a restaurant and keep it alive. This episode is about knowing the difference.

🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode:

🍽️ When Your CV Isn't Enough to Open a Restaurant

🧠 Detaching From Your Own Taste to Build a Real Concept

🏚️ Why the Best Restaurants Started as Taverns

🔪 The Truth About Kitchen CVs and Fake Skills

👥 How to Build a Team From Scratch in the Middle of Nowhere

💀 The Four-Days-a-Week Trap That Kills Restaurants

📋 Why You Need a Mock Schedule Before You Hire Anyone

🤝 Scouting vs. Trusting People You Already Know

🗣️ What Your Cooks Aren't Telling You

⚠️ When to Walk Away From a Client Who Won't Listen

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🎙️ EP182 — Pressure exposes everything: ego, clarity, restraint, empathy, and whether the person leading the pass is actually leading at all.

🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode:

🪖 The Korean War Leadership Paper

📚 Why Nobody Teaches It

🔥 Calm Under Fire

🗣️ Clear Communication

🤝 Respect and Fairness

🧠 Empathy in the Weeds

👨‍🍳 Leading by Example

⚖️ Discipline vs Being Too Easy

🚫 Shouting and Bad Leadership

🏗️ Brigade Systems Revisited

🎯 Standards and Accountability

👀 How Teams Really See You

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🎙️ EP181 — Turning ideas into dishes is one thing. Turning them into a menu that makes sense is where cooking gets real.

🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode:

🍽️ Building a Menu From Scratch

🔪 Small Team Kitchen Structure

🥗 Starters, Grill & Dessert

🌿 Ingredient Driven Dish Creation

🌎 Local Dishes With a Twist

🧠 Cooking for the Local Palate

🥬 Why Freshness Tastes Better

🔥 When to Transform an Ingredient

🐟 How to Build Around Fish

🥄 Sauce Design & Flavor Logic

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🎙️ EP180 — Before there’s a dish, there’s a way of seeing. This one gets into how cooks find ideas, work inside constraints, and turn produce, technique, and instinct into something worth putting on a plate.

🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode:

🌱 Creativity Starts Before Cooking

🧭 Constraints Shape Better Dishes

📍 Resources, Geography & Seasonality

🤝 Why Producers Matter

🌿 Gardens, Foraging & Access

🫙 Preservation Builds a Pantry

🔥 Technique as Personal Language

👅 Taste, Texture & Seasoning

🍶 Vinegar, Garums & Condiments ✨ What Gives a Dish Value

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🎙️ EP179 — What can cooks learn when they stop chasing ingredients and start understanding flavor, balance, and instinct? Mark Hill of The Social Distortion gets into Prik Laap, experimental Thai seasoning, and how local scraps become honest flavor.

🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode:

🇹🇭 Thai Flavor Logic

🧂 Seasoning & Balance

🌿 Cooking With Substitutions

🔥 Prik Laap

♻️ Scraps Into Flavor

🍛 Curry & Relish

🧠 Honest Influence

🍽️ The Social Distortion

💸 Why Restaurants Fail

📍 Northern Thai Cooking

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🎙️ EP178 — Eggs are the ingredient that exposes whether a cook understands texture, heat, structure, and restraint... or just follows recipes.

🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode:

🥚 Why Eggs Matter

⚪ Whites vs. Yolks

🔥 Egg Temperature Wars

🍳 The Perfect Fried Egg

☁️ Using Leftover Whites

🇫🇷 Why Soufflé Still Matters

🧪 Adapting Recipes

🏭 Cooking at Scale

🍋 Lemon Curd Logic

🧈 Egg Yolk Sauce

🧀 Whole Eggs vs. Yolks

🍮 Custards, Flan & Set

📚 Go Fact Yourself: Egg Myths

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🎙️ EP177 — What cooks learn in other people’s kitchens: pop-ups, borders, Mexican food abroad, and the small decisions that separate real adaptation from watered-down cooking.

🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode:

🚨 Dubai Under Missile Attacks

🍷 Madrid, Castizo Cooking & Old-School Restaurants

🇲🇽 Mexican Food in Dubai

👨‍🍳 Pop-Ups, Collabs & Real Professionalism

🔥 Adapting Cuisine Under Restrictions

🌮 Tortillas as Culinary DNA

🍽️ Why À La Carte Still Matters

🥩 Chuleta, Salsa & Playing With Tradition

🥃 Mezcal, Sotol & Raicilla

🧠 Tradition vs. Innovation in Cooking

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🎙️ EP176 – Master baker Claudio Perrando joins Eric to talk fermentation, flour, open crumb, Tartine’s influence, and why bread is still one of the clearest signatures of a serious restaurant.

🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode:

🍞 Bread’s Modern Renaissance

🏝️ Baking Bread on a Caribbean Island

🔥 Baking vs Cooking

🥖 Deck Ovens vs Rational

🕳️ The Open Crumb Revolution

📚 Tartine & Chad Robertson

🧪 The Science of Dough

🌾 Flour Quality & W-Value

🥐 Panettone Craft

🍽️ Restaurant Bread Service

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