Balancing Passion, Profit, and Culinary Innovation in the Restaurant Industry with Chef Michael Gulotta

In this episode of Chefs Without Restaurants, host Chris Spear talks with Chef Michael Gulotta, the chef-owner behind New Orleans hotspots MoPho, Maypop, and the newly opened Italian restaurant, Tana. Michael shares his journey from attending culinary school to working at Restaurant August, and eventually opening his own restaurants.

The discussion delves into the complexities of the restaurant industry, including the financial and operational challenges of running multiple establishments, the ongoing debate between sourcing local versus commodity ingredients, and the evolving culinary scene in post-pandemic New Orleans. Michael also offers candid advice for aspiring chefs and restaurateurs, discussing the balance between passion and practicality in the culinary world.

MICHAEL GULOTTA
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Transcript

 Chefs Without Restaurants - Michael Gulotta

[00:00:00] Chris Spear: This is Chris Spear, and you're listening to Chefs Without Restaurants, the show where I usually speak with culinary entrepreneurs and people working in the food and beverage industry outside of a traditional restaurant setting. I have 32 years of working in kitchens, but not restaurants, and currently operate a personal chef service throwing dinner parties in the Washington, D.

[00:00:19] Chris Spear: C. area. So, this is Chefs Without Restaurants, but today I actually have a chef who does have a restaurant. Actually, he has three of them. Today I have Chef Michael Gulotta. I first heard of him, well, in 2018 I went to the Star Chefs Congress in New York City and I took his workshop. He was making, uh, buden bao buns.

[00:00:41] Chris Spear: I hadn't really heard of him at the time, but I took the workshop and I loved it. In fact, so much that when my wife and I went down to New Orleans in 2019, we went to his restaurant, Maypop, for dinner, and it was phenomenal. Not a traditional, uh, what you would think of, like, New Orleans restaurant. Like, it's not like po'boys and [00:01:00] muffalettas and things of that nature.

[00:01:01] Chris Spear: But again, delicious, and I highly recommend checking out his restaurants every year down in the area. So he is the chef owner of Mofo Maypop. And his newest venture, Tana, where MoFo and Maypop are Southeast Asian restaurants with influences from Cajun and Creole ingredients of the area. Tana's an Italian restaurant that leans heavily on Michael's experience cooking in Italy.

[00:01:27] Chris Spear: And I'll be honest, this interview kind of threw me a little bit. Um, I actually don't remember what I thought I was going to talk to him about, probably his new ish restaurant. And I have to say this is one of my favorite conversations, but it kind of went off track from where I thought it was going to go because Michael is so open and honest about things in the restaurant industry.

[00:01:50] Chris Spear: You know, I don't usually focus on the restaurant industry so much per se on this podcast. But the conversation naturally led to places where we were talking about things like [00:02:00] staging and employee pay. We talked about things like using commodity goods versus, you know, heirloom ingredients. I mean, you know, a lot of people come on this podcast, no shade to anyone, but, you know, they're running things on the side or, you know, it's just something they're doing for a little extra money and they don't have to run it like a real business.

[00:02:22] Chris Spear: Whereas Michael has three businesses, like real, like no offense to anyone, but like real businesses that need to make money. So talking about, no, I have to use commodity pork shoulder for this pork dish, whereas a lot of other guests have come on the show and say, you know, they're only using the best, most premium things and from the table, yada, yada.

[00:02:40] Chris Spear: And, you know, we also talk about the fact that he's had some struggles with his restaurants financially and, um, has had to stop doing lunch at one of them. And is it even the right decision to stay open? Again, where a lot of people want to flex and, you know, everything's fine and everything's great. [00:03:00] He was really brutally honest about a lot of these things.

[00:03:02] Chris Spear: And that's what I Really loved about this episode. He's very candid about, you know, what goes on in his restaurants, what's worked, what he's had trouble with. So while this is a love letter to his restaurants, I do think it's also a reality check in many respects. So forgive me for being more off the cuff here.

[00:03:24] Chris Spear: I had scripted out kind of what I want, wanted to say, but so much of it's going to be in the show notes if you really want to check it out. You know, he was a food and wine best new chef. He was one of Plate Magazine's top 30 chefs to watch. He's received multiple James Beard Award nominations. So a really decorated chef with a great reputation who's making great food.

[00:03:46] Chris Spear: So I hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as I enjoyed talking to him. Again, I just kind of threw out my questions and let the conversation go in the places that I thought were both important and interesting. And I kind of think [00:04:00] that's what makes a good podcast, right? It's not overly scripted.

[00:04:03] Chris Spear: This wasn't a PR pitch about his new restaurant. It's really him talking about what has worked for him, what hasn't worked for him and what's next. So, and as I say all the time, if you're loving the show, please share it with people, just let them know what's out there. And if you're so inclined, leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen to your podcasts, if they allow a rating and review.

[00:04:29] Chris Spear: Thanks so much for taking the time to listen to this and have a great week. Hey, Michael, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for coming on. Thank you. Glad to be here. Glad to have you on. We were just talking a little bit. I have tried your food. I've been down in New Orleans. New Orleans, one of my favorite places.

[00:04:43] Chris Spear: Actually, um, I thought I was going to work there. I went to Johnson and Wales for culinary, uh, and graduated 98. And back then I was really interested in kind of like. Cajun Creole, you know, I come from Massachusetts, the land of emerald and was maybe going to follow in his footsteps a little bit and, uh, went [00:05:00] down there and checked it out, but it just, uh, it wasn't in the cards.

[00:05:02] Chris Spear: So now it's a place. I just like to visit. 

[00:05:05] Michael Gulotta: No, that's, that's awesome. I mean, you and I were in culinary school at the same time. So, uh, But I went to Nichols State in Thibodeau, Louisiana. I almost went to Johnson and Wales and then I, and then, um, Thibodeau had a full scholarship. So that was way better for me.

[00:05:19] Chris Spear: That is such a great deal. And I kind of wish I had a place that had a full scholarship for me and wouldn't have even necessarily, you know, in hindsight, I don't think it's that important to go to one of those higher end culinary schools. It's something we talk about on this show all the time. 

[00:05:33] Michael Gulotta: Right. And that was, I mean, that was the thing is that, You know, I talked to, I looked at Johnson and Wales and all and I looked at CIA and I was like, dude, there's just no way I'd have to pay.

[00:05:42] Michael Gulotta: I would have to take out massive student loans and just, it just so happened that at that time, the state of Louisiana had this loan program to keep students in Louisiana. And it was like, and the state paid my way entirely. I was like that, that, that allowed me to do so much more. Cause I left without debt.

[00:05:59] Michael Gulotta: Yeah. I was [00:06:00] immediately able to go to Europe and live, live for free above a tool shed in Italy for eight months. And that'll, I mean, that just allowed me to do so much more than if I would have left with, you know, 50, 000 in debt. And I remember being the chef, the casino restaurant August, and these kids would come in, they're like, well, I need to make a certain amount because I'm paying all this debt back.

[00:06:16] Michael Gulotta: I'm like, you're a line suck, man. I get the numbers don't work. I can't pay you. This would, this would have been 2006, you know, I'm like, I can't pay you 20 an hour, 2006. 

[00:06:29] Chris Spear: Now you talked about going to Europe. Is that something you would recommend in this day and age that people could do, especially not getting paid to work?

[00:06:37] Chris Spear: Because there's a lot of talk about that, like the whole staging and are we at the tail end of this staging for free? Is that something that's still a viable option or should be done or should everyone be getting paid? 

[00:06:48] Michael Gulotta: I don't know about now, but there's now like America really is sort of waning into its regional cuisines.

[00:06:54] Michael Gulotta: The only thing that's great about going to Europe is you still, I mean, you know, we're everywhere is getting more into seasonality [00:07:00] and in Italy and in Europe, they still cook with that seasonality. Although now I feel like people are swinging back away from seasonality just because it's so hard to manage, you know, I think post pandemic people are leaning back into convenience just because of labor shortages and because everything's so damn expensive, you know, and even the farmers realize that trying to do, you know, there's still only a few farmers left who are really trying to do total seasonal locality, like wanting to go through all those steps because it's a lot of work.

[00:07:28] Michael Gulotta: You know, a lot of younger farmers six years ago, we're trying to switch their farms over and do and cook just for, you know, the CSAs in the, in the, in the local restaurants and I've talked to some of those guys now and they're like, nah, man, it was easy just to go back to like big farming and just, and just, I mean, that was hard work.

[00:07:43] Michael Gulotta: It's a lot of extra attention to detail and people just got worn out. I think, 

[00:07:47] Chris Spear: yeah, I, um, you know, I've talked to a lot of farmers. I've had some on the show. Uh, I'm someone who's always looking for like heirloom products and cool things. And they've said to me, like. It doesn't make sense to grow. Like I can't sell half of it unless [00:08:00] I'm growing it spec for like a chef.

[00:08:02] Chris Spear: Like nobody wants that. Like I can't even get rid of my Cole Robbie and my CSA. Like, I don't know about growing fish peppers because you like them. I'm just going to do some jalapenos and that's my one hot pepper and that's it. You know? And yeah, it is. I mean, I think that's, I 

[00:08:15] Michael Gulotta: think there's just a, I'm trying to think what's a collective, just exhaustion from the pandemic and trying to navigate it.

[00:08:22] Michael Gulotta: And like, I think, I think all of that will come back as people naturally want to practice. There are, and they're going to work a little harder to do it. So I think it will, that pendulum will swing back. But I think there's just this collective exhaustion where people are like, I don't want to do that right now.

[00:08:36] Michael Gulotta: I want to survive. And then once I get my feedback under me, then I'll start doing the things that make me happy. But right now, we're just gonna try to get through this. 

[00:08:43] Chris Spear: Well, I've heard you talk on another podcast about having to use some commodity products at your restaurant because of the price point that like you couldn't have a restaurant that was only using, you know, heritage breed animals and, um, super niche vegetables that at like some point if you want a [00:09:00] profitable restaurant, I think that's the balance of like, It is a business, right?

[00:09:04] Chris Spear: Like people say this is what they want to eat, but also they're complaining about costs at the same time. So how do you balance that? 

[00:09:09] Michael Gulotta: And I oftentimes think I shoot myself in the foot because I am brutally honest about everything. And you know, you notice like a lot of chefs get higher acclaim because they just sell these pie in the sky ideal.

[00:09:19] Michael Gulotta: But no, we only use local. I'm like, that's physically impossible. You physically cannot do that. I mean, there's just no way you've got to bring in tomato onions because yeah, most of those price point. is 25 a head, guest check average. And we still bring in some local items for like specials. And then, you know, like right now it is Creole and heirloom tomato season.

[00:09:40] Michael Gulotta: So yeah, we bring it in and we do a few specialty items. But I mean, for my Burmese pork, I have to use commodity pork shoulder. There's just no way. Um, and I remember when we first opened Mofo, because, you know, I came from a super high end French restaurant where, and even then I was honest, even when I was running that restaurant and getting interviewed, I'd be like, we're wiped.

[00:09:59] Michael Gulotta: I was really [00:10:00] proud because we got to like 60 or 70 percent local, you know, and that was even that was hard to do and so Of course, also, then you were like flying things in from everywhere around the world. That's back, that's back when you were still frying in fish from, you know, Australia and flying in asparagus from Spain.

[00:10:16] Michael Gulotta: And, you know, you're a white asparagus from Spain or Germany, like that's those days are over as well. But, but I was proud to just get that much local. Uh, I remember I was, you know, touching tables at MoFo when it first opened and some lady's like, are, are these chicken wings all local? And I'm like, Do you want to pay 40 for a bowl of chicken wings?

[00:10:36] Michael Gulotta: I mean, cause that's, I mean, no, there's no local farm that could keep up with the amount of chicken wings we go through. And if they did, that's how much it would cost you. And like, if people just don't want to hear that. 

[00:10:45] Chris Spear: Yeah, no, not at all. Yeah. We have a, we have a, I have a friend locally and we're just talking, he, you know, is buying stuff from a CSA and he said that they're, Mint was 25 a pound.

[00:10:55] Chris Spear: It's like, you know, if it's a product that's going to make a difference, but I don't know, is [00:11:00] your special, you know, organically raised mint that's 25 a pound, any better than, you know, generic mint that you can buy for 69 cents a bunch at H Mart? Like, I don't know. 

[00:11:09] Michael Gulotta: And it might like down, like, I mean, I had one lady who used to grow for me.

[00:11:13] Michael Gulotta: And I miss her dearly because we used to have, like, she used to, you know, she'd harvest all the cilantro blossoms for me and all the, she'd harvest all the parts I really wanted. But I had her growing some herbs for me and they were so powerful, people didn't want to eat them. Like, she was doing such a good job at growing them, like, the mint was aggressively mint.

[00:11:30] Michael Gulotta: You know, to the point where it was almost bitter. And so, no, sometimes people don't want that. They want, they want their, their very toned down approachable. They don't really want to see how strong something can be. You know, we are, we are kind of that 20 percent as far as wanting to really see how far you can push it.

[00:11:47] Michael Gulotta: Most people just want to get right down the middle and be nice and comfortable. Maybe, maybe they get to try a 

[00:11:51] Chris Spear: few new things. And there's a place for that. You know, I, I think the whole spectrum, you're going to find your customers. Um, but again, you know, as a business, [00:12:00] what makes sense? So let's kind of start with the restaurants.

[00:12:03] Chris Spear: You've got a new restaurant, but I want to kind of go back to the beginning ish of you have mofo and may pop. Those are Southeast Asian restaurants. How would you describe the food at those two restaurants in your words? 

[00:12:16] Michael Gulotta: Uh, once again, I think I give my business partner fits because I make everything way too complicated.

[00:12:23] Michael Gulotta: Um, well, the original idea for Mofo was that, you know, in New Orleans per capita, we or we used to at least have the largest Vietnamese population per capita. Um, and it's oddly enough. The more you sort of do your research, that was due to the Catholic church because they brought, because Vietnam was a French colony.

[00:12:40] Michael Gulotta: So they had a lot of huge Catholic population. So they'd go and bring them all over. So there's these huge Catholic Vietnamese communities all on the Gulf coast. And also, and it was just like Vietnam, it's all brackish water. So they all immediately became shrimpers and farmers because it's the exact same kind of growing season, the exact same, you know, uh, fishing styles that [00:13:00] you use, shrimping and crabbing and all that kind of stuff.

[00:13:02] Michael Gulotta: And so, uh, they all settled here. So I grew up with a ton of Vietnamese influence. And. You know, everyone who is working in fine dining, New Orleans restaurants, which is this sort of Cajun, Creole, French, very rich, you know, we'd all find ourselves going and eating Vietnamese on our days off because there's this huge Vietnamese population.

[00:13:22] Michael Gulotta: And so. You know, at that time, I think all of us fine dining people were running to like something more casual because we were all in that pressure cooker, like tasting menus and and we're like, uh, so we we went to our basically the neighborhood that I lived in my business partner and I and and we, uh, we found this spot and we're like, we're gonna do something totally casual, like for cook servers and bartenders and that was mofo.

[00:13:48] Michael Gulotta: And originally, you. Mofo was going to be just this sort of small thing that was going to, that we were going to run very cleanly and real slim and then use that to open like a higher end restaurant [00:14:00] later. We did not know what we were doing. So obviously, because that doesn't work that way. But suddenly, like Mofo was on these top lists, like top eater lists.

[00:14:08] Michael Gulotta: And so we kind of, I was like, Oh, shit, I got to make this way more interesting. And so you're hoping 

[00:14:13] Chris Spear: to just kind of fly under the radar a little bit for a while, 

[00:14:15] Michael Gulotta: we were literally like, we are literally how hard is it to serve soup and noodles and make money. And that's what we were thinking. And I'd run it with no staff, that kind of thing.

[00:14:23] Michael Gulotta: And then all of a sudden, like we were on, uh, you know, like eater and eater nationals most anticipated at restaurant openings. And I'm like, Oh shit changes everything. So then it was like, okay. Like, so then I redid the whole menu and made it way more, you know, we, I think we did like sticky rice steaks with uni and stuff when we first opened and, you know, it was a really intense menu.

[00:14:46] Michael Gulotta: That was the coolest thing is I had cooks coming into working for me and being like, dude, like, this is like a new cuisine, like what y'all are doing. You know, it's like. And that was what was so hard about both restaurants, man, like friends in the industry and, and I, I've always sort of [00:15:00] shrugged these things off and I've learned to listen now because they would come to me and they're like, I don't know how to describe this to my friends to ask them to come eat and I'd be like, annoyed.

[00:15:09] Michael Gulotta: I'm like, why? Like, why can't you get this? It's like me coming, it's just good food, right? It's just like, just come eat, but people need to feel comfortable. And if they don't feel comfortable, they're not going to come in. And this was a huge problem, especially for Maytop. Like Melto, it was just like, Hey, Vietnamese food, New Orleans.

[00:15:23] Michael Gulotta: It was a little easier. I guess people kind of understood, but even there, it was a little tricky. And Maytop was super hard. But it's funny because if I go do a cooking demo for someone, I get people that invite me to do these cooking demos. And so I cook for like 30 people and I'd show them. I'm like, okay, this is what Maytop is.

[00:15:38] Michael Gulotta: Like, I'm taking the flavors of a New Orleans Creole, but I'm subbing in coconut milk and lemongrass and fish sauce. And shellfish paste. And so then it's somewhere between a Creole and a curry. So it's like, is it a shrimp curry? Is it a shrimp Creole? And then I'm taking my training in Italy and I'm making fresh pasta and I'm tossing it all together and I'm serving it to you, [00:16:00] try it.

[00:16:01] Michael Gulotta: And then they'd be like, Holy fuck, this is delicious. I'm like, yes, see? And so I could convince these little groups of 30 people. And that's literally what I had to do for like the first five years of Maypop. And then by like 2019, that restaurant was a, was a monster. And just like people just started really understanding what it was all about.

[00:16:18] Michael Gulotta: Um, and so that's what it is. It's just like finding these natural pathways. What I always like to say is MoFo and Maypop are like, what does a third generation. Vietnamese New Orleanian serve their spouse. Who's from Lassiette. Okay. That's a good, that's an interesting description. Yeah. What do they cook for them?

[00:16:42] Michael Gulotta: Cause I would go to my, my Vietnamese friends houses and I'd see their. You know, I would see their aunts, like, cooking Vietnamese, but they would sub in New Orleans ingredients, or they'd sub in crawfish, or they'd sub in, you know, they'd sub in these flavors, and I'd be like, holy shit, this is amazing. Like, they're taking these things that we have here, but they're using the flavors of Vietnam, and it [00:17:00] was like, it was just so damn good, and it was just this natural thing, and so I just sort of, I tried to just sort of hyper evolve it.

[00:17:07] Michael Gulotta: Where I'm not just like taking, you know, I think that the fusions of the eighties and nineties was sort of large hadron colliders, smashing cultures together and hope seeing what happens. Whereas I was trying to find natural pathways to do it. 

[00:17:18] Chris Spear: Yeah. And fusion is such a dirty word. And I noticed you steered away from that early on when you were describing that, because I do think there's so much of this, you know, we've got a Japanese pizza and it's like, we put Japanese ingredients on a pizza and you're like, ah, I don't know if this works, but, um, I recently spoke to someone for the podcast and she studied Chinese cooking and we kind of veered into, um, like Chinese American.

[00:17:37] Chris Spear: And she said, and. Very similarly, like it became its own thing, right? Like these people came here from China, but they didn't have the ingredients. So they had to kind of create their own cuisine. So we've done Southeast Asian, but you have a new restaurant, which is Italian. So I'd actually love to hear about what that's like.

[00:17:56] Chris Spear: I know. So this started as a pop up almost a [00:18:00] decade ago. Is that right? Like this is something you've been toying with for a little while. 

[00:18:03] Michael Gulotta: Yeah. I mean, so. For the longest time, pasta was my obsession. So, you know, I trained, I trained in the Gloria and Northern Italy, and that's what I always wanted to do. I always want to do pasta and it's weird how things work out.

[00:18:18] Michael Gulotta: And I ended up doing most of them. And so that's how it sort of took a right turns. But then may pop was sort of my foray back into pasta because, uh, maybe I've had a huge housemate pasta, uh, section of the menu. But yes, in the, in the in between, uh, how strange things work out. We were doing bar food at a friend of ours bar, which is very busy in New Orleans.

[00:18:39] Michael Gulotta: And they had a 2nd bar, it was like a, uh, like a really nice cocktail lounge. That was also an art museum was a really cool space. And I can you do something for here as well? And I'm like, yeah, man, I want to do my little Italian pop up that focuses on Ligurian cuisine, because a lot of people don't know Ligurian cuisine, especially not New Orleans.

[00:18:55] Michael Gulotta: And so that's Tana and so did that for [00:19:00] a few years. And it's funny how many of you, because it was like, man, it was on Tulane Avenue. It's kind of a rough spot. There wasn't, you know, it never seemed busy. But the amount of people that came to me and was like, man, Tana is awesome. And I'm like, oh, wow. Okay.

[00:19:14] Michael Gulotta: And so fast forward it's pandemic time. And there was a, a, a friend of ours who we talked to a few times and he was trying to get us a space for an actual taana. And I was like, man, I don't wanna do taana unless you can really do it right? And he was like, me, I got some, some guys wanna open a, a restaurant on this, on this really nice area of, uh, a suburb of New Orleans called Old Mettery.

[00:19:37] Michael Gulotta: And, uh, they want to talk to you. And so we sat with them and originally it was like, you know, there are, we, we pitched them the idea and they were like, oh man, we love it. But it was kind of like, we were just going to sort of manage it. And they're like, well, this is now become so much your project, like let's make y'all partners.

[00:19:55] Michael Gulotta: And so that sort of first Tana and it has really become [00:20:00] my job, like an over the top restaurant. You know, it's, it's one of those ones where I never, you know, most of we definitely bootstrapped. Just with a little fun, you know, almost like crowdfunded money and then ran and got loans and open these restaurants.

[00:20:14] Michael Gulotta: And this is one of those ones where I actually have like partners and backers. And it's, it is this massive 5, 000 square foot restaurant with a really awesome cocktail lounge. And it also has like a, a giant wine cellar, but it's all glass and clothes. It has a, a pasta rolling station in the dining room.

[00:20:31] Michael Gulotta: It has, uh, the, yeah, the nicest pop to making equipment I've ever had in my life. Um, I made a beautiful main dining room with all Walnut tables that are all like handmade Walnut tables. And then, I mean, it's for the 1st time ever, I have a rationale oven, which is just has changed my life. The things you can do with them is just unreal.

[00:20:51] Michael Gulotta: And then, you know, really being able to for the 1st time, really being able to design my own kitchen. It's a monster restaurant. And I think the hard part is now we're like [00:21:00] 6 months in and it's figuring out, okay, we got it got so caught up in being a monster restaurant. Now, we have to get back to. Sort of streamlining and training the staffs up and, you know, and really great, especially front of house, like really great front of house.

[00:21:13] Michael Gulotta: Does it really show up for the first round? Like the, the seasoned veterans, they hang back for like six months and that you work up to make sure it's going 

[00:21:19] Chris Spear: to open and be a place that they're going to want to be at. 

[00:21:22] Michael Gulotta: Yeah. They, they know better than they're going to try to be on an opening team. And so now we're at that like five, six month mark.

[00:21:28] Michael Gulotta: And so now all these veterans servers are starting to jump on board and, and, and I know from the, from the get go, we're still with us and they're awesome. But like, God, the first, you know, the first three months are always hell because You're dealing with a lot of servers that don't know the finer points and you're trying to train them up quickly and, you know, there's a lot of that, you know, thankfully, we got a lot of good coach right off the bat.

[00:21:46] Michael Gulotta: We have almost our entire opening team with us and they all do a great job and we pick up a few more really solid people along the way, but now it's starting to really feel good. Like, you walked to the dining room and you're like, okay, the tables are all very well manicured. You know, we have this, [00:22:00] we have this roving pasta cart that took us about 3 months to get off the ground.

[00:22:04] Michael Gulotta: So, you know, there's, we have these two cooks that are trained up and they're really awesome showman. And they roll this card from table to table, and they do table side pasta out of a giant wheel of Grana Padano. Uh, so that's become a whole thing. 

[00:22:17] Chris Spear: I've never seen that before. 

[00:22:19] Michael Gulotta: So it's very popular in Italy.

[00:22:21] Michael Gulotta: They call it Pasta alla Rolotta, which is really more the American name for it. The Italian name is like, oh god, I can't remember it right now. It's a very long, it's like, pasta tossed in the block of cheese. Like, it's all spelled out in Italian. It's like, it's a very long Italian phrase. So at the end, I just have, uh, In parentheses that cheese wheel pasta, so everyone orders it, but it's a lot of fun and you can get whatever you want.

[00:22:45] Michael Gulotta: So it's always just house made tagliatelle and then we, we scrape out this giant wheel ground up and down. I use ground up and down because I spent half my time in LaGuardia, but I spent some time up in, um, or most of my time in LaGuardia, but I spent a few months up [00:23:00] in Austin. And in the Toe River Valley, and that's where Grana Padano comes from.

[00:23:04] Michael Gulotta: And so I got to go to some Grana Padano factories, and I just feel like it's like the more powerful Parmesan. So we get in, we get whole wheels of Grana Padano shipped in, I think we go through a wheel in about 6 weeks. 

[00:23:16] Chris Spear: That's a lot. 

[00:23:17] Michael Gulotta: And so, we've got, yeah, we've got these, these, these, You know, my 2 guys, um, Isaac and Gavin trained where they, they know how to crack into the wheel and then, and then they, they slowly work it.

[00:23:27] Michael Gulotta: They scrape it out slowly down, uh, all the way to the edges. And so it's slowly gets entirely used all the way. When you're done, when you're all you have left with is just a giant hollowed out rind of Guanapadano. Uh, so they scrape the cheese up and then we had this custom made all walnut wood cart made.

[00:23:44] Michael Gulotta: It's really impressive It also weighs about 300 pounds when it with the wheel ground up and down a lot because the wheel ground up and down It weighs almost 100 pounds. So pushing that thing around the dining room is not easy But then they in built into it is also a burner so they can actually because every time i've had the pasta out of rota [00:24:00] It always gets to the table cold.

[00:24:01] Michael Gulotta: Because they usually just bring hot pasta from the kitchen with a little hot pasta water and they work it in the giant wheel of ground up Adano. By the time you get it, it's kind of cold. So I made sure we built a burger into it. And we do a bit more of a show where we flame it with Marsala, although Marsala doesn't have a high enough alcohol content to flame.

[00:24:16] Michael Gulotta: So we actually hit it with a little 151. So I think this balancing act of like pasta with fresh pasta water. And then a little Marsala at the 151, we flame the table side. And then we pour the flaming pasta into the giant wheel of Grana Padano. We stir it around and get. It gets so aggressively cheesy that we actually tell tables, like, you don't want this as your entree.

[00:24:36] Michael Gulotta: Like, if this is something that you put on the middle of the table and you all scoop out of it, that's kind of your sides for your entree, because it's so it's like the most intense mac and cheese you've ever had. Yeah, it's just it's a really fun display. Uh, and then for people to add things to, you know, we do fresh shaved truffles, or we do, you can add crab meat, you can add shrimp on a busy night.

[00:24:55] Michael Gulotta: We'll sell like 4 or 50 cheese wheels. And so that, you know, those guys get their workout [00:25:00] by the end of the night, they are exhausted 

[00:25:01] Chris Spear: and it feels like such a nod to New Orleans. Like, I can't think of having table side preparation anywhere but New Orleans, you know, from their history of desserts, you know, whether you're having a bananas foster or something like that, it's not something you really see much anymore, but I do feel like that's a very New Orleans kind of thing.

[00:25:19] Michael Gulotta: And I think that's why we had to add the flaming because usually they don't, if they don't let a lot of that in some places, you do the flaming, um, in Italy, it does happen, but that's why we felt like we had to build the gear down. That's a very New Orleans thing of having the Garrett on rolling to the dining room with the burner on it.

[00:25:33] Michael Gulotta: And so we felt like we really had to add that to it. 

[00:25:37] Chris Spear: So now you've been open for a while. How do you manage having. Three restaurants. I, you also have a, I know, are you still out at the airport? Do you have a location out at the airport as well? 

[00:25:48] Michael Gulotta: Oh man, the airport location. So the airport location is not really me.

[00:25:53] Chris Spear: Okay. 

[00:25:53] Michael Gulotta: Um, that was a huge, I mean, it was a huge deal, so it was really awesome that. That we were sort of [00:26:00] thrown in the hat for that. I mean, most of it had only been open for maybe a year when that happened. Just absolute insanity. Uh, they came to us like, Hey, we're building this new airport. We want to put most of the way to it.

[00:26:12] Michael Gulotta: And we're like, what? Well, it's not really how it worked. They put out bids and we had to, and you have to pick a, you have to pick a team. And so like three different teams are putting in bids. And you had to just, you had to set the pick a team and hope you got it. And I had other, like, but they, but they were, they really wanted a bunch of local restaurants in the airport, local restaurants and bars in the airport.

[00:26:33] Michael Gulotta: And so I remember like some, like some friend restaurant tours of mine, pick a different team. And like, we were all like, Oh, we're going to get in. And most of them got in and like some of my other friends didn't. And I was like, Oh my God, this is going to be amazing. And I'll give, uh, the, the company that, that runs a credit.

[00:26:46] Michael Gulotta: When we first tried to get it open, they were, I mean, they really tried hard to make it like the original mofo. They really put the work in. And I, for three months, that thing jammed like, Oh my God. I Florida covers a day out of this [00:27:00] little restaurant in the airport and then pandemic hit and it just. It just fell off the map.

[00:27:04] Michael Gulotta: I tried going in there and like, every, you know, once a month, I was going in there and training an entirely new crew. And I'm like, dude, this is not going to work, you know, and so it's, it's there and it does its thing. And, you know, 1 of the biggest things for Mofo that's helped Mofo is, uh, John false. I went to his culinary school, so the John false culinary school is at nickel state.

[00:27:24] Michael Gulotta: And to Louisiana, and I worked for him when I was at that culinary school, like, at his restaurant in Donaldsonville. And so I came to know him. And then when I left, you know. I was very lucky. I was a food, wine, best new chef. I was a plate magazine chefs to watch, you know, we were in the top 50 for bone app with no.

[00:27:39] Michael Gulotta: So, and so I, I, I being at that time, I was sort of the most decorated person to come out of his culinary school. And then there's a false market in the airport as well. And so he and I in, in for the same company that runs them both. And so he and I were in a lot of the same meetings, planning meetings for putting all of our [00:28:00] restaurants in the airport.

[00:28:01] Michael Gulotta: And I was talking with him, uh, about, like, the stress of trying to make, like, Nook Mom caramels at the airport and trying to make, like, Dindaloo curries at the airport. And he's like, I would do it in his voice, but it's very funny. He has a really thick Cajun accent. He's like, you know, Michael, come up to the, come up to the facility, you know, because he makes all this, uh, food.

[00:28:19] Michael Gulotta: Like, uh, John Folsom Company makes, like, if you have packaged jumbo anywhere in America, like, he makes it. He also makes all the sauces for Shake Shack. 

[00:28:26] Chris Spear: I had no idea. 

[00:28:27] Michael Gulotta: Yeah, he has this massive. Production facility in Donaldson, Louisiana, that makes sauces for TGI Fridays, make sauces for chilies. Um, and he, but, and the reason his is so good is because he, he puts so much attention to detail.

[00:28:44] Michael Gulotta: Like, the sauces are really, really well made. Um, you know, he has a whole, there's a whole giant, uh, scientific test kitchen. You know, and all, all the people are typically ex Nichols grads who then went on to get degrees in, um. Food science. And [00:29:00] so he's like, Hey, we will make all of your hardest to make sauces here, which was just a huge game changer for us.

[00:29:07] Michael Gulotta: And, you know, that's why now we're really, my business partner and I are really working hard in trying to make more mofos, like mass produced mofos. So the one in the airport, yeah, it was very cool because one, the airport team made it look really good and it forced us to come up with our recipes for full.

[00:29:26] Michael Gulotta: So now he can make them in mass. Because he makes them for the airport. And so now, like, we kind of have all of our stuff prepackaged. So we want to start making more as we can. We just have to kind of find the 1st. A really good 1st satellite location, how to build that's actually something he and I are working on right now.

[00:29:43] Michael Gulotta: It's trying to brainstorm the 1st, the 1st, true. Satellite of, but it's going to be a very, very different. It's going to have to be much more pared down. It can't be the mom and pop style restaurant. It is now. But to get back to your original question, how do you manage 3 restaurants at once? [00:30:00] Um, there are days where it's a huge learning curve, and you're like, good God, could I just close 1 of them or maybe even 2 of them?

[00:30:09] Michael Gulotta: But it's an entirely different management style. You have to give up to your staff, and you have to trust that your staff is going to do the right thing. But, you know, the thing I'm learning now is I have to make time for all of them. I've got to be able to swing through each location because I've just been at Tana for the last 5 months, right?

[00:30:24] Michael Gulotta: Like, that's all I've done doing it. Everyone's kind of understood that. Um, but now I'm trying to get back through and swing through each restaurant and taste and, you know, I'm very lucky in that everyone who's in a manager position at my restaurants really cares about the restaurants. We've been really, really lucky in finding, you know, like, our general manager at MoFo has been there since we opened.

[00:30:44] Michael Gulotta: She started us, I was just Then she went over and was the AGM at Maytoth, and then she came back as the GM at Milfo. You know, she cares and like, my chef, Paul shell has known me for 7 years and the man, you know, he and his wife, [00:31:00] uh, go and live and was it pre pandemic? They would go and live in Indonesia for a month and a half every year.

[00:31:05] Michael Gulotta: That was like, part of our deal is like, okay, I'll tell you a certain amount, knowing that you're going to leave for a month and a half every year to go live in Indonesia. And he would go and because his wife had worked down there, and so they would go and live for a month and a half, and he tore around and eat and they come back with so much inspiration.

[00:31:20] Michael Gulotta: It was a huge, like a huge boon for MoFo because he'd come back and then one of the years I went with him and we spent two weeks touring Southeast Asia and I'm like, we just came back with so much fresh inspiration and like, it totally changed MoFo when they popped some in you again. Um, so like having him in that position and then.

[00:31:38] Michael Gulotta: You know, I just, uh, have a new chef at cuisine that may pop is really changing it up and we launched them, you know, may pops downtown, and that's been a full shit show because downtown new Orleans has gone into the gutter because no one, no one goes to work downtown anymore. So like pre pandemic may pop would do anywhere between 70 and a hundred people for a lunch every day.[00:32:00]

[00:32:00] Michael Gulotta: Uh, now there's no lunch. So that's a huge 

[00:32:02] Chris Spear: workers. Like so much of these jobs are remote now. 

[00:32:05] Michael Gulotta: Exactly. So, I mean, I've talked to every, like, and that was the crazy thing is, When I opened, uh, I mean, because I'm always like I said, I'm always brutally honest. Like, my business partner and I were getting ready to shut.

[00:32:16] Michael Gulotta: I mean, it's just like downtown's dead, at least for us, because we went and do it up and coming part of the downtown. There's still, like, this sort of busier centers that are still pretty busy, like, street. And some parts of the French quarter and like near the convention center. They're still busy. We went into what we knew was an up and coming area.

[00:32:38] Michael Gulotta: And by 2019, I mean, we were a very busy restaurant and we were doing, like I said, between 70 and a hundred covers a day for lunch and anywhere between a hundred and 50 and 210 covers for dinner. Like, I mean, we were just jamming and it's a tiny restaurant. I mean, may pops barely 2, 500 square feet. So like, like literally at the end of the ship, you would have nothing left in the walk in.

[00:32:59] Michael Gulotta: You just [00:33:00] be out and you have to prep it off again the next day while you were putting out. 

[00:33:02] Chris Spear: That's a good way to be, right? If you have a restaurant to sell out all the time. Right. 

[00:33:06] Michael Gulotta: Yeah. So I mean, I mean, it was stressful for my staff because we get to the end of the night and we're like, we're out of food for tomorrow.

[00:33:11] Michael Gulotta: And you're like, shit. And then you knew you had 70 on the books for lunch. So it was, it was just a monster. It had become quite a monster. But then post pandemics, um, I mean, literally, dude, I'll be honest. My may pop does like right now in the summer, we're doing like 20 covers a night. 

[00:33:28] Chris Spear: So tour is tourism fallen off, um, in general there.

[00:33:32] Chris Spear: I mean, because I always think of it as a place that people love to visit and, you know, Um, they're just not back. 

[00:33:38] Michael Gulotta: It's the kind of tourism. So, you know, you had, pre pandemic, you still had people that had to come down to work every day, even in the summer. You know, so you had, still had lunch business. And then, you'd have the sporadic, um, uh, different kinds of, of, uh, It's not so much tourism for places like Maypop.

[00:33:58] Michael Gulotta: It is more, um, [00:34:00] conventions. We survive off conventions. And we survive our specific kinds of conventions. Like for us, it's like, to be quite honest, like doctors conventions, radiologists, cardiologists, when they come in, they basically got places like may pop dining experiences. The typical person who's coming to just visit New Orleans as a tourist is going to stick to the French quarter.

[00:34:20] Michael Gulotta: They're going to stick to the to the swamp tours. They're going to stick to. The matches on the Mississippi are going to eat gumbo. They're going to eat, you know, they're going to try to find good red beans and rice. They're going to get po boys. They're not going to come to make pop. It's a dining destination that survives off of people who are basically literally like the 20 percent of diners.

[00:34:38] Chris Spear: It's the kind of place I like to go to. 

[00:34:40] Michael Gulotta: And that's the thing is like, and that's why my views always skewed. You know, those 20 percent is going to be all the time, but dude, you can't shut me up. Like, it's such a gem. And you're like, okay, man, but 20 percent doesn't pay the bills. 

[00:34:52] Chris Spear: Yeah, 

[00:34:53] Michael Gulotta: and so now, but the thing that really kind of caught my partner and I, is when we opened Tana, so many people stop [00:35:00] us in the dining room.

[00:35:00] Michael Gulotta: We're like, we love that restaurant. We just don't work downtown anymore. And also, like, crime really spiked in the city during pandemic and so they're like, we don't, we don't go into the city anymore. And if we do go into the city, we leave before the sun goes down. And that's like, facts right now, like, people just people, you'll have some tourists and conventions come in, and they'll stick to, like, right around the convention center, but the locals don't go downtown anymore.

[00:35:24] Michael Gulotta: Uh, and so it's just, you're just like, oh man. And there's, you know, there, you have a few. Restaurants that are still able to do it, and they do it well. Um, but they're much more middle of the road. They're much more approachable, whereas mapops never going to be approachable. If I make an approachable, it's not going to be any more.

[00:35:41] Michael Gulotta: Uh, it has to kind of be what it is. And so now he and I are trying to find an investor to move it. That's really where our minds at if we can. Um, but what we've done in the meantime, because, you know, we still love the restaurant and we want that area to come back. We're [00:36:00] hoping it comes back. So, like, right now, we switched entirely to tasting menu.

[00:36:04] Chris Spear: And just dinner, or do you still do lunch? 

[00:36:06] Michael Gulotta: No, there's no, there's no way we could do lunch. We've tried twice to do lunch, bring it back, and we, we just hemorrhaged money both times. Like, bringing staff in, get, trying to do it right, and, uh, and we just lost a ton of money. And so now, And that's the thing is like, because when you're starting a restaurant, you know, you're going to lose money in the beginning because you have to show everyone how good it can be to build to build that steam.

[00:36:31] Michael Gulotta: Like, that's like a time right now. We want to hire a labor cost than we should. Right, because we're trying to show people, even though we're still growing that team and training people and getting them in a position, we know that we're going to run a higher labor cost because we can't skimp on quality.

[00:36:44] Michael Gulotta: Until we have that market secure. But when you've already had a market, lost a market, and then getting a market back again, gets so much trickier because, you know, you have to think about why did you lose it? Where did it go? Can you get it back? And so now, you know, [00:37:00] in the short term, we've switched to almost entirely tasting menu, which has changed our gastric average from like 45 a head to 80 a head.

[00:37:09] Chris Spear: That's nice. 

[00:37:11] Michael Gulotta: It's nice, but we really need to be doing 40 people, not 20 people. 

[00:37:16] Chris Spear: Yeah, because I mean, you're serving more dishes and you know, you have to look at profit margins and all that. So just a higher check average doesn't always mean higher profit at the end of the day, right? It doesn't. 

[00:37:27] Michael Gulotta: Um, you know, but we, like right now, we're running a tasting menu with like three cooks.

[00:37:31] Michael Gulotta: And so that's the thing. If we, if we magically get 40 covers and we do an 80, 80 average, then with 3 cooks, like, suddenly all the numbers fall in line. But right now in the summer, you might get an 18 person night or a 15 person night, but then it's hard to staff properly because then all of a sudden that you may have like a show at the Superdome because we're only a block from the Superdome.

[00:37:53] Michael Gulotta: Or, or, or a show at one of the theaters right around this. And suddenly we'll have a night where a hundred people show up and we'll only have three cooks. And then we're [00:38:00] like, ah, shit. So it really makes it hard to nail quality when you're in sort of this on, in a, in a huge unknown. 

[00:38:09] Chris Spear: Well, I respect the honesty.

[00:38:11] Chris Spear: Thank you. Because a lot of people this day and age, it seems like it's all flexing, right? Like everyone's on social media. Everything's great. Everything's going well, but I have a lot of people listening to this show who they either have a business or they want to start a business or they're doing it on the side right now.

[00:38:24] Chris Spear: And I don't think it's. Beneficial for them to have everyone come on and say like, everything's fine. Nothing to see here, you know? Uh, which is what I think a lot, a lot of that's out there right now, 

[00:38:36] Michael Gulotta: right? And I think I, like I said, I think I drive my, uh, my business partner nuts because, you know, typically the guys who go out there and are more positive and are just like, like, you know, rainbows and sunshine, they have a tendency to have more people listen to them because people want to hear good things, not bad things.

[00:38:50] Michael Gulotta: Um, but we have, but in the same. On the flip side of that, we do have a lot of things going for us. You know, like, Tana is an insanely busy restaurant, which is awesome. And [00:39:00] then, you know, we've got a lot of plans for MoFo. And so, you know, we do have a lot of things going our way. Just it's heartbreaking for Maytop because Maytop is such a good restaurant.

[00:39:08] Michael Gulotta: And we have a team that's really sunk so much energy into it. And they're doing such a great job even now. You know, I was just down with my chef of cuisine yesterday, tasting dishes, and he was just nailing them. I mean, they're every, all the flavors were just Exceptional, you know, and I was like, God, man, this food is so good.

[00:39:24] Michael Gulotta: Um, but they know, like, we're totally honest with them, right? Dude, this is our game plan. Like, this is our this is our 6 month game plan. You know, we get through this summer. We're working on finding, you know, a place to move it. You know, we have, we do have super bowl coming, you know, and there's a lot of stuff coming up in the fall.

[00:39:42] Michael Gulotta: So maybe there is a lot, um, that we're working towards. It's just finding the proper pathway. 

[00:39:49] Chris Spear: What do you think best prepared you for running a restaurant or multiple restaurants? Was it your experience having worked at places like August or, um, you know, just like [00:40:00] how, how did you learn, I guess, how to be able to be flexible and run a kitchen so well?

[00:40:09] Michael Gulotta: I don't know, because I like to joke that I was trained in the fuck around era and now I'm running businesses in the find out era. Like, I watched my old boss. I mean, a lot of my old bosses have multiple restaurants where they just run them like crazy people and somehow those things just printed money.

[00:40:28] Michael Gulotta: Whereas now we have to be, like, we just have to so micromanage everything. And. So, I don't know, you know, I don't know the right answer for that. I think the biggest thing that I do is, is 1, you kind of have to give it up to, you kind of have to compartmentalize and give it up to your staff and trust that.

[00:40:51] Michael Gulotta: You know, the biggest things we've learned is you got to have meetings. I think that's 1 of those ones where you, like, when you're running mom and pops and your mom and pop style restaurant, [00:41:00] you're just kind of like, oh, like, you're kind of watching the cost. You're kind of watching the labor cost. You're kind of watching the food cost.

[00:41:05] Michael Gulotta: Uh, but you're so busy that it's kind of okay. And then, you know, you look at the, you, you might kind of just have spent some numbers out of your team. It's like, nah, man, the biggest thing is manager meetings. Like, you've got to have manager meetings, even if it's, you know, I get may pop in tonic alternate and then run so smoothly.

[00:41:21] Michael Gulotta: Now they have their kind of own internal ones. And then we sit down with them once a month. And then they pop in like, every other week. So, so every week, my business partner, I was going to at least 1 manager meeting. It's either or it's. May pop, and we sit down, we look at numbers, we go over what we want to accomplish.

[00:41:37] Michael Gulotta: Um, and then just really tuning everyone in to, uh. You know, now all my restaurants run on toast, so everyone's got a toast app on their phone. All my managers and they pull it up and they're looking at sales versus labor. Uh, and then, you know, all the restaurants run with extra chefs. So my tech back in the house is constantly looking at money in versus money out.

[00:41:54] Michael Gulotta: You know, because as long as you're standing every day is showing you what you spent. And so it's just a lot of [00:42:00] expecting of putting an expectation level on your teams. And that's what's really made things easier. Like, when I finally, when my best partner and I finally started sitting down with my, with our front and back house and being like, all right, you are responsible for these numbers because he and I would walk around and agonizing like, oh, my God, the numbers, the numbers, the numbers.

[00:42:18] Michael Gulotta: And then, you know, I think it was like, a year ago, you know, we just weren't bouncing back from pandemic like we thought we were and we had, we like, we can't take all the stress on ourselves. And you forget because you're still thinking of yourself as like that individual line, that individual chef de cuisine when you're actually like, holding up the weight of.

[00:42:38] Michael Gulotta: All of the restaurant's costs, or high costs and the lack of revenue. And it's like, okay, we have to, like, as chef de cuisines. We have to remember that they're still doing what I think is chef de cuisine does, which is coming in and they're still kind of working a pretty set schedule. They're managing labor, you know, they're making sure the schedule's written, they're making sure the orders are done, but are they really, like, [00:43:00] shouldering that weight of like, no, no, no, man, are you putting in the right orders?

[00:43:03] Michael Gulotta: Are you putting in, are you writing the schedule properly to where it's not, you know, we don't have too much labor sitting around, like, we need to put that stuff on our teams. And that's and about a year ago is when we really started doing that, making sure everyone was looking at the numbers. We, we always did shift logs.

[00:43:18] Michael Gulotta: And now the shift logs have every night when the shift report is put in, it has the daily hourly labor costs. It has, you know, um, you know, how much was in, you know, what percentage was alcohol sales? What percentage was to go sales? What percentage was in house sales? Like, so we're tracking all those things now.

[00:43:34] Michael Gulotta: And like, what are we doing to get more people in the door? What are we doing to get more alcohol sales up? Like, we want you guys looking at these numbers because. You know, we always kind of did it with heart before, but now we have to do with our head a little more and actually look at, you know, words like metrics and data mining things I've never used in my life because all I ever wanted to do is just make delicious food and delicious cocktails.

[00:43:54] Michael Gulotta: And now it's like you have to do these things if you want to be successful. 

[00:43:58] Chris Spear: Definitely. And I think that's something [00:44:00] the big companies do much better. And that's something I had to learn. Um, I worked for Ikea for a number of years. They also use rational combi ovens, which is a whole side thing. And that was my favorite.

[00:44:09] Chris Spear: But, um, Everyone had to take ownership of sales for the day. They had at the time clock what the expected sales for the day and whether you're a 16 year old dishwasher or someone, you know, I worked in the restaurant, their restaurant there and the store GM could come up to a dishwasher and say, Hey, Nick, what's the anticipated sales today?

[00:44:27] Chris Spear: Like they were expected to know that today was a no way. And that means we're going to do. You know, 250, 000 in revenue or 10, 000 in the restaurant or whatever. Like everyone took ownership of that because it wasn't enough to just come in and say, like, I'm just here to cook meatballs today. It was like you needed to be part of that process.

[00:44:46] Chris Spear: And I've worked at places with daily spend down sheets, like, you know, you take a monthly food budget and say, okay, for the month we have. 100, 000, which means every week we have 25, 000, which means every day you have this. And then you put in at the end of the day, all [00:45:00] of your invoices. And it's like, well, now by Tuesday, you only have, you know, 8, 000 left by Wednesday, you have four and you get down to Friday.

[00:45:07] Chris Spear: It's like, okay, today's menu. We got to be using the stuff in the Like we, you were not allowed to buy anything else because you have to stay on budget because I worked in also contract food service. So you were on like a PNL. So basically, you know, you work for Sodexo and you go into a university or a business, you've told them I can do it for this much money.

[00:45:25] Chris Spear: And if you spend more than that, they don't pay you. That's how a PNL in corporate contract food service works. So like, From the get go. It was like, okay, we told them that, you know, they're going to pay us a hundred thousand dollars a month for us to do it. It cannot cost us 125, 000 a month. So like, this is how much you guys have to spend.

[00:45:42] Chris Spear: And I had to teach chefs to cuisine and sous chefs. When you're putting in orders, this is how much you have for the day to keep us on target. And actually, you want to be under because you don't make any profit if you don't go under. So seeing stuff like that really helped me when I started my own business, because I don't think you get that in a, a traditional restaurant [00:46:00] setting.

[00:46:00] Michael Gulotta: No. No, I think that's, that's, that's awesome to hear. And I think that's the other part of it is like now, especially in the last year, you know, um, Jeff, who's my business partner and I, like, we, we keep, we just started like asking for help, which we never been before. Like now, like our new big thing is ask for help, like be honest.

[00:46:19] Michael Gulotta: Talk to people, you know, because before we're, I think he and I were just very proud, like, you know, our first restaurant, we won all these awards. Like, we know what we're doing, but we really didn't, you know, we, we knew how to make great food, great service, great drinks, but we didn't know the business side of it at all, you know, because I really wasn't taught the business side of it when I ran restaurants.

[00:46:37] Michael Gulotta: Like, my job was just to make sure that we were staffed and the food went out. Awesome. You know, that was my job when I ran August for 7 years and so to really get down to the nitty gritty of it, you know, our new thing now is we keep trying to get meetings with people who are smarter than us, like keep making sure we're the least intelligent person in the room and just ask a lot of questions.

[00:46:58] Michael Gulotta: So that's been a lot of that of us just sitting [00:47:00] there. And just calling for lunch meetings will buy people lunch, you know, people who have expanded big chains, people who have overseen, uh, you know, large restaurant groups and just sitting with them and being like, okay, you know, what are your best practices and just taking notes.

[00:47:13] Chris Spear: So if you were to open a restaurant. Today. I mean, you just opened one, but if you were to do it again, like now knowing everything you've known, what advice would you give to someone who, you know, has maybe never opened a restaurant, but has worked in a restaurant, let's say maybe as a, even an executive chef or a chef de cuisine, someone who has some of that experience, what would you say, you know, you really need to have control over.

[00:47:36] Chris Spear: I mean, we talked about pricing and that kind of stuff, but anything else. 

[00:47:40] Michael Gulotta: So the old thing I used to say was, Make sure the cooking is the thing that you know the most, because it's the thing you get to do the least when you open your restaurant the first time. You know, even when I've opened most of them, I've had two really awesome sous chefs who now are award winning chefs in their own right.

[00:47:57] Michael Gulotta: Trey Smith and Blake Aguilar, who have [00:48:00] uh, St. Germain. There are food, wine, best chefs, like they were my opening chefs for mobile. They had worked for me in August and when I opened up when they both came and worked for me and like, having those 2 guys, as they said to me, like, we know that you have to do.

[00:48:12] Michael Gulotta: All this other stuff, let us cook just sit with us and do the recipes and do the 1st tasting and then let us take it from there. And they were really awesome about that. And so that really allowed me the room to make a lot of other mistakes because they were at least just hammering the food out. So, I mean, you know, and I have a business partner and I used to have 2 business partners and, you know, a lot of people would always say, like, when are you going to go do something on your own?

[00:48:35] Michael Gulotta: Like, what do you mean on my own? Like, Make sure you have a good business partner. Make sure you have someone else because I've seen friends of mine do it on their own and they were trying to do the food and manage their GM and manage all the bills and payroll. And I kind of do it all while coming up with food for a menu.

[00:48:53] Michael Gulotta: And that's insanely difficult. 

[00:48:55] Chris Spear: I think the hard thing is how do you find that person? Because again, like I have my personal [00:49:00] chef business. I don't have anyone working with me. I do all the everything from the marketing to the budget to everything. And I've looked for someone to bring in. And this is something I hear from all my friends.

[00:49:10] Chris Spear: They've got food trucks. They're doing all these things and they're doing it all themselves. Because I think, you know, some of it's being a control freak, but someone's just finding the right fit. You know, especially if now you're working by yourself, how do you find that person? And, and, you know, a co founder or whatever you want to call it partner.

[00:49:26] Michael Gulotta: That's a really hard one. I mean, dude, like major props to you because that's, I've watched my friends do it and I'm like, dude, how, how are you doing it? How are you doing all of that? Because, you know, like the one thing I like about my business partner is I found someone that. And he can be gruff and this and that, but like, he doesn't have a bad bone in his body because even when I'm sometimes like detached and I'm busy and like, something happens, he'll stop me.

[00:49:50] Michael Gulotta: It's like, no, no, this is the right thing to do. Like, you know, like, if for like, 1 of our employees, if something happens, it's like, no, no, we need to do something for this person. Like, they've been with us for a long time. We need to take care of them. Like, and like, because [00:50:00] he seems like this very gruff and grumble kind of guy and everyone kind of jokes because he is very direct.

[00:50:05] Michael Gulotta: They can make situations very uncomfortable if there's something that needs to be addressed. You know, whereas I'm sort of more of the listener and sort of a good top, but like, when it comes to serious situations where someone needs help or attention, he's like, no, no, no, we need to do the right thing here, which I think is awesome.

[00:50:20] Michael Gulotta: So like, I don't, and I think that's the number 1 thing about him. Like, he and I have both made a lot of mistakes. We both talk some things up over the years, but I think he always had the businesses and all of our employees. Interest in mind with every decision he's made and I think it's finding someone like that to where even if they make a mistake, you know, they're trying to do it for all the right reasons because I have so many friends who have gotten in bed with people who then they find out that that person was just taking money like left and right or that person was just like, never was around, never getting anything done, you know, so I've seen a lot of friends hit that situation too.

[00:50:52] Michael Gulotta: So you make a, you bring up a really good point and I don't know what the right answer for that is. 

[00:50:57] Chris Spear: It's more like, you know, I've, I've always, when I looked at staff, [00:51:00] it's almost like hiring for attitude and aptitude and not like, um, skill. I mean, you know, you don't discount skill, but like if I have people come in, that's why I always put a lot on interviewing, right?

[00:51:11] Chris Spear: Like really getting to know someone, like, how are they going to fit with the team? I don't care if you came with a four year culinary degree, if you've If it seems like you're going to create drama in the kitchen, and you know, we're all going to crumble under that. It's not worth having you. And I'd rather have someone with no cooking experience who seems like they are a good person and have a good work ethic.

[00:51:29] Chris Spear: And I guess like trying to figure out who that is, um, you're 

[00:51:33] Michael Gulotta: right. It's, it's, and I guess that's the same thing. If you're going to choose a business partner, it's like, and that's what I kind of like about my business partner. We're not, and it's almost everyone, you and I are not the best of friends. You know, like we've now been in like a 10 year marriage.

[00:51:44] Michael Gulotta: So like we, we definitely respect each other. You know, we, we wouldn't want to do it with anyone else. But like, we don't hang out, like our families don't hang out. We don't do things on the, because I know people who are like, Oh, me and my business partner. Like, we go to Vegas together and we go do dance and we go do that.

[00:51:56] Michael Gulotta: And like, you and I are like, no, man, we got our own lives. We'll sit [00:52:00] and do all the really uncomfortable things together. But at the same time, we have no problem calling each other out because we're not best friends. We're not super close. We don't drink on the weekends together. 

[00:52:11] Chris Spear: Yeah, yeah, it does. It does.

[00:52:13] Chris Spear: Blur the lines. Well, I have probably more questions than we have time to get into. So I want to give you a little time. Is there anything you want to talk about before we get out of here today or any last words? 

[00:52:25] Michael Gulotta: So I guess the big thing now is that I'm trying to sort of switch. I've always been very much the I don't know.

[00:52:31] Michael Gulotta: I think all of us who have run kitchen sort of had that mindset of we're always looking for the problems were always Okay. Or at least for me, you know, I'm always, uh, trying to fix everything. And I think now I am trying to switch because I think there is a certain truth to all those people who are overly positive all the time.

[00:52:50] Michael Gulotta: If you are pushing out that positivity, if you are pushing out, you know, the goals to get ahead, I think you, you do sort of find those pathways easier. So I [00:53:00] am trying to sort of switch my mindset on that and being like, no, no, man, we've got a lot of shit going for us. We've come a long way. Our restaurant, I mean, we have a restaurant group.

[00:53:08] Michael Gulotta: That has three restaurants, two of which have been open for more than five years, one of which has been open for ten years. You know, both of those restaurants, even though they've hit hard times, the pandemic have won so many awards. And it's like, you forget all that because you're just trying to get through the day.

[00:53:22] Michael Gulotta: And I think now is I'm trying to switch that, you know, for my family, for my kids, because, you know, my kids see me stressed a lot and I'm just like, okay, man, I got it. I have to start turning that off and being. Yeah, I even remember one time, God, I was, I was sitting at breakfast with my, with my sons and, uh, I think my son was like slurping his drink or bowling bubbles and I was drinking.

[00:53:43] Michael Gulotta: I'm like, Hey, man, can you really, can you stop that? That's how we do the dinner table. And my other son goes. It's okay, Liam. He's just upset because it's summertime and the restaurants are really struggling and I'm like, dude, and he was like, they're like, they're like 8 years old at this point. And I'm like, I don't know, man, like, I got to be better about this.

[00:53:59] Michael Gulotta: I cannot bring [00:54:00] all this stuff home to my kids. Yeah. And so now I am really trying to have a little more attitude of gratitude. And because, you know, my team's used to me walking around being like, what's the problem today? Like, what's wrong? Whereas I think. Maybe it's better for me, and it's it's funny because I say these words to tell Paul because, you know, we got to be sunshine factories.

[00:54:20] Michael Gulotta: For our teams, like, we got to be the ones pumping them up with with with, uh, you know, getting them excited. And I think I was that way for a long time. And then, but since pandemic, I have been very. By just austere and stern and not the greatest person. I think I need to, I kind of got to get back to really pumping my teams up and getting them excited to do work and getting excited to do great food because, you know, I have 3 restaurants that all make really great food and they have give really good service and have really great cocktail programs.

[00:54:48] Michael Gulotta: And I think. We need to really wean back into that. 

[00:54:53] Chris Spear: Well, thanks so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate you taking the time and I can't wait to get back down to New Orleans and, uh, check out the new restaurant [00:55:00] and, uh, maybe hit all three of them while I'm down there. It's someplace that, uh, I've always loved and I anticipate heading back to soon.

[00:55:08] Michael Gulotta: That'd be awesome. 

[00:55:09] Chris Spear: Well, thanks again. And to all of our listeners, this has been Chris with Chefs Without Restaurants. Thanks so much and have a great week. Thank you. You're still here? The podcast's over! If you are indeed still here, thanks for taking the time to listen to the show. I'd love to direct you to one place, and that's chefswithoutrestaurants.

[00:55:26] Chris Spear: org. From there, you'll be able to join our email newsletter, get connected in our free Facebook group, and join our personal chef, catering, and food truck database so I can help get you more job leads. And you'll also find a link to our sponsor page, where you'll find products and services I love. You pay nothing additional to use these links, but I may get a small commission, which helps keep the Chefs Without Restaurants podcast and organization running.

[00:55:49] Chris Spear: You might even get a discount for using some of these links. As always, you can reach out to me on Instagram at chefswithoutrestaurants, or send me an email at chefswithoutrestaurants at gmail. com. [00:56:00] Thanks so much!