Matt Lambert earned a Michelin star at The Musket Room in New York in four months, a goal he'd given himself three years to hit. He describes what followed as treating the star like a religion, the Church of Michelin, and says he's never felt that emotional high again, chasing it in different forms for years after.

Why he thinks the tasting menu has lost the plot.

The moment he realized every chef on Instagram was making the same tart with a different color, and what he did about it

Why moving back to New Zealand after New York hit him harder than the original move to America ever did

André Natera and Matt Lambert cover 75 Hard and the 30 kilos he lost once he finally started taking care of himself, winning a major international chef award a week after his brother's funeral and feeling nothing standing on that stage, the moment his own chef de cuisine's face told him he didn't want to be the best anymore, why hospitality matters more than the food itself, and building Return in Auckland as his own answer to what The Musket Room used to be.

Guest

@chefmattlambert

@return_restaurant

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/

Bryan Caswell has cooked inside three very different kinds of rooms. Jean-Georges Vongerichten's kitchen in the early 2000s, where he learned that a quiet, organized kitchen beats a screaming one. Seventeen restaurant openings of his own, roughly half of them his own concepts, from Reef to his new restaurant Latuli in Houston. And, less known, rooms full of policy people deciding how the Gulf actually gets fished.

• Why he thinks the redfish fishery is in the best shape he's seen in his career, and why almost nobody outside the industry knows it
• A real proposal for cutting aquaculture's biggest cost problem in half, using something shrimp boats currently throw away for free
• The specific menu-writing rule he still uses today, learned running R&D inside one of the most systemized restaurant groups in the country: count every move a dish takes to plate

André Natera and Bryan Caswell cover what it was actually like working under Jean-Georges before he was a household name, why talent alone breaks the moment a chef has to build a kitchen from nothing instead of running an established one, the Gulf Coast bycatch program he pioneered at Reef that's now industry standard, why he hasn't touched red wine in a sauce in over two decades, and his return to Houston with Latuli, his first restaurant of his own since Reef closed.

It ends where every episode ends, with the Mount Rushmore.

Guest

@wholefishLatuli Houston

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/

Rosana Rivera runs three businesses under one roof: a bakery storefront, a wholesale bread program, and a catering and events company called Gatheria Studio. Most operators would guess wholesale wins on volume alone. It doesn't. Catering does, by a wide margin, sometimes 30 to 40 percent margins in a good season, more than either of the other two combined at the bottom line.

She's also the first Latina chef to ever beat Bobby Flay on television, and the casting process that got her there is worth hearing before you ever get a similar email yourself.

• The one piece of advice from her producer that won her the Beat Bobby Flay episode, and how she practiced her signature dish for exactly the time she'd be given
• What it actually costs to open a restaurant right now, and why the number most people quote is too low
• Why she runs a monthly AI audit on her own online reviews, and what it caught in her matcha program before it became a real problem

André Natera and Rosana Rivera cover why most influencer marketing for restaurants doesn't move the needle, whether kitchen robotics are actually worth the investment, the one ingredient that wrecks her food cost every single year no matter what, why a bakery's margins are thinner than most chefs assume, and the full breakdown of why her events business outperforms both her storefront and her wholesale account.

It ends where every episode ends, with the Mount Rushmore.

Guest

@chefrosanarivera@chefandthebaker

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/