Part 1
When Steve Lawson, a degenerate misfit, falls in love with cooking despite his initial dreams of becoming a business marketer, he finds himself addicted to the camaraderie, self-accomplishment, and the pressure of working in the grueling, chaotic environment of a restaurant kitchen.
After starting as a dishwasher in a cool new spot, he quickly moved up through the line and fell in love with the job. After a busy shift, he realized this was what he wanted to pursue for the rest of his life. During the holidays, he found that the clientele could be grumpy, but he and his fellow cooks and chef found time to enjoy each other’s company and get through the shift together. Despite the pressure and long hours, Steve found that the camaraderie and constant challenge of improving his craft kept him coming back for more.
In this episode, you will learn the following:
1. Exploring the unique camaraderie between cooks, chefs, and those in the restaurant industry; 2. Understanding the journey of a chef, from dishwasher to sauté chef, and the passion that inspired the transition; and 3. Examining the difficulties of working during the holiday season, from the perspective of a chef in an open kitchen.
Other episodes you’ll enjoy:
Connect with me:
Instagram: @insidethepressurecooker
YouTube: @insidethepressurecooker
Twitter: @chadkelley
Patreon: @insidethepressurecooker
Website: https://insidethepressurecooker.com
Feedback: Email Me!
Loved this episode? Leave us a review and a 5 star rating on Apple Podcasts or Follow Us on Spotify or your favorite podcasting platform.
[00:02:38]
All right, Steve. Tell everybody. Who are you? Hi, I’m Steve Lawson. I’ve been cooking for about eight years.
[00:02:46]
I really enjoy it. And besides cooking, I just hang out with friends and just be me. Just be you. All right, so you’ve been cooking for eight years. What got you into cooking?
[00:03:00]
I worked in fast food first, and that was just a bullshit high school job. And then there’s a cool new spot opening up in Denton, one of my buddies is going to be a buster up there. And he said they were hiring and paying pretty well, so I was like, I’m going to try that. I’ll be a dishwasher. And cooking was never supposed to be my ideal job, but I ended up falling in love with it.
[00:03:25]
What was your ideal job then? Just working in an office, I guess. We’re business, marketing. Marketing, okay. Yeah.
[00:03:36]
You went to school, right? You got a degree? Yeah, I did go to school. Okay. No degree.
[00:03:40]
Oh, no degree. What were you studying before that then? Business and marketing. Oh, business and marketing. So you just wanted to get into business and Marketing?
[00:03:47]
Yeah. Okay. I want to own my own business. I don’t know what, but something. All right, and then you just kind of fell into cooking then, huh?
[00:03:56]
Yeah, I started dishwashing. Got a lot of prep thrown at me. Like, not a lot of prep, but a lot of bullshit prep, like cutting fries and making little sauces. Eventually moved up through the line up to sushi, and I really enjoyed it all. Nice.
[00:04:16]
How did you know us for you then? I mean, you were going to go to school for marketing. You’re in business, you thought there was something there, otherwise you wouldn’t have. And then you just kind of fell into cooking. Just literally fell into it.
[00:04:31]
How did you know? I guess after the first couple of years when I got on the line, I noticed a lot of people were like me, just like kind of degenerate. I’ve always kind of been a degenerate a little bit. And I was like, all these people are really cool. I can go out and have some drinks.
[00:04:50]
I was always with my friends, so that’s why I enjoyed it. And then that made me love the job. Okay, so is that what you’re going to it for every day then? It’s like the camaraderie of it all. The camaraderie back then, but now I take it very seriously.
[00:05:08]
Well, we all kind of take it seriously. The camaraderie kind of gives you an almost an excuse and why you enjoy it, but even then there’s that. It keeps me coming back. Yeah. All right.
[00:05:26]
Is there a specific moment that you can think of that you are just like, fuck, yeah, this is it. This is fuck the business, fuck the opening, all the other stuff I wanted to do. I’m cooking. I’m going to be a chef.
[00:05:41]
I guess my first busy night on flat Top or Saute. Slinging out a busy shift flawlessly is one of the best feelings in the world. And then I was like, this is for me. I think this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. Nice.
[00:05:59]
Just getting your ass kicked one day and you’re just like, this is it. I want more of it. Yeah, this is fun. I mean, just the self accomplishment. All right, and the fact that you can always get better at it.
[00:06:13]
Yes, absolutely. I love that. And it’s so earlier, we kind of talked offline. I asked kind of what inspired you, and you said yourself to get better. You’re always after that chase to get better.
[00:06:32]
How are you working on that right now? I just go into work every day and try and get better at what I’m doing. I’m working saute right now at the place I’m at, and I just try to make every dish better every time I go in. When you say better every time, translate that you’re following a specific recipe, right? Oh, for sure, yes.
[00:06:55]
But just making sure it’s consistently plated every time, garnished the right way and looking nice, and also efficiency and speed at it. Okay. Do you do anything at home or when you’re not at work to kind of improve yourself with that? I’ve been trying to cook more at home, and I feel like cooking at home helps you be better at work. It’s sometimes hard, though, just like for everyone else.
[00:07:22]
Sometimes you just don’t want to cook. No, no. Yeah, I get it. Even here for me with my wife and all her friends are like, oh, you must cook all the time. I mean, I do now, but back up until a few years ago, no, I never cooked at home, and it was just like, Cobblers son has no shoes, so I get it.
[00:07:46]
When I was cooking full time too, I think I’d come home, my dinner would be like, a beer and an easy mac for sure. Or just, like, fast food or ramen or just like, sometimes no food at all. Yeah, because I would remember you cook all day, and you’ve got the adrenaline, everything’s going. You finally leave, and then it would take me about half an hour or so, 40 minutes, and then all of a sudden, I’d be like, fuck, I’m hungry. I realized I hadn’t actually eaten anything, and then that’s when I’d pick up fast food and, yeah, the healthiest diet ever, for sure.
[00:08:25]
So what else inspires you? There’s got to be something out there that you’re just like, man, this is awesome. I love this. I mean, you’re chasing a dream now. In a period of eight years, you’ve gone from dishwasher to a souf.
[00:08:39]
I mean, you’re as a soup at a pretty high end hotel in Dallas. So, I mean, you’re doing a lot of things right. What’s pushing you more to I like it. It comes back to me being better and just, like, going to the next level of cooking. I’ve done the approachable fine dining.
[00:09:00]
Now I’m pushing for the fine dining. That way, I’m pretty well rounded in all aspects to be an actual soup chef. Approachable fine dining. That’s the first time I’ve heard that term. Yeah, it’s what my chef said it, and honestly, it made, like, perpetuity.
[00:09:18]
It’s right there on the bubble of being fine dining, but it’s not like I don’t know, it’s normal people. It’s not pretentious. It’s not pretentious. Yes, I got you. So, I mean, it’s great food, presented well without the pretentiousness, but probably the fine dining price tag.
[00:09:35]
Exactly. It’s still very expensive. Yeah. Okay, so let’s talk shifts. This is probably at the hotel as well, the shift that no one speaks of.
[00:09:46]
Now there’s probably plenty of brunt shifts that you can recall for sure, but what are some other nightmare shifts where you’re just like, I just don’t even want to revisit those anymore. Honestly, I worked every holiday last year, like Thanksgiving, Christmas, Christmas Eve, New Year’s, Valentine’s Day, and Thanksgiving and Christmas shifts were like the saddest and roughest shifts I’ve ever had in my life. Just because it’s all these lonely people coming out to eat because they don’t have any family to go to or whatever. And also everyone I don’t know, I feel like the worst people come out. Really?
[00:10:27]
Yeah, it was not fun. We also did over 500 coverage. God. So it was just busier than shit. And the clientele there is just they just weren’t happy.
[00:10:42]
I get it. Obviously Christmas and I was by myself mentally. You’re going to be not in the greatest of places for the most part. Everybody’s used to spending some time with family. Exactly.
[00:10:55]
But did you have a lot of single diners or was it smaller groups? We had a lot of couples. We had a couple of single diners and we had a lot of families that seemed like they just did not enjoy each other’s company. Kids. That’s called the holidays, man.
[00:11:13]
Yeah, for sure. But I don’t know, I grew up holidays being the whole family together and having a good time and not like it might have been a facade, but it was still fun. No family. It’s always great to get back together with some family for a period of time. But my grandmother had the greatest quote, family is like seafood.
[00:11:42]
After about three days, they start to stink for sure. But yeah, even then, that was back when we all kind of lived in the same area where I grew up in California. Now we’re kind of spread out a little bit, so usually there’s more traveling that’s involved. So if it’s us staying at my in laws or if they’re coming up to here, yeah, everything works out well, and then all of a sudden it’s like, all right, time for you. Could I please go home?
[00:12:11]
Yeah, just you could tell it starts working on my wife’s nerves and I’m like, oh man, something’s going to happen for sure. Did you guys run like prefix during that time or was it just still full menus? It was like partially full menu. We have like a special dinner plate and a special Thanksgiving plate. So you’re still serving Thanksgiving dinner then?
[00:12:34]
Yeah, but it was a little bit more like we did like a turkey rollad with some nice cranberry sauce and like glazed carrots and pumpkin or like sweet potato puree. I got you. You’ve got a little yeah, for sure. And Christmas, we just did a bunch of specials. I got you.
[00:12:55]
I did a couple of pasta specials. Like a duck ragu and pasta special. Man, it just seems odd that people would be so grumpy during that time and just working. I mean, I understand why that day would suck to work with, especially you being a football fan and missing your Cowboys during that day, for sure. But I know in general, during the holidays, people seem to be grumpier.
[00:13:26]
I know comps and complaints always went up for this time of year, but it seems like the day of at least people would kind of just get through. I mean, you would think so, but honestly, Thanksgiving was the worst. Christmas wasn’t as bad, but Thanksgiving was for sure one of the saddest days I’ve ever worked. Yeah, that kitchen was an open line so you could see everything, right? Oh, yeah, that is sad.
[00:13:53]
But on the bright side, me and the cooks and the chef all had a good time because we’re not going to be miserable. We’re working. We’re having a good time. It was a hard shift, though. Did you know that you’re going to be that busy?
[00:14:08]
Were you able to prep for it? Or was it just like, oh, shit, what just happened? We didn’t know exactly how busy we were going to be, but we knew we were going to be busy. But it was definitely unexpected on how busy we got. And also it didn’t help because the front of house was doing all that whole flat seating shit, like where they sit the whole restaurant once, which was not fun either.
[00:14:32]
They’re just trying to keep it interesting for you, for sure. Right around 1230, man, the whole restaurant was full and there was no food out there. Yeah, no, there’s I would I don’t know if you’ve learned this yet, but whether it’s you’re in the kitchen or if you’re in the past where you just listen to the dining room and the louder it gets in the dining room, the worse it’s about to be in the kitchen. For sure. Right?
[00:15:01]
Because if it’s loud, it means people are talking, having a good time, but they’re not actually eating. When everybody is eating the decibels drop, it gets quieter. So it’s one of those you learn to listen to that kitchen to kind of forecast your shit moments. It’s like, hey, man, you hear a lot of noise, start bringing some shit in. We’re not doing anything right now.
[00:15:25]
It’s even worse than when you’re in an open kitchen because you can see it happening. At least when you’re in the closed kitchen, you can kind of like it’s a little bit more of a surprise. Whenever it’s open, you can see all the servers go from table to table writing down a bunch of stuff and then go on the computer and just read it all in at once.
[00:15:44]
The joys. The joys. Well, at least they weren’t doing it all. I know everybody now wants to go to using, like, handheld devices, mobile devices, to order stuff to save servers time running back and forth. And the part that I don’t like about that and I know you weren’t doing that at the hotel.
[00:16:05]
I don’t think they were, but I know that was something we dealt with, building restaurants with that group. But that time where the server stops and walks away kind of creates like a natural what do you want to call it? Buffer barrier or something? Time gap? Yeah, at least a good five minutes.
[00:16:24]
You know, not even that, you know, but it’s something as opposed to just someone just standing there typing send, type, send, type, send, and all of a sudden it doesn’t stop and it’s like, okay, listen, this isn’t fucking Chickfila, right? We’re cooking food back here. Yeah. Not even cooking it, but then plating it and plating it properly. This isn’t just scooping shit onto a plate and sending it out and four different versions of a mash.
[00:16:53]
Like, no, all this stuff takes time to do well and execute well. So, yeah, I couldn’t stand that. It’s the same thing, like, hey, man, how fast can we get this out? And it’s like, that’s not the point, right? Yes, we want to create an experience for the guests.
[00:17:11]
We don’t want them to sit there for 3 hours. But there’s a realistic time frame that we can make this all happen in. And yeah, this isn’t a fast food nation. And the other part, even though Chickfila, they do all that stuff and everybody raises about them, they’re not that fucking fast. And they only have two things.
[00:17:32]
Fried chicken, real chicken. Wait, I’ll add salad on there. There’s three things. They’re french fries. Oh, so I’m a bitch.
[00:17:39]
French fries. All right, we’re up to four, right? That’s it? Really? That’s it.
[00:17:44]
And I mean, they’re not cooking to order. It’s ready to go. There’s mass amounts of it. Yeah. And it’s not like they’ve got such a huge menu that you can order something and then modify the fuck out of it.
[00:17:56]
It’s like, do you want your sandwiches pickles or no pickles? How many tickets trips do you want? Three or four? Yeah. And so even with that, they’re not that fast.
[00:18:08]
So what makes you think that we can apply that same thing to a restaurant? You can’t. The place I’m working right now, that’s what they’re ideal, is, like, having food out within ten to 15 minutes, which I try to do, but when we have a rail full of tickets, I can’t do that. Well, nobody can. No, realistically, that’s like, okay, if you’ve got a couple of tables in and you’re not doing a whole lot.
[00:18:39]
Depending on the menu. A ten to 15 minutes pickup for an entree is potential. Right. There’s potential there. But once again, it depends on the menu, how you execute it, the size of the menu.
[00:18:55]
But at a certain point, it changes as the more tables come in and the more tickets start lining up. Yeah, that ten to 15 minutes starts dragging out. Now you’re eleven to 16, now you’re 20 or 30. Yeah, potentially. I mean, obviously once you get into that 30 minutes range, it’s just like, oh shit.
[00:19:17]
But then again, that also needs, hey, give us some help, seat a little bit differently. You see a hole in the ground, don’t just stick a chair in there. For sure, kind of create a pattern. And it makes it easier for everybody because otherwise you’ve got that hill where the service gets slammed, then the bar gets slammed and the kitchen gets slammed, and then the service gets slammed again. And it’s just a constant cycle.
[00:19:47]
It is so much that vicious cycle. And then everybody looks around at each other like, what the fuck? And then all of a sudden you find out that the guests didn’t have a good experience, everybody’s hurried, and you did three quarters of the sales that you thought you could do well. Servers are so busy, they’re not trying to sell or upsell. And when they’re also hurrying and the guest feels hurried, they’d order differently.
[00:20:15]
Right? Maybe the server couldn’t get back to another round of drinks. Like, there’s so many different variables to it. So it’s like just mellow things out, create a flow, and all of a sudden everybody’s going to have a better shift, the food is going to be better, the service is going to be better, the guest is going to have a better experience, and the restaurant is going to bring more cash. Yeah, as long as if you’re on a consistent set of flow and you’re all working together, it’s better for everyone involved.
[00:20:43]
Always the guest, you the bartenders, servers, host. If you’re all working together, it’s always better. Yeah. Communication is key. Hey, thanks for listening to part one.
[00:20:54]
Part two will be coming out tomorrow. Keep an eye out for it and. Don’T forget to rate and review us five stars. And if you don’t want to put five stars, just don’t leave anything.
Part 2
“Discover the bonds of the kitchen and the passion of cooking with Inside the Pressure Cooker – a show dedicated to the misfits, pirates and chefs who thrive in the chaos of the culinary world.”
“It really does take a special someone not only to survive, but to really thrive in an environment of just what feels like complete fucking chaos, but it’s pretty damn controlled.”
Steve Lawson is a chef and restaurateur with 25 years of experience in the industry. He has a passion for mentoring the next generation of chefs and is an avid environmentalist, gardener, and seafood enthusiast.
Steve Lawson has worked in restaurants for the past 20 years and has seen a range of people come and go, who thought they could hack the job but couldn’t. Through his experiences, Steve has discovered his passion for cooking and mentoring, particularly with seafood. He recommends finding a good chef knife and shoes for the job and for anyone interested in entering the culinary world, he advises to learn discipline and reach out before you move to another location, as well as staging in unfamiliar places. Through his story, Steve encourages others to take the time to explore and find their passion.
In this episode, you will learn the following:
1. The unique bond shared by cooks, and chefs and how it’s in their blood.
2. The importance of having good shoes in a kitchen, and the differences between steak and seafood when it comes to technique.
3. Exploring the culinary scene of the Pacific Northwest and the benefits of staging in a new place.
Other episodes you’ll enjoy:
Connect with me:
Instagram: @insidethepressurecooker
YouTube: @insidethepressurecooker
Twitter: @chadkelley
Patreon: @insidethepressurecooker
Website: https://insidethepressurecooker.com
Feedback: Email Me!
Loved this episode? Leave us a review and a 5 star rating on Apple Podcasts or Follow Us on Spotify or your favorite podcasting platform.
[00:02:37]
This was kind of a funny question I asked you. I said, So you’ve been in Denton for a while. You’ve been down to Dallas for a while. You’ve been out there studying some food. You’ve been to a couple of restaurants, working?
[00:02:51]
I should say so. I was curious, like, what do you see is overplayed? And your answer was food served on planks. Yes. Food on served on wood is overrated.
[00:03:02]
I’m tired of it. Wood is disgusting. You can’t get a clean. Is this based on your history at a restaurant that served a lot of food on wood boards? Yeah, and it’s been every restaurant I’ve worked at.
[00:03:17]
Really? Yeah, they did it at the hotel and they do it here, too, at my current place. Why do you think everybody’s putting food on the boards? I feel like it’s good for color, contrasting. But you can make a plate any color, and you can clean a plate properly, or a piece of ceramic or glass or whatever with those boards, people are cutting into it and food is going down those cracks.
[00:03:45]
You can’t do anything to clean that. Yeah, no, there’s certain food I didn’t mind putting onto a board, but when it came to the point where someone was going to need a knife to cut, I was just adamant about putting it onto a plate just for that reason. But I always lost that battle. Always. I get it.
[00:04:10]
The other part, too, is like serving steaks on a board, which if the steak didn’t have time to rest once you start cut into it, or if you’ve got a sauce, the shit’s just running everywhere for sure.
[00:04:26]
At the hotel, we had a big old 48 ounce drive and it came with a poison, and you would pour that on there and it just goes all over everything, dude. Because there’s nothing to catch the sauce. Did they do that at the table? It was an aramic, and the table would do it to themselves.
[00:04:48]
Why would you put the sauce for the steak on the side?
[00:04:55]
It’s because we did it on a board. If we did it on a plate, we could report it on there.
[00:05:02]
That’s what I’m saying. Desk the damn boards. I hate them.
[00:05:08]
Yeah, go ahead. And it’s killing all the trees.
[00:05:16]
I don’t think that the boards are killing the trees, but it’s probably the paper. Yeah, that’s fair. No, actually, a lot of the boards were made from fallen timber, are just older. Like the boards that we were using were just fallen oaks and pecan that are just prominent in this area. Well, that’s cool.
[00:05:44]
At least we’re recycling, I guess. Yeah.
[00:05:50]
That’s interesting, though. Would you consider yourself environmentalist? As much as I can be. I still indulge in stuff that I can’t recycle, but I do my best to recycle and compost. Compost?
[00:06:04]
Do you compost at home? I’ve been trying to during the summer, yes. I’ve been starting to do a little garden. I got a lot of plants around the house, so I feel that I can. What do you have in your garden?
[00:06:17]
This year I did peppers and squash and zucchini. I did some herbs like dill and terragon and mint. That was pretty much it. Okay. You can expand that at all.
[00:06:31]
Was that all indoors or was it outdoors? It was outdoor. Okay. The summer heat killed it, but I. Had a good spring yeah, that’s why I was wondering about all that.
[00:06:44]
Interesting. I never thought of you as the gardener. I evolved, you know? Oh, absolutely. You all have.
[00:06:53]
After working in Dallas, I started to appreciate food a lot more, or I guess I would say after COVID. And we really may respect what I did because I didn’t cook over the pandemic or half of it. I did not. Right. So what did you do during the pandemic?
[00:07:14]
I was stocking shelves at a grocery store, and then I ended up working at a food truck later on part time before I got back on at our place. Okay, so you had the chance, you went and did something else, but yet you came back to the restaurants. Yeah, because stock and shelves is not fun. It’s very simple work. Well, even then, like, a lot of people in COVID were laid off and went and found other work.
[00:07:44]
Some enjoyed it, some didn’t. But at that point, a lot of people took that opportunity to kind of find themselves again and search after something else. Did you ever feel that or did you know that you’re going to be right back in the restaurants when it hit? I don’t know. Whenever I was talking to the shelves, all I thought about was cooking.
[00:08:04]
So I never thought about myself doing anything else. I know. I didn’t want to work in a grocery store. That was awful. Yeah, I couldn’t imagine I couldn’t do that either.
[00:08:18]
It’s just such mundane work. Yeah. Just putting stuff, putting boxes on the shelf. People took it really seriously too, but I was like, I’m used to doing so much more.
[00:08:31]
So what do you geek out on now? You’ve really discovered the culinary world, right.
[00:08:43]
You’ve made your own path for yourself. You didn’t have the traditional background, whatever the hell that traditional schooling meant for some people. And you kind of fell into cooking, and then you just knew it was for you and you really missed it during the pandemic. And you’re really pushing yourself to grow and learn now. So what is it like you geek out on the most when it does come to cooking?
[00:09:09]
I geek out on pasta ever since I worked at the hotel. We did a different pasta quite often, and I just fell in love with different noodles, shapes, different stuffings, different sauces, different pan sauces. It’s all so much fun. And I also learned to love seafood. We did a different fish every week at the hotel.
[00:09:30]
We cooked a lot of scallops and mussels, and seafood became a big part of what I like to cook too. That’s good, because honestly, seafood is a great one to learn to cook and to cook properly because as you found out, it’s a lot more delicate. It’s temperamental. Temperamental, sure. But you’ve got to use a a of hell lot more finesse with a seafood.
[00:09:58]
With a seafood. Wow. You’ve got to use a lot more finesse with seafood than you do with that 64 ounce fucking porterhouse. For sure. Obviously, night and day differences there, but seafood is a good one to learn to work with because, yeah, you’ve got to be quick, and you’ve got to pay attention to it.
[00:10:21]
You’re right. It’s temperamental because you don’t have that margin of error that you will with, like, a steak. And also, you got to know you got to be able to tell if a muscle is bad or oyster is bad. You can get someone really sick. It takes a lot more handling all around, from raw to cooking.
[00:10:39]
And then pairing seafood with essentially their garnishes and veg and proteins and all that stuff is a different art and science to itself, because you can easily overpower fish if you’re not careful with what you’re pairing it with. That’s cool. I wish we had more seafood in the North Texas area. I understand why we don’t. We’re kind of landlocked.
[00:11:04]
I feel like we got some pretty cool stuff at the hotel. We had a lot of golf caught fish, which was kind of cool. Lots of grouper, lots of tile fish. We had amber, jack. All that stuff was pretty cool.
[00:11:20]
Yeah, there’s definitely a lot of fun stuff you can play with out of the Gulf or the Third Coast, they would also call it. Yes. So based on your experiences, what would be the word of advice that you would give to someone walking in the door that was you eight years before? I would tell them, hey, you’re going to have a lot of fun, but you’re also going to have a lot of hardship, but it’s going to be worth it because it’s going to make you stronger, and you’re going to learn some discipline, which is definitely what I needed whenever I started cooking. How are they going to learn discipline.
[00:11:50]
By getting yelled at? As soon as I asked that question, I was like, I don’t know if I want to know the answer for sure.
[00:11:58]
Okay. What books are you reading right now? I’ve been reading the whole fish and Maddie Madison to cookbook. All right. And then one of the last few questions I ask is, outside of a chef’s knife, right?
[00:12:13]
You’re opening up your toolkit. You bust out your chef knife. Now everybody has to have a quality chef knife that they’re working with, so that’s kind of taken out of the equation here. What’s the next thing out of your kit? I think on my answer, I said shoes.
[00:12:31]
My birkenstock. You got to have shoes in your kit, bro. But it’s still a tool, though. Okay. If we’re going for tools, I like my own fish spatula.
[00:12:42]
Okay. But I’m going with shoes. Shoes. You got to have good shoes to work in the kitchen. Your backs may kill you if you don’t.
[00:12:47]
You said you wear burks. I do wear burks. You wear just Burkies? I wear the super grip boston burks. Yeah.
[00:12:53]
I went through a phase where, man, it took me a long time to figure out what kind of shoes worked for me. I did the Burke’s, and then I did just other styles of Burke burgund stocks before I finally finished. I say finished, but ended on clogs sunita. And there’s another popular one, I don’t remember, but once you learned to walk in them and they saved my knees and my back so much, they were actually pretty damn comfortable shoes. I mean, they’re heavy for sure, but I hear you, man, because I was having just constant back pains.
[00:13:24]
My knees hurt all the time. And then I also didn’t realize that your knees and your lower back are connected. So when one hurts, the other one, they work together. They go hand in hand, you know? Yeah.
[00:13:36]
I was wearing walmart shoes before I started wearing perks. And whenever I switch over to perks, I was like, wow, what have I been doing for the last fucking six years? I hate to say it, but I mean, you’re right. Then I guess the next investment out of a chef knife would be shoes. That does make a lot of sense.
[00:13:54]
I will give you that one. Yeah. Because I went from paying $20 a pair to birks are $150. But they last you four times longer. Yes.
[00:14:04]
As long as you take care of them. I’ve seen them. They can get haggard for sure. Yeah, that’s why I like my Burkies. If they just kind of got ugly, I would literally just take out the insoles and run them through the dishwasher.
[00:14:17]
Nice. That’s what’s up.
[00:14:25]
Then I just kind of throw them in the back of the car and they’d be dry the next day. I mean, you’re a crazy cat lady. We cover that. I am a crazy cat lady. I do love my cats.
[00:14:35]
I guess it’s like what the future holds for me. I’m hoping I can get onto this new fine dining spot and work there for about a year. I would like to get out of Texas at some point. Where do you want to go? I think Pacific Northwest.
[00:14:52]
Like Colorado, Oregon, Idaho, montana? Somewhere up there. Colorado wouldn’t exactly be the northwest, though, right? That’s fair. But it’s still right there.
[00:15:05]
Everything is a lot closer together up there, so it doesn’t really matter.
[00:15:11]
You know people out there. I’ve got a few friends in Colorado. Okay. It always helps to kind of know someone wherever you’re going to land for sure. Just so when you get there, you least got a place to crash and someone to help you kind of that knows what’s going on.
[00:15:35]
I will say the restaurant is big of a place. It is. It’s a very small world. But each little individual, city and state, so to speak, has its own little niches. And when you first get into it, you can easily get into the wrong spot just because you don’t know for sure.
[00:16:00]
Yeah, reach out before you move. I know it’s not anytime soon, but for anybody, just reach out to other people through social media or something like that and just kind of, hey, I’m coming. What’s the deal? And also, if I do end up going out there, I would like to go out there beforehand and scope out the cooking scene, see what’s hot and what’s not. Yeah, it wouldn’t be a bad time to stage as well at that point, for sure.
[00:16:30]
That’d be fun, man. Yeah. I’ve lived in Texas. I’ve lived in Texas my whole life, so I would like to go somewhere else eventually. No, it’s good.
[00:16:43]
I mean, you should travel, man. Talk about you enjoy seafood and some of that stuff. The seafood up in the Northwest is just fucking amazing. Yeah, it’s right up there next to the Pacific Ocean. Yeah, well, I mean, it’s just the Northwest because they get a lot more product out of Alaska as well.
[00:17:04]
So Southern California and some of those areas, they do have some pretty good seafood, but it’s not just as prominent as it is up in the Northwest. I don’t know why exactly.
[00:17:21]
That is strange. I know Seattle has a huge fish market up there. Yeah. Well, Steve, I wish you all the best. Wherever you go, you’re definitely on the rise.
[00:17:34]
You’ve got the right mindset and the right work ethic for it. So good luck to you, brother. Thank you, sir. And thank you for listening to this episode of Inside the Pressure Cooker. If you enjoyed this episode and feel like you’re able to take something away from it, please go to Apple podcast and rate and review us.
[00:17:54]
If you don’t use Apple Apple podcast, please follow us as well as share this episode with a friend. This is a publication by Rare Plus Media, hosted and produced by me from Rare Plus Media and myself, Chad Kelly. Thank you for listening. Keep kicking ass.
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