There's different kinds of chefs out there. There's great technicians and disciplinarians and people that follow Yellow brick road and they do things correctly. I can't do that. Feel the burn baby. Oh yeah. It's a. Slam dunk. Absolutely breathtaking. Welcome to the Bike to Bites podcast. I'm your host, Garrett Bes, and this is a companion podcast to our television series, bike To Bites. And if you're interested in checking out where that is, you can click on the links below. In today's podcast, we're going to be exploring the central Jersey Shore, which is where I spent my time riding around to six different establishments, restaurants on the bike route that we took. And my guest today in the studio is David Burke, executive chef and owner of Drift House by David Burke, of course, along with many other places, which we're going to talk about as well. I'm excited to get into this episode, but before that, I want to take a moment to thank our sponsor. Plus, for the support of the Bike Debits podcast, when your tomorrows are built on technology, you need to partner with Superior Insight, with expertise in cutting edge innovation across ai, cloud security and workplace transformation. E plus today's modern enterprise e plus where technology means more. So in the studio with me today, we've got Chef David Burke. Now David is an incredible talent and friend, internationally celebrated chef who has won many awards, and we don't even have time to mention all of them. We're going to talk about 'em of course, while we're sitting down for this discussion. But you can check those out in the show notes as well. And trust me, you're going to be quite impressed as a two time James Beard winner, David has made frequent appearances on Top Chef Masters, a guest spot on the every day with Rachel Ratio, NBC's Today show, Bloomberg's small business television series, the mentor and more. I mean, David, the list goes on and on and on. Is there anything I've missed? I'm sure there's welcome, by the way, David, thanks for joining me today. My pleasure. I'm really glad that you're here. I was going to ride my bike. You should have, should have rode your bike. You should have rode with me at. Least. Well, there's a bike shop across the street now. I know. Right across. The street. He's my next door neighbor. Yeah. And we've got a little bike shop here in the studio, which. Oh, nice. You can check out afterwards. We don't sell bikes, but we repair the ones that we ride. We should do a little promo with. The. Bicycle Highland bike. Yeah, he's a nice guy. I actually, we've met in really, really good guy. When we were kind of figuring out what we were going to do to feature Central Jersey Shore, I could not think of doing the Central Jersey Shore without Chef David Burke. You are iconic. You are an institution and in and of itself. So talk to me a little bit about why you ended up building, you've gone through many iterations, your career. Take me back to the beginning. Where did it all start? How did this guy from Jersey who started out dishwashing become a restaurateur, an executive chef, a brilliant talent who now manages or owns or runs 18 different restaurants? I started not far from here in Haslet. I was a kid. I was a teenager doing dishes. I played sports, did what kids in the seventies do. I got into the kitchen and there was a sense of comradery there. There was a sense of being part of a team. I was young, obviously. My youngest Mike, one of my cousins was maybe eight years older. He was making salads and such or whatever. And there was this group of colorful, creative, funny, hardworking, talented misfits. And I don't say misfits is a bad thing. I say it as an endearing group of people that landed in the kitchen from various other walks of life, whether they were in the Vietnam War or dropped out of high school or a career change or that's just what they landed at. And they got good at it. And the interesting part was I was young, so I didn't know what good food was. I knew what hard work was. I always worked hard, but I knew that there was something here that was interesting and exciting and not boring. You knew that you wanted to do this while you were in high school, right? This is correct. You were going to high school at Raan, right, which is not that far from here. I was a varsity wrestler as a freshman. I weighed 98 pounds. I was on the varsity team, the first kid out there to wrestle. So I did pretty well as a freshman. So some would argue you're still wrestling today? Yeah, so had a different weight class. So I know exactly when it happened because the summer between freshmen and sophomore, I'd had a great freshman year wrestling. The varsity guy got hurt, I had to step in, et cetera. And I did well, much better than anyone really well, a prospect of being a champion of going to wrestling, college, et cetera, et cetera. So that summer I became, I started working in kitchens and that's when the bug hit me to make money, to make money. Then I'm like, this is what I want to do. And again. What were you going to do before you got that. Bug? Well, I was too young to know. Dentist. Architect, whatever, something. I mean, I was just a student. I graduated high school in three years. I rolled my own cigarettes and drank some beer back then, but I still had, I was a's and B's all across the board. I graduated three years because not only did I have my credits, I also, because I was a varsity wrestler, they let me out a little early for the phys ed because I was an athlete and also my guidance counselors, he signed me up for the Culinary Institute of America as a junior or as that senior first month. So I had that. So I was kind of like a work release program. They let me not go senior year and I worked at the So I got great experience. While you were wrestling, I mean, was that ever a desire that you wanted to go to college and wrestle? You didn't. No. You just did it in high school? No, I was just too short to play basketball in high school. I was a good basketball football player in the peewees. I went to high school. I was a late bloomer. I was, like I said, 99 pounds is not running back weight. So I wrestled that summer. I decided I want to pursue this and I have a father that's aggressively trying to tell me to figure out what I want to do in my life. And again, telling him I want to be a chef was a. Joke. Did that go over well? Well no. Because telling someone in 1977 you want to be a chef is like telling someone you want to be a janitor. It was still considered a service job. This was long before the food network craze. Well, it wasn't recognized as a profession until later that year, 77 or 78 being a chef was not a profession. It was a service industry job made in utility work and the janitorial work. We fell under that category 77 or 78. The CIA started recruiting high schools, which is how I got in. What happened in those. Years. That year when I went back to school in September, a sophomore and the rest of the team's like, Hey Burke, you ready for this? I'm like, nah, I'm not going to do it. They're like, what? You got to do it? You're like a star. And I'm like, nah, I don't really want to wrestle. I said, I never really liked it anyway. I didn't like losing, but I didn't like, it wasn't like something I aspired to be. It was just a sport that I could do. And then my coach came and grabbed me and he found out I wasn't going and he took a shit fit, picked me up, threw me against the locker, called me some choice words that were really not usable these days About being fairy saying, what are you going to make pink cupcakes and shit. So he really was wildly unhappy about it as well as my dad who didn't call me names and just said, my dad, I got to tell you. He says, he sits me down. He goes, David, he goes, you might not know this, but I know you smoke pot. He goes, I just didn't realize how much Because of the choices you were making. Yes, yes. That's pretty funny. And he goes and he's like, why in the hell would you want to be work that hard? He goes, you got a brain, you can go to college, I'll help you. He was parenting and for him it was a head scratcher as to why anybody with good grades and some skills would want work in a kitchen. My dad grew up in. A bar in Brooklyn above a bar to him being in a bar business or even to him food was like probably in the army. He's thinking of a diner. He's not a country club guy, but this is what you knew you wanted to do. Hundred and so fast forward, you end up at ccia a right call. Yeah. I wound up at Navien Country Club from re before CIA. So I go to ccia A with guns of blazing. You go with experience. I cook ready with experience, which is a hundred percent, which is one of the reasons I could, I got a head start. I knew what I wanted. I saw what greatness was from those two places. I saw the chefs that were doing it with their own two hands, two eyes and two legs and knew, you know what, there's no magic here. It's hard work creativity. So you graduate CIA, do you then you go over to Europe and you start. You go to Norway. I get drafted you. No, I got a job. The meanest son of a gun instructor I had there who I thought hated me. He recommends me at a job fair to go to Norway. And I'm like, the guy's like, listen, we come. Highly recommend. One of the chefs said that you were the best student you ever had. I said, really? I said, who? And he goes, Henin. And I look across there, this guy, I'm still in touch with him by the way, and he looks at me and he's got this look like I thought the guy, Hey, fucking. And he looks at me and I look at him and I get this little, I shake my head and he's like, he walks away in silence and I goosebumps. I still get goosebumps. He was like, you can do this. He didn't say it, but he was like, and this guy says, he says, you're the best studio you ever had. I'm like, I said, the guy hates me. He goes, it's tough love pal, whatever it is. Anyway, I wind up in Norway working for the wealthiest family in the country. As a personal chef. That doesn't mean I learned a lot. I experimented a lot, but it got me to Europe. Then. I traveled all through Europe, not eating because I didn't have the money to eat in the best restaurants. Looking in the windows, reading the menus, eating what the locals eat, hitting the bistro ham and cheese sandwich on the steps of this museum. Did. You work any other place in Europe after you left? Not then. Not then. I went back to Norway, flew home, came back to New Jersey, got a job at a very fancy through this man in Norway. He lived in Greenwich, his headquarters in Greenwich. Got me a job up in Westchester in the super fancy French restaurant where all the waiters and the owners spoke French and there was a young chef and you. Spoke Jersey. Maloof was a new chef there who came from la. He hired me and I was his So, and then I became a sous chef and I spent three years side by side with this master chef and he was like a big brother. Then I went to work for Daniel Ballou in the city, and because it was time for me to get New York City experience, which is super valuable, I worked for Danielle for few. How. Was that working with Danielle? Well, I was young. He was young. I mean, this is 84 at the Hotel Plaza Athena, and he was tough. I was a good cook though. I was already a sous chef young and I could cook great. I was a good line cook. I was like being a piano or a guitar player. You just get on and you can do it. And they know on the first note, when you pick up a pan, if you're a cook, if you pick up a pan and you turn on the stove, you can tell if someone's. Good. What did you learn most from him in that particular experience? Finesse, precision organization, how to be a little loud, but respect for food and the kitchen. And like I said, I could cook already, but this was fine. China, this was the brigade system and they all spoke French. Everything was ordered in French, but I knew that from the other restaurants, so I knew the lingo. You. Started picking it up. So I worked in the day times and then because I worked at that famous la creme air restaurant in Westchester, Charlie Palmer, who was the chef of a country club up there, became the chef at River Cafe. But he would come in on Sunday nights and I would cook for him when the chef was off, he calls me up, he says he got a sous chef job at the River Cafe. In New York. This was 1985. In Manhattan. Under the Brooklyn Bridge. Brooklyn. Famous. Famous, beautiful. So I am like, shit, I know Charlie. I want to be at the River Cafe. So I leave Danielle after a few months, I go to River Cafe it as a sous chef. Now I'm 25 or 24, 25. It's young for this place. This is an internationally recognized restaurant. I go in there and I just box it out, man. People testing you all the time. There's 30 cooks there. And again, I'm not 98 pounds, but I'm not two 30 either. What did you take from the Danielle experience and Finesse. Finesse, right. And then what did you learn from Charlie? A lot. Charlie taught me, Charlie, the river cafe was the wild. He taught me French food and sauces and technique and butchery and stock make, but sauces. He taught me sauces and I cooked on the line like crazy. And then Danielle taught me how to lighten the sauces because they were doing a traditional restaurant of Western, and Danielle was more of that new Vel tire and also present and daintiness and finesse and making things really pretty and light, right? Charlie? He had bigger portions. Big guy ran the river cafe, but River Cafe had ingredients like a bounty of American cool ingredients and we had a laboratory there to do whatever we want whenever we want. BuZZo Keith, it was like you guys cook what you and Charlie told me a lot as I learned, Charlie let me do, he was like, Charlie wasn't micromanaging, he wasn't possessive of what goes on the menu. He edited me. We worked together. But I was that kind of guy that was like, Hey, can we do this today? Hey, can we do this? I would take scraps and turn 'em into gold. How much of your creative DNA is organic and how much of it was environmental from the experiences that you had? That's a great question. I was always creative even before food. My nickname back in the days when we rolled our own cigarettes was imagine if perky, because I was always saying, Hey, imagine if we did this. Imagine if we did that. What if we did this? You know, the big oil tank. Don't you still do that? Yeah, no, but I think that's part of, that's just a new DNA. I mean, if I was an artist, I'd be creative if I was painting or designing my house or whatever, and I do design my restaurants to a certain degree. I'm not an architect or an interior. I can't do it from scratch, but I can decorate and I can design certain, I design dishes, but that's part of my, whatever I would've done, I would probably have been creative in that profession. You can't really teach that. So there's different kinds of chefs out there. There's great technicians and disciplinarians and people that follow the yellow brick road, they stay on the path and they do things correctly. I can't do that. I can't sign my name the same time twice. One of the descriptors that has long been attached to you is whimsical, innovative, whimsical. These are words that come up when people describe David Burke passionate. But what you do, I have not seen a lot of people. Do you integrate artistry, true artistry into some of your conceptual ideas behind dishes? Where does that come from? I don't have a short answer. It's a process that I think you teach yourself a discipline that you're not satisfied with certain things. It's also an ability to be open-minded and pivot and change things with the decades or when other things change. Open-minded meaning there's another way to cook this salmon, these flavor combinations, daringness not a fear of failure and being able to, the key to any creative process for food is understanding the classics and the basics. If I'm an architect, I need to understand how to build a foundation for a skyscraper. And a lot of people miss that. So they don't understand the geography behind a dish, the history behind it, the digestive reasons, the religious reasons, the necessity reasons for food before there was transportation. So if you think about why do we serve apples with pork chop and oranges, with duck and pickles, with and ketchup with fries and mint with lamb and mustard with pork, why do we do this? Always my curiosity makes me find these answers. They don't teach you that in school either. Why are we putting vinegar in a salad and sugar in a dessert. For everyone who's listening and watching? We should take in our show notes, we'll make sure that we put the answers to those questions that. You just read. But when you start asking those and then it becomes a line of reasoning, why did they salt co and make duck confi and grx and smoke? So necessity salt. Salt was a necessity to stay alive through the winter, you had to preserve your food. The word salary comes from salt. So if you had salt, you had money. So then you start to put that little sticky poster in your back of your brain and I got thousands of them floating around and I pull one down, I pull another one down and I put a puzzle together and I create a dish. That kind of process. I might see a plate that has two duck feet on it, like a stand or a candy dish and say, man, that'd be great for some duck skin cookies or for some, a creme brulee would be good, like my creme brulee. Okay, I can make great creme brulee. So can you. So can anybody, right? You go get a recipe, you cook it. Correct. So my creme brulee can be the same as Daniel Balu, right? So how's mine going to be better? How's mine going to stand out? You accessorize. Right? You're the king of that actually. So you have to give it some, you make it with ginger and serve with a homemade fortune cookie. All of a sudden there's something more interesting. Little, little wows, right? We all like big wows, right? A big wow is nice, right? But if you do a succession of little wows, it's even better. One of the things that you shared with me when we were sitting down in our interview in the show is we talked about your approach and we talked about what we were eating, which we ate the red snapper, we ate the oysters, the lobster bisque phenomenal, and we're going to talk about that in a second. But what you said to me stuck, which is like as chefs tend to, we don't always have to overcomplicate things. Sometimes simple is better. And talk to me about that because was that always your mindset or has that become your mindset? No, it was not always my mindset, but you have to learn simple first, right? You have to learn fundamentals. You got to learn how to make an omelet correctly and what a soft omelet means. Americans eat hard scrambled eggs. If you go buy an egg wrap any diner, they're cooking the hell out of the eggs. So you go work in the best hotels in the world, which I have in the best restaurant, there's a soft scramble, there's a sexiness to the egg, and the French are the best. You fold that thing over and it's got a jiggle to it. You don't cook it to death. We don't need to kill bacteria in the eggs. We don't need to cook pork. Well done anymore. So you learn that texture, visual, all the scents come into play that the crunch, the smell. So I'm big on smell. I want to smell my food. You go to a sushi restaurant, you don't smell it. There's no sizzle, right? No. If you don't put food on a hot plate, the hot plate not only ensures that the meal stays warm longer, but it makes the aroma rise, right? So when you throw a little fat or butter on the hot plate, it opens up, it cooks it still. So now the aroma comes under your nose and your food smells better, your food smells better, it looks better. Guess what? Tastes better In general should. But if you're going through all these other processes to make sure that the wows are there, the little wows, then why wouldn't you make sure it tastes good? So training is very, very important to train your brain, to always look for the mistake. And I had a confrontation recently with one of my chefs about trusting people. I said, don't trust anybody. Don't trust your cook. Don't trust the guy that said he's got it. You know what the worst thing anyone could ever say to you all said, I got it right? Yeah. That's like saying, we're from the government, we're here to help you. Yeah. So it's a mindset of always questioning, always challenging a. Hundred percent. And also mentoring and teaching them, right? If you're a coach, you got to keep, even if you're coaching Michael Jordan or you're coaching a great player, you still have to coach him. You can't just let 'em go. You still got to say, do you have it? You're good. You did. You check this? How you feeling? What do you got? We have 150 coverage tonight. Do you have enough lamb? Do you have, there's got to be this back and forth, and that energy creates the aha. Oh, you know what? I didn't think, because there's a lot to think about. I happen to have an extremely good memory. Super, super. People always comment me on that. New people join, they coming. They're like, if he tells you something, he's going to remember. Don't think because he rattled off 16 things in the last 15 minute meeting we had that he's going to forget any of them. He might not remember them all today or tomorrow, but about a week from now, he's going to say, Hey, what happened to that duck dish I told you to work on? And you're going to be like, oh my God. I remember. Constantly dialing it in, constantly fine tuning. It's funny, I have a client on the corporate side of our video work that we do that there was an expression that he used to say that I don't live in the 98% of what we do. I live in the 2% that we do wrong where we're not getting it right. That's because that's the only percentage of improvement. The 98% that you're already doing right is expected. It's expected. It's the 2% that we should be focusing our. Energy all the time. And even the 98% you're doing right could be better usually. Now I have a background of working for some of the best people in the world, and I've seen what real, real excellence is. Now, one of the problems I have is when I take that excellence from New York City and or Europe where it worked, and I come out here to Jersey, I don't have the pool of talent like there is in New York. And sometimes I expect when someone says, well, I'm a chef and I can work this. I expect them to know what a New York City chef would know. And it doesn't translate always. So the patience level has to be a little bit more, and the training, so what one person calls a chef or whether it's yourself and a chef in one restaurant is a cook in another one. So there's no real license factor. If I get my hair cut, I get my lawn landscaped. If I get my electric done in my house, these people don't need licenses. Even a maid service, they need a license. But chefs, we don't need licenses. We can just put on a white coat and. Say we're a chef. And shake our hair and say, I'm on the food network. It's interesting, when you started building your, you've had many, like I said in the beginning, many iterations of yourself were I think on the finest iteration of David Burke right now, in my opinion. I've known you a really long time. You started restaurants in New York City and then you departed New York City for a little while, and then you reinvented yourself and you started reinventing yourself back where you all started back where it all started here in Jersey, and then you've now expanded back out, and now you're back in New York City again. Talk to me about that. Journey. We always had a restaurant open in New York, but the pandemic, it went quiet. I moved out here to Jersey. We started moving out to Jersey in 2016 consulting, and then 2017 or 18 before the pandemic, we had three or so restaurants open because I saw the minimum wage rising in New York and the cost of doing business to be prohibitive to some restaurants. And it was then the pandemic hit. Obviously a lot of places closed and we got to reset our rents and such in New York. But the minimum wage in New York is crazy for restaurants. People forget a restaurant has lots of employees just to produce one dish. Now there's a show to bear on tv, which I have not watched, but people tell me, it gives people a real sense of how much work goes into a dish. It's a great show. And I'll have to watch it. And some of my chefs have told me this is the real deal. I see you in some of the situations where the intensity and the amount, it's like being in an operating room, sometimes in a kitchen, and you think about it, nobody's dying, but we're working as if somebody is right. So you came back to, I came back to Jersey, saw the opportunities. I started thinking, you know what, we can't afford to buy buildings in New York, but in Jersey you could. And what happened in Jersey is because of whether it be the food network that people that travel, the two people working Uber people started eating out more than Friday, Saturdays in the suburbs. So the opportunities expanded, right? People are now not working in the city five days a week, or they're working from home. So there's a dinner business on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday night, which didn't exist 20 years ago. And end of suburbs, people ate their meals. And also the other part of being in a suburban restaurant is expense accounts weren't allowed in suburban restaurants for the Wall Street people and the business and the lawyers and the people that worked in New York. So they'd stay in New York and work, eat, take their clients out. So there's been a shift in that where people are not going to the city so much to eat and theater, and they're choosing to have an experience that's closely related to a New York experience than just a typical suburban family restaurant, AKA, the chains that you find on 35 and Route 18 and such, which usually dominated the scene because they could afford a liquor license. Did. You see that trend coming? Yes. You did. Even before the pandemic. Way before it. What was the flare? Well, the fact that looking at my bottom line in New York City, because minimum wage went up and all the benefits that went with it, the government got in the pocket of the restaurateur. Well, it's mandatory to pay every employee two weeks vacation. It's mandatory to do this. Minimum wage is 12 bucks an hour for a waiter. Now I have 30 waiters sometimes in New York, think of it's 30 people, bartenders, busers, wait, Tipton employees, they make 12 bucks an hour. They New Jersey, it's three now, they don't make 12 bucks an hour. They really make 60, 50 and $60 an hour with the tips in New Jersey, but their base is 12. That's what I have to pay them now. So that's $8 more an hour than Jersey times 30 people, right? That's $240 an hour times 10 hours a day. That's $2,500 a day more in waiter labor. I have to pay seven days a. Week. Jersey just changed their minimum wages recently. Did that affect your. Industry or is that It does, but what it affects is people's pocket because we've got to keep raising prices. It affects, but not so much. The problem with Jersey has to be careful with the minimum wage because the different pockets of zip codes. New York City, the zip code is tremendously wealthy. Even if there is no poor area, there's no blue collar area in New York City, Manhattan, and people can get anywhere on that island to pay a lot of money for what they want. In Jersey it's not. So if you're going to raise the minimum wage for everyone in Jersey, there's going to be places to go out of business because people can't afford to eat. And you'll see that if you look at the price of food, the price of labor, the price of fuel, the price of liquor, all that, people during the pandemic, they drank more than they ate. So despite all of these things that have negative impacts, you're still bullish on the industry. What keeps you bullish on what you're doing and what you're building and how you're continuing to grow. And tables, your seats are full. Filled, I should say. If you're a parent, if you have a family and you have 10 children, three of those kids are not getting straight A's. Okay, let's face it. So what looks really good, and we do a good job and we work hard. We're honest, we're loyal, we're hardworking, and we're trustworthy, and we happen to have talent. Doesn't mean every meal everyone gets is going to be 5.0 because we're not at every unit. So we understand that we have to go back now and start working and tweaking some of the places that need a little, like I said, always reeling it in, always fine tuning, always going back. You think it doesn't bother me to read a review that calls me names and says this in that my donut's 50 cents more money than ShopRite. How dare you? I mean, I'm like, they start, they want to lynch me, my Dixie Lee Donut's, 50 cents more. But you know what? You take the good with the bad and you analyze it. Is this really true? Is it that much or do we not fitting into this demographic correctly? And we take everything we read. You got to take David Burke the business away from the personality and the, luckily, I'm not that sensitive, but sometimes you get up, you read something, you get all creative about retaliation, and then two cups of coffee later, you're on your next problem. Anyway. Now before I visited you, I started my journey. I started the journey at Rook Coffee in Red Bank, which is Holly, one of the owners and founders. Unbelievable. Rode from there, rode to Stroll's Lighthouse in Long Branch. Okay, I've never been in there, but I hear it's good. Oh, it's a nice place. Italian, nice, phenomenal. Went there, rode up Ocean Avenue on our route and then stopped at Drift house. And we're going to talk about the drift house experience. In a second left Drift house continued to ride into Atlantic Highlands and then along the water, along the Henry Hudson Trail. That's. Beautiful. Picked up Auggie at Carton Brewing and got on a bike with Auggie and then rode from carton back over to Rumson where we ended our journey with a barnacle Bills burger. Oh good. And a beer. Nice. But we did stop at Drift house and it was an experience in and of itself. We had this unbelievable whole fish snapper that you prepared. We had the oysters, we had a lobster bisk with literally an entire lobster in it. And. Then. The oysters were so darn fresh and so wonderful. And we got into a discussion, you and I, about sustainability, about locally sourcing, and I was really kind of taken by the fact that you have a commitment when you can to source things as locally as you can. Talk to me about what we experienced that day that we sat down together in the restaurant. Well, the oysters, normally they're coming from Cape May. There's a co-op down there or bar, and I bought an oyster tank. I found an oyster tank online, which keeps the oysters alive. It's a fish tank. It's like a live fish tank, but it's oysters perfect water. It's the right temperature. So when we get them from Bargate an hour and a half away, they harvest them, they ship 'em to us, they go back in the tank, they stay alive. So when a shellfish comes out of the water, a lobster or a scallop or shrimp get frozen right away anyway. But lobster is a good example. They live off their body while they're out of the water. So they're deteriorating, they're, they're eating their own flesh basically to stay alive. So when you get a dead lobster, it's meal, this and that. The oysters doing the same thing. It's sitting in that cooler living off its own juice, right? And dehydrating. Now when you put it back in the tank, it's still alive. So when we open our oyster, that oyster, you could not get a fresh oyster unless you went diving for yourself. It was delicious. So again, that's expensive. There's maintenance, but wow, there's a wow factor. There. Is a wow factor. Right? If it's open correctly and served at the right, of course it's the right temp. So now you've got a leg up. My C cri brule is better. My oyster's fresher, right? Your oyster's fresher, and I love the way you said you like to eat them naked, nothing on them, and then you gradually started adding a couple. Things. No, I like to eat them the way they were just plain. Right? Nothing on them. And I taste one that way, then I'll put a little doctor on 'em. I like soy, ginger, garlic, maybe horse radish sauce. But that's really, here we go back to the reason why did we put horse radish sauce, A cocktail sauce on an oyster? Think about it. Why would you put ketchup, chili sauce and horseradish on an oyster, right? Very pungent, strong flavors. Right? Why do we do that? I'll tell you why. In the, I'm on the edge of the table. Manhattan Island was surrounded by oysters. The oysters were foot long, sometimes three oysters with dinner, and what happened? People drank. There was bars way before restaurants, people drank. They had liver problems. What's good for your liver? Horse radish. It's revived your liver. That's why this horse radish on oysters. And what else is horseradish? That's where it came from. What else is horse radish and Tomato Inn that's in a bar? Bloody Mary. What does bloody Mary do? Helps you with a hangover. It helps revive your liver. So there's no reason to put horse radish on an oyster. There's no real reason. It's tradition. It's tradition based of drunk people eating them at a bar and horse radish. Think about it. Prepared. So is ketchup, so is chili sauce so a bartender can make it so it's a condiment and it also has digestive qualities because of the sweet and sour of the ketchup, which is another reason. Look at Asian food, right? Why people say, oh, I had Chinese food. I was hungry an hour later because it digests quicker because it's sweet and sour. Those are the two key eggs to digestion. That's why your pickles on a hamburger, sweet and sour, ketchup on fries, sweet and sour, all of these things have digestive qualities and these. Some of them are regional and geographic and traditional. Shifting gears for a second, as we're kind of getting ready to wrap up. What do you think, looking back at your very successful career, what do you think some of your biggest challenges were professionally, personally, in terms of the journey that you've been on? The biggest challenge in the restaurant business in my career and my genre of chefs, the guys that came up with me from let's say the seventies till now, is navigating the pitfalls of what this industry can take you down. The late nights, the drugs, the alcohol, the stress. There's people, I've lost three chefs in the last four months to see the suicide. Drug addiction overdoses. One got hit by a car of New Year's morning drunk on a highway. This is personal to you though, too. Oh yeah. Because of your own journey. Oh yeah. Now you have to navigate and hopefully be lucky enough that now forget about losing your life, but you lose your career, your wife, your husband. I mean the highest divorce rate of any profession. Number two is chefs. Number one is pilots suicide. Number two is chefs. Well, before someone gets sent off to culinary school, understand that it's not being on a food network with a sweater stirring fucking risotto. You know what I mean? There is a grind involved. It's a lifestyle choice. It's commitment to its fullest. If you want to be to a certain level, there's other layers of food and beverage that you could be in, which is a life balance. But if you want to be at the top level of someone that's a celebrity chef, you're going to work for it. You're not born a chef. You're not born like a piano player or a painter. Maybe there was some talent in there because your fingers are longer or you got an eye hand coordination thing. But being a chef is a journey. It's a lifestyle. Rock stars, musicians, athletes, famous actors, all of the other celebrities, and I use the word celebrity chef too, which I'm not a big fan of, but they all get lots of time off because they are celebrities. So they get to pick and an athlete has half the year off. An actor gets to choose when he can acting to take another movie. This, and I had a politician that does this. They all get time off because they've made it to a certain level. A celebrity chef, the more celebrity chef, you're the harder you work. So there's this hamster wheel effect where, and we're adrenaline junkies and we have to maintain our image. It's not about our last movie, it's about our last meal and it's about your reputation. Now we're getting a lot of credit for the hard work we do in the creative process and what a chef really does based on some of the document mentorees and some of the shows. And there is a reward there for it. But again, the reward is not everybody that's good in college. Football makes it to the pros and it's the same as the restaurant business, but there is a lot more employees. There's a lot more that can go wrong that's outside of my control. The weather. A bad waiter can get me a bad review, a bad cook can get me a bad review, a bad mare D, the person answering the phone, the sound system, the bathroom not being, all of these things add up to somebody being a critic and saying, ah, you know what? I spent 120 bucks and my waiter wasn't that good and they didn't tell me the specials and the coffee was cold. All that work you put into. Something. What's amazing about you and my observations is I you've found that perfect intersection of where the business meets creativity. I think you've been able to master how to harness great creativity, great tasting food, and still be practically smart about the fact that you're still running a business. And the perfect example of that is what you shared with me when we sat down together, which was the whole couch potato story. You know what I mean? And I think the couch potato story sums up the fact that you are in a culinary art, but you're still running a business. Can you dive a little deep into. That? Every time I hear couch potato, I got to bring that back. So I'll tell you what happened. I opening a restaurant in DC Estate Couch, right? I go to this flea market where it's a farmer's market. There's food, there's produce, there's goat cheese, and there's a guy that does woodwork and he makes cutting boards and coat hooks for people moving in their little wooden bowls, artist stuff. And he's got this little wooden log that has four holes in it for candles. And I look at that and I keep saying to myself, couch potatoes would be the best side dish in America. Everyone would order it. They're like, what the hell's couch potato? So I said to the guy, I said, can you make me a couch like this is a guy from West Virginia, doesn't have a tv. Great guy, by the way. He made my dining room table at home. He says to me, he goes, man, that would be a big tree. He's going to make a couch. No. I said, I want a baby couch like that thing there with the votive candles on it, but I want to put potatoes on it, four potatoes and call it couch potatoes. He's like, I said, couch potatoes, right? He goes, no. I said, you watch the NFL football. He goes, I don't have a tv. I said, you don't know what a couch potato. He says, no, which is a whole nother story. So I told him, I said, make me a couch. I write it on a piece of paper this size with the arms, rest arm rests. A little angle he makes. I said, I guarantee it'll be on the cover of a magazine. Sure as hell. Six months later, ribeye with couch potatoes is in a DC magazine and we had an onion. To me, it was one of the most creative things I ever did. Because. I could never figure out how to charge 15 bucks for a baked potato. Now I got it, and it's shareable. There's four potatoes, four people at a table. You get it and it comes on a cedar couch smoking onion rings on top, and. Nobody's thinking about the 15 bucks at that point. No one cares. No one sees the 15 bucks. They see it's Instagram, but it's also shareable. It's a delicious, first of all, it's delicious. It's shareable. Instagramable conversational, and one went boom. Four of those bingo. When we ate the oysters. And profitable. And profitable, and that's what we were talking about, merging the business between the creativity. But it's a little wow. It's not a big wow. You don't walk in and see a big ballroom and a beautiful recipe and go, wow, look at this. Look at that bottle of wine. That's a little wow. But that's another one that's like, how often do you look at a side dish and say, that's cool. Yeah, it's. Memorable. Almost never. Yeah, and it's like the wow that you do with your lobster bisque. That's a bill. Bill. And this is why you got to listen to tradition Bill's sitting there and Bill's the nicest guy. He grew up, his family owns a lot of real estate. He owns the beach club and he stays out of my way with the menu. He does never claim to be a foodie, but he knows what he likes and he goes, when I was a kid, my dad used to take me to Harry's Lobster or one of these places, and they used to give you a cup of soup with a whole lobster in it. I'm like, no way. I'm like, no way. He goes, yeah, it wasn't in the shell, it was the meat came out. It was a one pound or whatever, lobster in the cup with the soup. He goes, I still remember it. I said, let's do it. We did it. It's a great cellar. And we made the mug. It says drift house on it. Totally. Darn. But it's because I'm a chef that's willing to listen. You like something as a kid, you're talking about it 30, 40, 50 years later, we got to do it because food does not go out of style. A good dish a good, maybe you make less cream, not so thick, A little more finesse. You modernize it a little bit. It's such a good, I can taste it right now. And the soup's good. It's. Really good. No, but it's 30 bucks for soup, but nobody cares because you're getting all, it's not a soup, it's a lobster with soup. But it's also, if it's that good, it's not about the price because it's a memorable experience and we don't expect everyone to order it. If somebody wants a soup without the lobster, I'm sure that's available for 12 bucks. I don't know. No, it was really, really good. One of the things that you told me. But that's simplicity at its finest now. And me, I'm usually like, oh, let's put a pastry cage over it and some flying mangoes on the side and it's like, no, just a cup. So the cup becomes with the logo on, it becomes part of the presentation and you get to keep the cup. So yeah, that dish, yeah. So what That's okay too, because it's that whimsical and shtick and fun and cute, and I used to always get pissed off from people. It's a little too cute. Cute is pretty good. I'd rather be a little too cute than a little too ugly. Where in there the descriptors that you just used, does the clothes line bacon fall in that. Clothesline bacon is listen, that's just creativity. That's finest. That's just giving people the middle finger that are trying to be creative. That's just me saying, you know what? You should have thought of this. It's so funny. When we were eating the oysters, you said, eat a half a dozen of those and you'll get a jersey attitude. And I said to you, I said, I think you already have one. I mean, God knows. I think I have one. What makes, and this is my last kind of question to kind of sum up our journey in Central Jersey, what makes Central Jersey, central Jersey? People think north, they think south. We talked a little bit about a little, we talked a little bit about it in the show. There's a couple of things. The landscape is one, I dunno if it's number one. The most important thing about Central Jersey is the people, in my opinion, the people are just down to earth and nice, and you got a good mix. If you look at Monmouth County and you look at the zip codes and the towns, they intertwine the high, the middle, and the low together in a successful way. So it doesn't matter if you're sitting at a beach bar or a restaurant in Red Bank, whether you're a blue collar, white collar, or a gazillionaire, everyone's kind of cool. It's like being a Met fan. We don't care if we win. We just want to go to the game Once in. A while. You said that. I love that line. I mean up north. I lived in Burton County for 20 years. Great place to live, close to the city, a little bit more intense living and busy highways and I think Monmouth County, you got the ocean, you got music, you got art, and you got land and you got some farms, so it kind of intertwines. You go to Hunterton County and Somerset, it's a little farm, a little bit too laid back. Monmouth County has that real good blend of people and landscape. I want to thank you, David, for joining us and having us share your stories with our listeners. I would love for you to let our listeners know where can they find David Burke in terms of social media. Where do we go to learn more about David Burke and your restaurants? I think we're at chef david burke.com is, I think that's my Instagram chef David Burke's, my instagram, david burke.com or chef david burke.com. David Burke Hospitality Management is the name of our company and that has its own channels as well. Or stop in and say hi. I mean chefs we're approachable and we like opportunities and we also like to help the communities we're in as well. So being another important part of being a chef is being the face of your company or the personality of what you guys believe, what the company is striving to believe in, and provide jobs and opportunities and growth for people. We talked about cooking schools and all that stuff, so that's where we are. And Jersey has been good to us and we appreciate all the business and we plan on doing more things in Jersey in the future. We're going to have to have you back to talk more specifically about some of those community-based programs that you are very actively involved in, and we didn't even get a chance to touch on all of that, which there's a great deal. Of that. And we're going to make a bite to bites dessert at Dixie Lee Bakery. Add a chocolate for you when this thing launches. I would love that. For more information on this episode as well as other episodes in this series, head over to our website at Bike to Bites podcast.com. You can also find us on YouTube at Bike to Bytes. Be sure to give us a like and subscribe while you're there, and if you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, we would appreciate a five star rating in a glowing review. It really does help spread the word. Check out our Instagram at Bike debits tv and be sure to follow my personal Instagram at Garrett Abe, where I post shots of my daily rides and interesting places I visit. If you're interested in watching the Bike Debits TV show, please visit bike debits.com. We also have some really cool stuff of bike debits, apparel, and some other things that you can check out. While you're there, I'd like to thank our sponsor. E plus E plus helps organizations harness the power of technology for truly transformative results from AI and security to cloud and workplace transformation. Plus brings you the right solutions at the right time, in the most efficient way. Plus is on the front lines of today's modern enterprise, and so you can check them out@eplus.com. Hey, I want to thank all of you for joining us. Again, remember Pedal e repeat. We'll see you next time on the Bike to Bites podcast.