Restaurant Reality Show By cover art

Restaurant Reality Show

By: Restaurant Reality
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  • Summary

  • The stories shared here all come from people that currently are or once were in the foodservice world. These stories are interesting in ANY business but somehow are even worse or more unbelievable when we realize they took place in a restaurant. These tales have an element that makes us possibly question whether or not we want to go out to eat, or maybe we want to go out, hoping we get to see one of these stories take place. Some of these may cause tears, laughter, goosebumps, cheers, makes you want to scream out loud, or possibly a combination of all of these elements. Some of them cover trials that people in the restaurant business get to or have to address. Regardless of the information these stories hold, these are all 100% true stories told by foodservice employees. These are Restaurant Reality. You can hear all of these and more at http://restaurantreality.show . This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podcorn - https://podcorn.com/privacy
    Copyright 2022 Restaurant Reality
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Episodes
  • #7 - Serving drinks in the parking lot, and two people doing the work of six! (36:19)

    #7 - Serving drinks in the parking lot, and two people doing the work of six! (36:19)
    Jan 18 2021
    Sam Knoll: [00:00:00] Let's just kind of start at the beginning. I'd like to know your whole history, so I'm going to get you to divulge some of that. And let me know when you started cooking, Why, you know, how old were you all that good stuff? JT: [00:00:16] I was, I was 18. I mean, it's pretty much the same circle. You started with me. The whole, uh, Willie Moats, Chuck Sass. Uh, Oh, Rick Maggard. Oh, Sam Knoll: [00:00:32] I was going to say, did you work for Rick early on? JT: [00:00:35] I started with him at crawdads cross. If you remember that all the way down at the South end of the beach. Yep. Sam Knoll: [00:00:43] And that was what was at his second restaurant. JT: [00:00:47] He had, he had, uh, Crawdad cafe. He had Coyote cafe, the little one on 27th street and a place called barking dog down at the end of 36th street. I think he was down then Sam Knoll: [00:01:01] I remember barky dog. Yup. It's amazing. Well, so, okay, so 18. What, so what was that just kind of like at a, at a high school, summer job, what, uh, what, not much. JT: [00:01:18] It just, um, it was right there on the boardwalk and, you know, it's, you know, I love surfing back then fishing and doing all that stuff. So it made, made sense right there and yeah. Easy, easy, easy job to get back then, too. Yeah. Compared to everything else from high school where it was way bette pay. Sam Knoll: [00:01:44] Yeah. I guess that's true. Yeah. JT: [00:01:51] And I was 18 and there's, you know, a whole room full of adults that buy you beer. Sam Knoll: [00:01:55] Oh, yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. You had a good group. You're working with I, that was one thing that Rick Magard did very well. Was he somehow managed to pull in people and produce pretty talented chefs. JT: [00:02:11] He could assemble a lot of talent that's for sure. Sam Knoll: [00:02:13] Yeah. Every place he opened, for the most part, it was kind of amazing. And so, so let's see. So you basically, so from 18 until now you've been cooking for a long time. Yeah, we met back in what? 90? I don't know, mid nineties somewhere in there. Yeah. JT: [00:02:39] How'd you get 96, 95, 96. Okay. Sam Knoll: [00:02:46] Yeah. And it was interesting. Um, I was looking at, you know, some of the folks that we cooked with back then, and I was, I was, I was even, I was, I was telling my wife this evening. Yeah. That there've been times where I've gone back to Virginia Beach, simply because I wanted to go see where you were working and try to come in and get something to eat or come back and grab a beer with you when you'd get off work. Right. It's been a long time since we'd been able to do that. Very long, probably too long. Yeah. We'll have to someday once this COVID stuff is over, we'll see if we can fix that. JT: [00:03:22] I think, I can't remember. You always wanted to kick my ass cause I'd take you out way, way, way past your bed. Sam Knoll: [00:03:27] Oh, without a doubt. Well, at this point, you know, I mean, I'm like an hour and a half past my bedtime right now. It's like you hit this, this 50 year old thing. Um, I obviously can't speak for all of them, but you hit that and it's just kind of downhill, you know, wake up at five in the morning for one to fall asleep at eight thirty or nine at night. That's just the way it seems to roll. Right. So, well, what else? Um, I'm trying to think, which, which are your restaurants out of all those, those jobs you've had? What, what was your favorite? One of those and why do you think that was your favorite? JT: [00:04:11] Well, we're like me Stroud. Uh Sulecki. I don't remember if you remember Paul Holbrook we're together for quite a while. We had a. Uh, coyote, like even at the beach and then we moved to a Laskin road. Yeah, that was, that was definitely my funnest time because I met, uh, some of the best friends that I still call best friends, even, even today, years and years and years later, you know, Mike Straud still...
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    36 mins
  • #6 - Every Darned Restaurant... (46:07)

    #6 - Every Darned Restaurant... (46:07)
    Dec 30 2020
     Lawrence: [00:00:00] I actually first met you when I was bouncing at Off Shore. The after hours club. Yep. Sam: Oh yes. The after hours club. Cape Henry. Right. That was, uh, that was an interesting time of life, you know, it was, uh, for me, certainly work-wise it was, it was very interesting because I was that time. I was waiting tables five nights a week and the same five nights a week, I would, you know, I'd get off work there at, you know, nine, 10 o'clock. And then at 1230, the after hours club would open. So I'd have like this little two-hour span during which I'd go around and stop and other places around the beach and say, you know, Hey you guys coming up tonight, et cetera. And then go and work until seven 30 in the morning for a bit, and then go to the restaurant the next day. Interesting life work, go drink, and then go out and get up and go back to the restaurant. Yeah, seriously? It's uh, yeah, so, okay. So yeah. So you cooked at coyote. What else did you work after? Cause I left coyote in 96 when 95, 96. Yeah, I guess there's 96. Where else did you work after that? Or how long did you stay at coyote? Lawrence: [00:01:51] Um, not too long lunches. And, um, Mike and Corey hired me over at Atlas. Sam: [00:02:00] Okay. Lawrence: [00:02:01] Paid me a lot more money, you know, so I didn't have to work too because I was a coyote on balsa doing the catering for Henry's not leave coyote and go over and. We be upstairs room and cater over there. Yep. And then, uh, and then I got into catering with Gary, but then I took some on my own, down at, um, uh, town point park, the TTI, um, the head of development came and found me at, uh, Atlas. We had Gary and I had done a joint effort down there, but he couldn't make it. So I did the whole thing, which is in both our names. Hmm. He wanted me to do all the, uh, VIP tents. Very cool. So I would do the VIP tents on stage left, and then they would rent out stage. Right. And tell and tell whoever ran it. I was their preferred caterer. So I used to get a lot of jobs like that. Sam: [00:03:03] That's not a bad gig, frankly. Lawrence: [00:03:07] Because I'd be running lunches and Atlas and hunger, a guy to go to five one. They let me use that to prep for that night. Then load up the car with all the food down to town point, get all that done. Then head up to, uh, one of the bars and Waterside go down to Sidney's place. I hang out there. Sam: [00:03:35] It's wild. What was it like working at Atlas? I was always, you know, cause I, I then moved out of town and, you know, essentially at 96, um, but came back with some frequency and I always ended up eating it at one of the Atlas diners. And I, I always thought that wouldn't seem to be a smart move. It was kind of like they'd, they'd figured out how to. To almost standardized to some, to some idea, you know, their location so they could keep opening new ones. Was that kind of the way that one worked or what did you, um, Lawrence: [00:04:12] they were, they were, pattering patterning that off of, uh, Ruby Tuesdays. Uh, they opened up 17 of those and then sold that off for millions. And that was their original plan was to. To do exactly that. Just keep opening them until they get to a certain level. They can get bought out, but that went awry. They, they, because of Corey, they were, they were, there was a chef-driven system. Yeah. It had standardized recipes, but you had to have culinary skills to actually pull it all off. Sam: [00:04:52] True. Yeah, because the level of dining was up high enough. You would need that. Lawrence: [00:04:57] Right. And that was where the problem came in. Couldn't find enough, you know, like they have today when you couldn't find enough good people to maintain that level. So where their downfall was, I was the last chef in their system when I left and they went to, to, to make an, you know, I made my mashed potatoes. I made so much as homemade. They went to boil in the bag of...
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    46 mins
  • #5 - In The Mouse House (57:40)

    #5 - In The Mouse House (57:40)
    Dec 21 2020
    jason_jell_ Sam Knoll: [00:00:00] Man, how are you doing? Jason Jell: [00:00:02] Uh, it busy, very busy. We've we're we've got a couple of big meetings coming up and been prepping for them and, uh, I'll be happy when we're on Christmas break. Let's put it that way. How about Sam Knoll: [00:00:14] yourself? Yeah, I'm, I'm kind of the same. I've just got so many balls in the air. It's kind of nuts right now. So, which is good. So Jason Jell: [00:00:22] yeah, nobody likes to be bored. Sam Knoll: [00:00:25] That's right. Not at all. So, well, this, I knew this would sound weird having me get you on here. I'm going to keep moving around because things bothering me. But anyways, um, because I know you have nothing to do with food service industry at all right Jason Jell: [00:00:45] now, but I knew you Sam Knoll: [00:00:48] had some history. And, uh, and so I thought, I don't know. I figured it could be a little fun just to get you in and just find out. I mean, it's interesting kind of even how you got into it, why you did it. Um, I think do, did you meet Jennifer, your wife, where you were working or did you know her before that? Jason Jell: [00:01:10] No. No, I, I, I, uh, I met her there. I, uh, started, I started in restaurants when I was 16. It was my first real job. Um, you know, before that paper, boy. Worked on a farm, uh, cut cabbage broccoli, picked corn through hay and, um, restaurants were like, it was my first stable job. Let's call it that. And, um, uh, and I remember when I first started, he was, uh, I remember it because they wore these pasta steak and sea house. So is the restaurant and, um, it's a, it's a chain, but it's primarily in Pennsylvania. There's some in New York. Uh they're they're still around. Um, And, uh, I was doing my rotation thing in the beginning where they're doing the walk run and everything. She was bagging trash cans. Uh, she was a waitress at the time. And, uh, they had these, when we first started, they wore these, like, I swear, I was like a little house on the Prairie kind of dress looking thing. Um, there were white with like, like poofy shoulders and like, uh, yeah, it, so I remember, um, I remember when I first saw her. and we didn't date for a whole bunch of years after that, because a couple of years, she's a couple of years older than me. And you know, when you're 16, you know, dating somebody who's a couple of years older than you it's like a big deal now. So we didn't date until I was in college, actually. So it was probably about a half a dozen years or so, but we knew each other, obviously the whole time. That's Sam Knoll: [00:02:46] pretty wild. I didn't realize all of that. That's kind of cool. Jason Jell: [00:02:50] Oh yeah. I got a lot of, I do have a lot of restaurant years under my belt, I guess I should say that. Probably about 10 years I spent working there. I was a dish man, uh, for several years. Uh, that was my, that was where I cut my teeth in restaurant. And, um, you know, then I, I graduated to, uh, two, well line. Like I worked, uh, just the end line where I did all like the. Final finish crap, where they put the new guys. And then I moved over gradually to like try or which is where they put the new guys that are half decent. And then, you know, eventually ended up being a grill, man, doing the steak and seafood still have the, still have the scars to prove it, uh, all over my arms. Sam Knoll: [00:03:35] You too, dude. It was really funny the other day. I don't know why. I found myself like looking at my right arm. I was like, man, I've got like nine or 10 scars down my arm here that I never even pondered. You know, Jason Jell: [00:03:49] and my fingers Sam Knoll: [00:03:50] look like, you know, I've like been fighting somebody in a back alley or something, Jason Jell: [00:03:56] and it's all like little cuts and whatever Sam Knoll: [00:03:58] else from working in restaurants. Jason Jell: [00:04:02] I remember, um, I remember when it was...
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    58 mins
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