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Olivia Wu: I don't need to say a whole lot about Rick. You know about him.
Many a James Bear Awards -- Chef of the Year, Restaurant of the Year, Humanitarian of the
Year -- so many, so many awards. But I do want to say that "Fiesta at Rick's"
has been for five weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
And so, this is the seventh book. And what season in the?
Rick Bayless: Seven too.
Olivia Wu: Seventh season in, in Mexico: "One Plate at a Time". So,so welcome. Why don't
you start by saying what this book is about and why did you, why did you write it?
Rick Bayless: Well, thanks first of all to everybody that's here. It's a real pleasure
to be here. My head is sort of swimming because I just got a tour of part of the Google campus.
And so, I'm, I'm still sort of in awe of all this really cool stuff and the espresso machines
on every floor and all of that sort of stuff. It's like I feel like a kid in a candy store
as I was going -- "Oh! There's that. And then, they've got that!" So you guys are lucky to
work in a place like this.
The laundry -- that really surprised me. [laughter] I wasn't quite sure what to think about the
laundry, but I, I thought, "Maybe now we need to do that at our restaurant and have the
laundry so that everybody can bring their laundry and do it while they're at work."
I don't know. We have to think about that one.
The – I -- You guys have more space than we have in downtown Chicago.
I love learning about food anywhere in the world, but when I got to Mexico as a teenager,
I just totally fell in love. And in fact, I went there at 14, and I found that, that
it, it felt like my home -- like I was going home -- not like I was going to some strange
and exotic place.
And I, and what I so loved about Mexico was the dynamism of the culture. Now, if you've
only been to, to Cancun, then you probably haven't seen this side of the culture.
There's a certain dynamism in Cancun, but it is actually more about the American guests
that are there rather than what that culture has to offer.
It's a, it's a culture that really values -- not only food in general, but food together
as groups. And because they follow the liturgical calendar,
there's all these different things that they're celebrating at different times. And what I
loved when I was living in Mexico later in my twenties was that every season brought
some new special dish that was celebrated as part of one of these big fiestas -- they
may be town fiestas, they may be people's birthdays, they may be something to do with
the church calendar -- but in any case, they were something that was sparked by some great
food that usually was very seasonal, very local.
And I grew up in the barbecue business -- the barbecue world in Oklahoma City. And
one of the things that I, I was taught by my father growing up was that we were the,
the holders of this incredible tradition in our area.
Because if you thought -- when I was growing up -- about food that was "our" food in Oklahoma
City -- people's minds always went to barbecue. And because barbecue restaurants always have
catering arms, because there are, there's a need for people to celebrate their local
special occasions with barbecue.
So I grew up doing all of that stuff.
Then, I got to Mexico and I, I realize I knew nothing about regionality.
Because we had our sort of special barbecue in Oklahoma -- and it was different than Texas
and it was different than Kansas -- but, in Mexico, I could drive, I could travel five
miles, and the people would have a whole different roster of dishes that they associated as their
special stuff. And I remember one time when I was living
in Mexico and I was looking for these little empanadas in a town in northern Mexico --
and I had read that they make them for special festival at a, at a certain time of year
-- so I went there, and nobody had them. And nobody said anything.
They said, "No, no -- we don't have those. No, no, no, no."
And people were just brushing me off right and left.
And I finally, I finally found somebody that I could really talk to about it.
And she goes, "No, you're asking in the wrong town.
That's like three kilometers down the road. That's where they make that."
And I realized at that moment how proud people were to have created a certain thing and really
identify with it. And then, to share it with people -- to share
it as part of a big celebration. So I grew up in a family that did a lot of
catering and had a lot of parties and that sort of stuff.
I got to Mexico, and it was like what I had grown up with on steroids.
And I, I, I just felt so comfortable in a, in a culture that could celebrate -- and that
they understood the role of food in that celebration. The celebration wasn't about the food, but
the food played an integral role in the, in, in the kick-off of the celebration.
And then, they have this thing in Mexico after the food is done and everybody's sittin' around
tables -- they have this thing that they call "sobremesa" -- which means, just literally
translated is, "over the table," because you're sharing things over the table with people.
And that can go on for hours and hours and hours.
And it all came from the fact that the people came around the table together, they had this
food that sparked the whole thing, and then, it turned into the real party -- which was
the sharing between people, and I just love that.
Not only could I relate to it from my growing up, but I could, I could understand it from
an even bigger and broader perspective. So I've done a lot of research -- pardon me
[sneezing] -- I've done a lot of research in Mexico studying the regional foods, sort
of breaking it down into its bits and pieces, translating that into something that people
in the United States can understand, sort of in its, in its 'building block' bits so
that all of us here can go home and we can make food that has an authentic flavor.
And so, I've tried to be the translator between the traditional foods of Mexico and the American
kitchen. And I've done that many -- in different ways.
My first book was a book that was sort of a snapshot of regional cooking in Mexico back
in the 80s 'cause that's when I lived in Mexico. And I went -- I spent five years writing that
book. And I traveled to every single state in the
Mexican republic. I cooked with local cooks. I went to every
market. I have books and books of catalogs of what
was in all of the market stalls, what people were cooking in the street, street stalls
and -- for special occasions and all of that. I really did that work -- well, I was in graduate
school in anthropology and linguistics and I learned how to study culture.
And I just applied that to my love for Mexican food.
And that first book was really very carefully researched from that perspective.
Then, I did a bunch of other books focusing on different aspects of Mexican cooking.
And then, all of a sudden I got to this place where after sort of 25 years of writing about
Mexican food and cooking this food every day, I decided that what I wanted to do was to
share with everybody the, the way that I approach this food from this deep knowledge -- that
the way I approach this food when I've got to get dinner on the table in 30 minutes.
And it wasn't like I was trying to do Mexican Fast or Mexican Light or anything like that.
I was just showing you like what I learned from the Mexican grandmas that gotta turn
out food for a big family every day. And they know all these shortcuts, and they
can make this food quickly. So I, I did a whole book that I just call
"Mexican Every Day." And it's all simple food -- all made from
fresh ingredients -- no sense of like, "Oh, well, if you buy this already-prepared thing,
then it'll take some time off." But no, it's all just like you go to the grocery
store. I chose to only work with ingredients that
you could get at any well-stocked grocery store.
My, my rule of thumb was, "If I could make it in 30 minutes, then it was something that
would be good for, for the book." And I wanted to be able to just offer simple,
fresh stuff that mostly could become a whole meal, like maybe dress some grains and have
a salad to go with them. But, then you've got your meal, okay?
And 'cause that's kind of the way I cook a lot of times when I'm cookin' for my family
at home. And I just thought, "I wanna get something
fresh and delicious on the table, and it's got to all sort of be cooked in one pot so
that I don't have a lot of pots to clean up afterwards."
So I did that, and it was super-successful. And, and so, I got to thinking after that,
"Well, where do I want to go next with it?" And in the intro to "Mexican Every Day", I
talked about my philosophy for eating and living, because I think it's all part of the
same thing -- and one of the places that we really get off track I think in our society
is that we try to compartmentalize everything so that we've got the food and diet over here,
we've got the exercise over there, and we've got the socializing over -- it's all sort
of the same thing. It's all about sort of how do you live your
life? And in the intro to "Mexican Every Day", I
wanted to just focus on that. I wanted to say sort of, "These are the way
that I integrate things in, in my life on an everyday basis."
I eat simply during the week. And what I learned in Mexico is that, on the
weekends, it's the fiesta. And you, you eat stuff you would never eat
during the week. And you put more time in it.
And you sit around the table all afternoon. And you enjoy the people that you care about.
And every weekend is a, a, a fiesta day, basically. There's some time on, in that weekend where
you bring people together. And there's always some kind of special food
that's made for that. Maybe it takes a little more time to make.
Maybe it requires an ingredient that either costs extra money or is harder to find.
But you just think about it during the week and you kind of get it together and you bring
the people around and the food sparks it and then the good times ensue.
And so, after I had, I had talked about that in the introduction to "Mexican Every Day",
I, I decided that what I really need to do is write the book for that.
So, "Fiesta at Rick's" is really that book. It's the stuff that I do when I bring people
together. And I decided to call it -- not "Mexican Fiesta,"
-- but "Fiesta at Rick's", because I love to have people over.
And even though I'm in the restaurant business and I am hosting thousands of people every
week through our restaurant that are celebrating all different kinds of things, that's not
my fiesta. That's their fiesta. And I feel honored to be able to create a
place where people can have their fiestas. But on the weekends, I want to have mine.
And so, I have people over almost every weekend, sometimes casual, sometimes more elaborate
or involved. But I wanted to share the kinds of things
that I like to do when I have people over -- when I'm puttin' a little bit more thought
in it, I have a little bit more time to get stuff on the table.
And maybe I have more time to search out those special ingredients that could go into it.
So I decided that I would divide this new book into chapters that are sort of not-your-normal
cookbook chapters, but more of the kinds of ways I think of parties.
So, sometimes, somebody'll be comin' through town, and I'll say to them, "Oh, just come
over for a drink," you know? So I gotta have some food to set out. It's
because it's just like I want to put something out – so there's a whole chapter in there
on guacamoles and little snack stuff and great drinks.
And that sort of is a party. I mean that can be a party just in and of
itself. Then, there's another chapter that I like
to focus on in the summer time a lot of times, because it's such a big deal to do seafood
cocktails and ceviches and stuff like that. I think they should never be buried.
And especially in our country, they should never be buried as like part of a meal unless
you're just really pullin' out all the stops. But, you focus a whole party around those
things. I have a chapter of that kind of stuff.
And then, there's this thing that the Mexican street vendors do that I just love and hardly
anybody does it in the United States. They make all these different dishes -- some
cold and some warm -- and they all are sort of chopped up stuff that is mixed together
-- maybe simmered together. And then, you say, "I'd like a little of that
and little of that and a little of that." And they put down a corn tortilla, and they
put some of it on there and they hand it to you -- just like tapas in Spain, only they're
using bread for the tapas in Spain, but in Mexico, they use a corn tortilla.
And there's this amazing place in the Condesa section of Mexico City.
I did a show there on the last season of the show that -- oh, we went to -- it's called
"Tacos Hola!" And, they have about 25 different things in
these earthenware cazuelas. And the guys -- the taqueros -- the guys that
are making the little tacos -- stand behind these 25 earthenware things, and they just
give you one or two tacos out of whatever you choose from all the cold stuff to the
warm stuff. And they do it with great flourish.
And it's totally fabulous to go and experience what they call "tacos de cazuela" -- "cazuela"
referring to the pot that, that they serve all that stuff in.
So, I wanted to do that kind of thing. So I did a whole chapter of that, because
I think it's great party food. Then, of course, a lot of us like to grill
when you're gonna have people over. I love to grill when I have people over.
But the one thing that I, I think we miss a lot in the United States is that we think
of the grill as just quick and fast. It's like you marinate something and you put
it on the grill and you're done. But, there's some really cool stuff that you
can do with your grill as a kind of braising device.
So, I love to sear the meat, and then put it into some kind of pot that I can just push
off to the side of the grill and put some other ingredients in there, some liquidy ingredients
in there and let things braise there and it picks up the smokiness of the fire and you've
got the sear of the meat that was grilled originally, but you can use cuts that have
to simmer and stuff. So that's the -- that whole thing is, is captured
in my grilling section of this book. And then, the sweets that I did are all inspired
by sweets that you get from street vendors, because, to me, those are really fun party
kinds of things -- everything from how to make your own homemade popsicles, to all different
kinds of ice creams, and simple cakes and stuff that the street vendors – and candies
that the street vendors do. So that's in a very, very long answer to your
very short question, what this book is really all about.
But now I'm kind of sketched out for you the sort of how those last two books kind of go
together and how this last book was really born out of what I fell in love with in Mexico
and that was sharing food with people around the table.
Olivia Wu: And, and it's true. The Fiestas at Rick's are wonderful.
Rick Bayless: We've shared a lot of them through the years.
Olivia Wu: We've shared a lot of them, yeah. So I love what you -- the word you chose
-- "translator" – 'cause I feel that's what I'm, I'm doing.
And I remember a conversation we had maybe 15 years ago where you felt – you said to
me you felt your role was to be an ambassador of Mexican culture. Not easy.
I mean, when you opened Frontier in Topolobampo, most people in Chicago when they wanted Mexican
food, they wanted their burrito, they wanted, wanted their tacos carne asada with the pile
of meat that almost loses the, the, the tortilla in them.
You know, ethnic Mexican food was supposed to be cheap.
Rick Bayless: It still is.
Olivia Wu: It still is. Everything people already know.
And maybe kind of a not-so-clean restaurant. How, how did you fight that?
We had conversations back then about that. I'm, I'm sure you don't have that now, but,
talk a little about that.
Rick Bayless: Well, the way I -- I wouldn't say that I "fought" it, 'cause I'm not much
of a fighter, but I try to seduce people with flavor, number one.
Because once you taste our food and you realize that I really learned how to make it. I didn't
just go on a 2-week trip to Mexico and said, "Oh, this is fun. I'm gonna come back and
open a restaurant." But I really, really learned it.
Like I said, through my first book, I spent five years writing it.
And it was after all of that that we opened Frontera back in 1987.
The – I've always said that you, you always seduce people with flavor first and foremost
-- that, once they've taken a bite of even something that they think they're not gonna
like, that if you've made it well, then -- and I always consider that my challenge as
a chef is – it's that I gotta make it really good so that they'll go, "Gosh..."
This is the common thing -- and all the waiters will tell you this in our restaurant that
people go, "I don't like Mexican food, but I really love this."
And we all laugh about it, because what they're eating is really well-prepared Mexican food.
But when they say they're not liking Mexican food, probably what they're referring to is
that Mexican food that I call "Mexican-American food," because it was really developed in
the United States. Of course, you guys probably all know this,
but almost all of the things that we talk about as "Mexican," -- things like nachos,
burritos, fajitas, chimichangas -- all that sort of stuff was all developed in the United
States. And they don't even recognize that stuff in
Mexico if you -- they've heard about it now, but they call it "American food," which I
think is totally hilarious, 'cause you can go to places now and find ballpark nachos,
you know with the Number 10 can in the warmer and they got the pump on the top of it?
And they buy these really, really crappy tortilla chips and pump it out.
You know that sort of gooey, orangish-yellow stuff?
And they call that "American food," which I think is pretty hilarious, because that's
our, that's our export to Mexico is ballpark nachos. [laughter]
But it's the -- when people are usually talking about Mexican food, that's what they're talking
about either loving or not loving, one or the other.
And I found that by just offering them what sounded like really good food would usually
make them sort of come, come over into my camp.
And then, I did a second thing, and that was that I told stories around all the food.
And, of course, I've been able to do that for a long time now through my books.
And when we decided to go back and do more TV shows -- I had done some TV work early
in my career even before we opened our restaurant. And then, I decided I really wanted to come
back to it after we'd been open for about 10 years or so.
But I said, "I don't wanna just stand in a studio kitchen and tell people what it's like.
I want to show 'em what it's like." So I wanted to make sure that half of every
show could be shot in Mexico on location. Then, in my sort of translator role, I could
bring them back to my home kitchen, and that's where I shoot all the cooking stuff.
And I could just show you how to make something that was what I just showed you where it came
from. Again, being that, that translator to show
you, "You actually can do this. It was made by a street vendor in Mexico,
but if you're gonna do it in your house, this is what it's going to look like, and I'll
step you through each one of the, the bits of it."
But, from my perspective, it was, it was never too hard to, to really get people to come
to our restaurant and to enjoy our restaurant -- number one, because I think I did a really
good job of training myself to be a good cook, and secondly, because I put a story around
everything that just brought it to life. And to me, the stories are what captivate
people, because it gives them something to, to really key into.
You're not just eating a taco. You're eating taco that is like the way they
make it -- the street vendors make it on the wharf in Vera Cruz.
And when you see them do that, and they sear that red chili cured pork in a, on a hot,
rolled, steel griddle. And then, they make this amazing salsa out
of raw tomatillos that they blend with a little bit of cilantro and green chili.
And then, they throw in a little piece of avocado to kind of make it a little bit creamy.
And then, they spoon that over that seared... Suddenly, when you're telling the stories
like that, then everybody's mouth is watering. And you could serve them -- I guess -- sauteed
dog food, but they'd think it was the best thing that they have ever eaten, because you've
gotten their mouths watering for the whole, the whole thing.
Olivia Wu: Story is everything.
Rick Bayless: Story is everything.
Olivia Wu: And, and, and a recipe is really just a very distilled shorthand for, for saying
how to make something that has a whole culture and story behind it.
I'm, I'm a musician. You're kind of a musician too, but to me,
I tell people, "When you're looking at a recipe, it's looking like printed notes on, on a page
for music. There's no music there.
There's no flavor when you write a recipe."
Rick Bayless: And I'm gonna steal this from another author, very famous chef who gave
a recipe to a person in the restaurant. Then, they came back, and they said, "Well,
mine didn't taste like yours." And he said, "I gave you the recipe. I didn't
teach you how to cook." And there is that, that relationship. A recipe
is like notes on a, on a page. And you can hand the same sheet music to 50
different musicians -- and they're all gonna play it differently.
They're all gonna interpret it differently. And in the hands of a musician that's not
very well trained, then it's not gonna sound very good.
And then, you move up the ladder. And it's the same thing with the recipe.
It's just your, your framework, your, your basic structure of what to put together.
And that's why -- I've always tried to be really clear in writing a recipe.
I don't want it to be too, too simple. I want to give you as much information as
I think that you can use or need to use. But, I also can't stand there and walk you
through everything. And a lot of times I do teach cooking classes
-- as you have -- for many years. And you, you end up watching people cook your
food, and you realize how you can interpret words in many different ways.
Olivia Wu: Many ways.
Rick Bayless: And when it says "medium heat" -- to some people -- I've been with -- I
used to teach a lot at the Culinary Institute of America up at Greystone and a lot of professional
chefs, for them, medium heat means "as high as you can get it."
And then, I would get some people who were very timid cooks who were just starting out
that would be in the class. And for them, medium heat was hardly on.
So, I know when you're interpreting these things -- and some people will say to me
-- it's like, "Well, it took me a lot longer to cook that than what you wrote there."
And it's like, "Well, it's probably because your interpretation of "medium heat" is different
than mine.
Olivia Wu: Yeah. It's, it's, it's the cooking. It is the story behind, and it's the, it's
the taste of the authentic food. So I, I have to ask the question everybody's
going to ask anyway.
Rick Bayless: What is that?
Olivia Wu: Top Chef Master.
Rick Bayless: [laughing] It was the big elephant in the room, was it not?
Olivia Wu: So, so I remember coming for a special birthday party in -- to Chicago, and
it was the, the dinner the night before and you sat down and you said, "I hope it's okay
for me to say this. It's one of the hardest thing I've ever done."
And you were just finished doing it. So, so tell, tell how you and Hubert and Michael
Chiarello laid down the ground rules, how you made it a more civilized reality show.
How -- and then, and then what transpired? Short story. [laughing]
Rick Bayless: Ooh -- gosh. That's like -- there's juicy stuff in that one.
Okay. So, the interesting thing was they had a hard time getting any chefs of note to say
"yes" to doing it. Because, as you know, that every one of those
reality shows, they can throw you under the bus really easy just by the way that they
edit things. And they, they -- their tape -- we were shooting
14 cameras almost all the time. So I mean, there's just like stuff they're
getting everywhere. And they said, "Okay, you have to trust us
on this. We recognize that you guys have great reputations.
That's the reason that you're here. That's the reason we want you here, and we're
gonna be gentle with you guys." I mean, if you give us something -- which
I think we all realize that Michael Chiarello gave them a bunch of stuff -- [laughter]
-- especially toward the end. And that they just didn't edit that out.
Because he delivered it to them on a silver platter more than once.
And so, they use that stuff. But if you didn't give it to them, they wouldn't
just take snippets of stuff and put it together to make it seem like that you were not the
person that you are. And so, I really appreciated that.
And it really was about cooking. And it really was about people who were at
the top of their profession showing you how they got there, but in the craziest challenges.
I mean, it was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, because you never -- well,
like, every reality show, they, they wore you out.
That's the whole idea is that they just keep you going all day long. There's never --
it's shot all at one time; there's never a day off.
And you're just dead, because they usually get back to your hotel and at like -- well,
you didn't have to live together, thank goodness. Well, we got back to our hotel between 11
and 12 every night. Our call was usually 6:00 or 6:30 the next
morning. So you never had a full night's sleep.
You almost never got a full meal. Sometimes you're just stuffin' stuff in your
mouth. The kitchen was always at a hundred degrees.
So you were always working in these really, really hot conditions.
And then, they would always start and stop and start and stop.
They'd say, "Okay, now we're going to do the challenge -- no, we're not going to do the
challenge -- okay, move over here. We're gonna move you."
So you're always constantly in flux, which is another way that they kind of wear you
down in all of that stuff. And then, of course, you know about the reality
shows -- there's always an open bar. There's always an open bar.
There's always *** everywhere you turn, okay?
So you are just open to drink as much as you want and make as big a fool as you -- out
of yourself as you possibly can. But the thing is, with the chefs that they
got for the first season of "Top Chef Masters" -- we're, we're all smart enough not to make
fools out of ourselves. We knew how much that we had to lose, so who
wants to lose? So they kept doing this thing.
Oh, you know, when we would stand in front of those judges and they would tell us what
they thought of our, our dishes, we would go back and forth with them.
That took never less than two hours we had to stand on our feet in one spot.
And oftentimes, it would go toward three hours. And then, we would have to go back into that
kitchen, we'd sit around that table -- and you notice that every time when we went back
into that table, they had it loaded with ***. Because they wanted us to sit there and just
drink ourselves silly, because that was always an hour -- an hour and a half -- while the
judges deliberated. And then, we would have to go back and stand
in front of them. And then, they really wanted us to be sort
of loose, can you say. So we would sit down at that table, and no
one would drink. And then, the producers'd come over and go,
"How about a beer? How about a --" You know, it's like "How about
some wine? We'll open it for you. We'll pour it."
"No" -- it's like, "No, I'm fine. No, I'm fine."
We'd all sit there and go, "Oh, what are we going to do with these guys, because they
won't give us what we. we wanted." But then they began to get into it and go,
"There's nobody's doing any backbiting. Everybody's helping each other."
It's like, "This is not a typical reality show," which actually, I think turned out
to be its term in the end. Because it was -- it really was -- you were
seeing people at the top of their profession and how they got there.
And what kind of dishes we created. Now, I have been a judge on regular "Top Chef".
And there's -- those young people have nothing to lose.
They're just out there trying to make a name for themselves.
And some of them are good cooks, and some of them aren't good cooks.
But a lot of the food, because it's done under such duress, a lot of the food's not very
well seasoned; it's not very good. It might look good, and you might say, "Oh,
it would be wonderful to be a judge on Top Chef," -- not really. [laughter]
No. I think maybe you'd like to do takeout or something like that.
Because sometimes it's just not very good what they produce.
And, in, in our case, sometimes it wasn't as great either.
But I think what you saw was people who have cooked for so many years that knew the shortcuts
through things that we could actually put quite delicious dishes together under --
I mean, if they knew it was going to take you an hour to make a dish, they'd give you
half an hour. So you really, really had to work quickly,
but also smart. Like the very first -- the first quick-fire
challenge that I did? And I didn't realize how fast 30 minutes was
gonna go. And I was like -- I looked up at the clock
on the wall, and it said "19," and I didn't know whether that was "19 minutes to go" or
"19 minutes into the 30-minute thing." And I yelled at the producer, and I said,
"Is that 19 minutes to go?" She said, "No." [laughing]
And I was like, "Whoa! I got 11 minutes to finish this dish."
And I didn't even have it on the stove yet. And so, I'm like -- I'm thinkin' about what
I can do, and I remember -- the geeky guy that I am -- that I watched one of these training
videos that came with my Vitamix blender. And there was like -- yeah, I am. I am one
of those geeky guys, so. I went to – I, I thought, "There was somebody
on that video that just turned the blender up high, and the friction that the blades
caused actually brought it to a simmer." [laughter] So I'm thinking, "That's my only hope in this
thing." And I had all these ingredients in this blender
jar. And so, I just turned it on. It made incredible
racket. But there I am just praying that it's going
to get hot in the blender. And you know what?
That training video was right, and I did really well. [laughter]
But I realized about five minutes into that there were so many ways that I could look
like such a fool on that show, which I think is one of the reasons it was such a really,
really hard thing for me to do.
Olivia Wu: But, but you were the one who said, "Nothing negative -- we're not gonna go into
negatives and backbiting. A winners' purse. Or all of our purses will
go to charity." You were the one who --
Rick Bayless: No, they were. They said that from the very beginning.
So, "You are, you are playing for charity." And you weren't really playing for your reputation.
I mean we always laugh, because when we would walk away from the judge's table, you know
how they always say on regular Top Chef, "Pack your knives and go home?"
So we would always say, "Pack your knives and go back to your extremely successful life."
[laughter] Because that was what -- as we were walking
out – because it's like, all those chefs are really successful chefs.
So, they're "Pack your knives." Yes, "and go back and do what you do really
good and you've become really famous for." So, it, it was that kind of a thing.
And nobody was taking it terribly seriously. Everybody had to lose at some point along,
along the line there. But it was really -- I have to say, working
with those chefs -- they're amazing. That was the coolest thing about the whole,
the whole thing was cooking right beside all those chefs for all those days.
And when we went back to start with the semifinals thing, and the first thing they ask us to
do was to make a dish that you consider to be like a perfect expression of your cooking,
a signature dish, whatever it might be. And they allowed us – they, they told us
ahead of time that they, that they would have the ingredients for us there, so it didn't
seem like a challenge at all. We couldn't figure out what was going on.
And then, they said, "We'll give you two-and-a-half hours to do it."
It's like "two and a half?" So, it was just glorious.
Two-and-a-half hours -- we were chatting, we were watching each other cook, we were
learning things from each other. And then, they said, "Okay, now.
Plate it, and sit down at the table and share it with all the other chefs."
And so, one by one, we finished all our dishes and we shared it.
And it's like, "Wow! This is cool. We're really enjoying it."
It was the most glorious moment of the whole thing for me.
And then, they got us up from the table, and they said, "Okay, now.
You're gonna have to make another one of the chef's dishes.
And it was like -- and then, we all swallowed very hard.
Because we had been patting each other on the back, "Wow! How do you get this flavor?
This is so beautiful. This is so incredible." And then, we were asked to, to create that,
not ever having done that before. And so, it turned from the most glorious moment
to the scariest moment in the world. Because nobody knew what to do.
And we were all talking, and it's like, "Are we supposed to do an homage to the dish?
Are we supposed to do the dish the way we would do it?
Are we supposed to change it? Are we supposed to say, 'Well, my version
would actually be better.'" [laughter] That would be a slap in the face of the other
chef. And we didn't know how to do it.
And that was really – that was the hard part of the thing is to decide how you were
gonna do it.
Olivia Wu: And you did…
Rick Bayless: I chose to do an homage completely to what Michael Chiarello had done with some
cuello -- and I cooked in a straight Italian style.
I mean, not as good as Michael Chiarello, but I've cooked a bunch of Italian food in
my life. And I thought, "I think I can, I can get it
fairly close." And everybody was really good about helping
the other chef to kind of know some of the tricks, but then they were on their own, because
once you start cooking, man -- you start cookin'. [chuckles] There's never any time.
And then, we only had an hour-and-a-half to recreate their dish.
And so, they had given us two-and-a-half to do our own and an hour-and-a-half to do somebody
else's.
Olivia Wu: So celebrity chefs – and all of a sudden in our culture in about 20 years,
chefs have, have risen to --
Rick Bayless: -- we've come out of the kitchen.
Olivia Wu: We've come out of the kitchen. What should celebrity chefs be doing that,
that really helps the cause of good food in America -- healthy food in America -- or maybe
that's my agenda. But what else, now that you have this platform,
what should be done -- what would you like seen done?
Rick Bayless: The, the one thing that I always think that we as chefs have the opportunity
to do – and, and I cooked the last state dinner at the White House. And do you know
that, up until this administration, the chef has never been introduced at the White House
at one of these things, okay? They don't even acknowledge that a chef exists,
that the food comes from the kitchen, and there it is.
And when Cris Comerford was put into the position of White House chef -- first of all, it was
the first woman to be there. Suddenly people were thinking about chefs as like, contributing
something. And that, actually, there's not only food
at the White House, but the administration actually has some things to say about food
in our country. And so suddenly, we were starting to think
about the administration in relationship to food, not just in big agriculture.
So it's -- we were putting something that we can relate to more as human beings in the
spotlight at the White House. And now that they have done for the first
time -- invited chefs to cook at the White House for these big events like that -- they're
introducing, not the invited chef first, but the chef of the White House first, then the
pastry chef of the White House, then the invited chef because those first two people are the
ones that actually make that event happen. We just are there to make our food and get
the flavors right and all that. They produce the event, because they know
how to do it. And there's so much protocol.
And they have to, they have to know that protocol and do it.
But I think that -- what I experienced there at the White House being introduced by Mrs.
Obama to all the people that had come to the state dinner and the President of Mexico and
his wife, it gives us the opportunity to talk about things that are important to us.
And every chef has different things that are important to them.
My -- I'm really interested in food as an expression of culture and food as a way of
bringing people together. That's really important to me.
So I have a platform where I can talk about that now.
Twenty-five years ago it would be really hard to have done anything like that.
Twenty-five years ago, if people were clamoring to be known, they were usually clamoring to
be known as having the most exotic food or the most expensive food or the most elaborate
food. Well, we have really gone past that now.
And many chefs choose to use their platform as a way of connecting people at home with
people producing the food. So like, we have a fabulous farmer's market
-- our big, big farmer's market in Chicago -- that's Green City Market.
And we -- I'm on the board of that market. And we are a 501c3, because we have a huge
educational component. Every week, one or two chefs is out there
teaching people how to work with the farmer's produce.
So we're connecting the, the everyday cooks with the farm -- farmers and their produce
and helping them to understand how to use more of it in their everyday cooking.
Then, there's other chefs that tend to go more toward the political end of things using
their platform to say, to say things as, as important as working with school lunch programs,
as working with farm bills -- all of those things.
They're all really important. I'm just thankful that, as a professional
cook, I have the opportunity to get people's ear, and to talk about things that are really
meaningful. Now, the one thing that I think you find with
most chefs -- perhaps not Gordon Ramsay, but many chefs -- is that they're incredibly passionate
people. They believe very strongly in things that
root you to the earth. And to have the opportunity for those passionate
individuals with such great convictions to be able to talk to people I think is just
an incredible gift, 'cause we haven't had that so much in the past.
People that have talked about food have either been sort of big producers of food or --
and their big advertising budgets, or on the flip side, it was people that wrote cookbooks
that were home cooks. And they didn't understand sort of that, that
way of tying from -- all the way from the farm to the table -- which, as professional
chefs now, we do all the time.
Olivia Wu: I know we both feel we love to make food, make it authentically, and translate
it, and, and serve people. But I think you also feel as I do that it's
very important for people to own their own food, to be connected and grounded.
And food is one of the -- the major way to, to do it.
I mean, we, we want people to know how to cook, how to cook from scratch, how to own
their own health. And I know you were a founding member of Chef's
Rick Bayless: Chef's Collaborative -- working on – working with chefs primarily.
Just it's an organization that just works with chefs to train them in how to work, connect
to their local growers, how to take that message from the local growers through their restaurant
kitchens all the way to the guests that come into their restaurants and to be a support
-- an educational support basically -- for the chef community.
And now, we said this -- I was at this ideation conference one time with, with the chefs
-- or, it was more like a board meeting with the Chef's Collaborative board.
And we were talking about like, "What would, what would have to happen for this organization
to become obsolete?" And you know, we're moving toward it at a pretty fast rate, and I'm really
happy about that. If you go to any restaurant in Chicago worth
its salt, you'll see the farm names, you'll see where the, where the inspiration for the
dishes are coming from, something incredibly seasonal.
This year, there are so many restaurants that are hosting dinners at farms, and they like
rent a school bus or whatever. They take the guests for that dinner -- their
restaurant guests for that dinner out to the farm. They set up tables out there.
They finish or they cook the food whatever it might be.
They always get local microbrews or craft beers or something like that that's also very
much of our place. And they have these amazing meals.
There's so many of them, I can't even keep up with them.
I think at last count, there was probably 45 of those kind of just "dinners on a farm"
from local restaurants. And you just, you just laugh and think, "You
know, even five years ago, nobody even talked about doing anything like that."
But now if I won't go into a restaurant and see all these names of all the farms on there,
I just -- I don't even know what to make of it.
I think, "Are they just buying frozen food and just heating it up for us?" Because if
you're gonna work with the farmers, you're probably going to say something about it on
your menu. So I'm really, really happy about it.
Olivia Wu: And ideally, that means it's inspiring the diners to go to their farmer's market
and, and buy food and cook it for themselves occasionally.
Rick Bayless: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Olivia Wu: Occasionally. Yeah. I'm gonna let you at him.
Rick Bayless: Okay, but before that, I have to tell you a story about Olivia, okay?
Olivia Wu: Wait, we didn't agree to this.
Rick Bayless: [laughing] Olivia is just -- she likes to throw parties too, okay?
And Olivia has had a -- this beautiful Chinese New Year thing forever and ever and ever.
I always look so forward to it. But one of those years, my mother was in town
visiting. And Liv says, "Just bring her on out."
And, of course, if you hang around chefs very much, you know that we have like real motley
groups of friends that kind of come together and we all just sort of accept each other
and it's really fun. And as I said, it's like a passionate group
of people. And so, we're at her house – north -- one
of the northern suburbs of Chicago -- and we're havin' just this -- starting to have
all this amazing things. Of course, when we arrive at the given moment,
Olivia's not usually quite ready for us to be there at that time.
So we are all trying to help her out in the kitchen and doing all this crazy stuff.
And at one moment during the -- most of the things – the meals that we would have, things
would sort of just spin out of control. And my favorite memory ever -- ever, ever --
of having one of these parties at Olivia's house is -- was that we were all singing camp
songs at one point -- like children's camp songs.
Olivia Wu: Chinese New Year.
Rick Bayless: And all of a sudden, and all of a sudden, we're not paying any attention,
but we haven't finished our food yet. All of a sudden, I notice that her dog is
eating out of my plate right next to it, and my mother is sitting across from me looking
at this thing with great horror. And I think my mother is never gonna come
back and visit me and my friends again. But it was the most glorious moment that I've
ever had at any party. And I always think about that -- singing camp
songs and watching the dog eat my food off of my plate. [laughter]
Olivia Wu: Okay, Barney. Kudos to Barney. So yes -- any questions, please come to the
mic if you have a question for Rick.
[pause]
Cynthia.
Cynthia: This is really just a sort of simple question.
Well, two simple questions. First is, when are you going to open a restaurant
in San Francisco? And the second one is, where are you eating
tonight?
Rick Bayless: Oh, I'm eating at Manresa tonight. And I'm really excited about that. I've never
been there. And I've read so much about it and I'm very
excited, because I share a lot of the same philosophies with the chef there and so I'm
really excited to see it.
Olivia Wu: And we're going to the farm beforehand.
Rick Bayless: And we're going to the farm beforehand, so that's gonna be really cool.
So we'll see where the food comes from.
Olivia Wu: Yeah, the dedicated farmer, biodynamic farmer for David Kinch.
Rick Bayless: So that's, that's going to be super-cool.
And when am I gonna open a restaurant in San Francisco?
Olivia Wu: I'd like to know too.
>> [laughter]
Rick Bayless: Well, I don't -- you probably shouldn't hold your breath.
I, I don't tend to be a person that proliferates easily.
So, you know, we opened Frontera Grill in 1987.
And then, our second restaurant, we opened next door to it in 1989.
It took us all the way until last year to take the next store front over.
I said, "At this glacial movement, we will all be all the way out to Lincoln Park in
about middle of the next century." But we do tend to kind of go slowly through
things. But if somebody from San Francisco said, "I
want to collaborate with you on something," I might think about that. So, pass the word
around to all your friends. Another question -- now, when I was at the Google campus in
Chicago -- much, much, much smaller than this one -- they were all sitting there posting
their questions online and voting them up. Now, I come here, and I don't know quite what
to do with this live question and answer session.
>> [Laughter]
Male Questioner: Hi. How's it going? I was wondering how you like to see the restaurant
industry evolve in the next ten years. I used to work as a cook at a kitchen in New
York. And I thought it was really hard to strike
a good balance between life and work and health insurance and was wondering if you have any
thoughts on that.
Rick Bayless: Well, yes. I do. Our restaurants have never been open more
than five days a week since we started, and that's one of the ways that you do that.
I, I feel like that -- you know, we have, we have never spent less of our income on
food than at this point in, in our history. And, I think that sort of says -- because
we'll spend money on what we value. Now, in San Francisco, my experience over
the last several days is that there's a lot of people are out there that are willing to
spend a greater portion of their income because they value the food.
And I'm really, really happy to see that. We have turned the tide that people say, "Good
food is elitist food." Because that's still out there really easily.
Even one of the top commentators on, on National Public Radio about three weeks ago said something
about the Dupont Circle Farmers Market being "the overpriced place for the rich people
to" -- when he used "overpriced" to refer to the beautiful produce at that market, I
was a little taken aback, because actually what they're charging for that is probably
the right amount to charge for it. And it's probably the accurate reflection
of what it takes to make that beautiful food. So people have to kind of come along with
us. But I do think that, with the success of
-- and the platform of a lot of great chefs that are willing -- like our restaurant –
to, to work with the local sources and to pay the right amount of money for it, and
then, to treat the staff in a way that you're not workin' 80 hours a week.
And most of our staff, nobody really is there for more than 45 hours a week, which means
that -- and I always, when I interview people, I always want to ask what they do outside
the kitchen, because if they're only just a kitchen person, they're not gonna bring
much to us. They're not gonna say, "Oh, yeah. I was out
doing" -- whatever hobby that they do -- "and it just occurred to me," because that
-- as you guys know -- you get really creative when you suddenly do something completely
different, and you figure things out. And so, I think it's really important to have
a balance. And I always think back to sort of the way
that a lot of, of the European kitchens are run where they're not -- they work long days,
but they don't work seven days a week. And then, they get a lot more time off.
I think all of that's really important. And as the value of food goes up in our culture,
I think we'll see a lot of the things that you're talking about and that you reacted
to. It's like, "Yeah, I can't stand it."
When we opened up our restaurant 23 years ago, I said, "I'm in this for life, and I
want a balanced life." I want to be able to do something that I can
be excited to go to every day, not find it a chore.
And the only way we could do that was to be open for five days a week.
Olivia Wu: Well, and so enlightened of you. I mean, from the getgo, you established –
there's profit-sharing in your restaurant. Rick and Deann and Lanie take the staff to
Mexico every year. Part of the staff -- not all 130 of them.
And, and trips to Japan. I mean, there are rewards.
You know the families of every worker in there, actually.
Rick Bayless: Yeah, we have -- I can't tell you right out the exact number, but there's
six or eight people that have been on our staff for over 20 years.
And we have -- 60 percent of our staff has been there for over six years.
Olivia Wu: It's so against the industry average.
Rick Bayless: So not -- but it's because I think we offer kind of balanced place to work
and you don't have to feel like you have to work 80 hours a week and stuff like that.
It's hard work, but a lot of people like that kind of work.
I love the physicality of it. And I was headed down an academic path and
I was in graduate school and all of a sudden, I realized, "I could never do this for very
long." I mean, like a lot of people get into the
kitchen, they go, "I could never do this for my whole life."
I had to go back to the kitchen, because I couldn't do a desk job for the rest of my
life. And I knew that.
And all of a sudden my friends were all graduating and getting these assistant professor jobs
in places I didn't want to live, sitting in desks that I didn't want to have to be my
life. And so, I realized that what I need to do
is take my love for -- and the knowledge I had gained in all of my studies -- and apply
that to the, to the thing I loved, which was Mexico and its food.
Q I got your book. I think "Mexican Every Day."
Rick Bayless: Yes.
Q One of the first two books. And I just want to say it's fantastic.
Rick Bayless: How nice. Thank you.
Q My question is, I had a, I had a boss once who was Japanese -- from Japan -- and working
with me. And we would go to sushi, and I one day asked
him, "What's the thing that you see when you go to sushi restaurants -- that you see Americans
or foreigners do -- that you just can't understand and you think takes away from the food?" And
he had an answer. It was, "drinking diet coke with sushi and,
and filling the, the soy sauce cup up to the brim."
It was painful to see. What would you say about Mexican food that
you think that Americans do -- other people do -- that you think that either detracts
from the food or I guess could make it better for Americans, but -- that sort of might make
you or Mexicans sort of skin kind of crawl?
Rick Bayless: Well, it's really interesting because the first thing that comes to my mind
when you ask the question is dairy products. Because it's all about melted.
People say that to me all the time, "Oh, I love Mexican cheese – food -- food -- I
love all that melted cheese." [laughter] Well, you know they have almost no melted
cheese in the food in Mexico. So, that is -- they use a dried cheese that's
more like a Romano or Parmesan and they put a little sprinkling of that over, but it's
just that flavor punch. So the dairy products, meaning a lot of sour
cream and, and melted cheese -- whenever I see that, I think immediately it's an Americanized
kind of dish. There's that one dish that was developed in
the 50s in Mexico City called "enchiladas suizas," which is a creamy sauce and then
there's melted cheese over the enchiladas. And that was developed, interestingly enough,
by a person in Mexico City but working at a place that was owned by Americans.
Now, this guy had immigrated there and he sort of settled in Mexico City.
But you can almost see the relationship between that one dish with the melted cheese and,
and the relationship to the American side of things.
But, that, that's it. And the whole idea of drinking margaritas.
I mean, you know, also margaritas were probably developed in Mexico.
There's not an exact story. But they were probably developed in Mexico
for Americans that wouldn't drink tequila the way that Mexico drinks tequila.
And only recently have margaritas taken off in Mexico -- only recently.
And that came because a lot of the Mexicans went to the resort towns, which are really
catering to Americans, and they learned to drink margaritas there.
And then, they came back and asked their restaurants or whatever where they lived to make margaritas
for them. But drinking margaritas through a meal or
something like that seems a kind of odd thing to me.
It sort of echoes the diet coke with sushi.
>> [pause]
Q I first want to preface this by thanking you for your contributions to the world of
food and the things that you do outside of just the shows and the books, but your contributions
to charity and things like that is just amazing. And I have to say that -- from watching the
PBS program -- my wife loves your backyard.
Rick Bayless: [laughing] I love it too.
Q Every time she sees it, she just, "Okay, we have to have that backyard." [laughter]
Rick Bayless: You could do it a lot easier here than I can do it in Chicago. [laughing]
Q We see all the stuff you're growing, and I'm thinking -- because I grew up in Michigan
-- "How does he grow all that in Chicago?"
Rick Bayless: I have a small greenhouse, okay? So that's my concession, because I can't
-- a lot of the tropicals and stuff like that, we have to cut them way back and put them
in the greenhouse for the winter. But then oh that glorious day when we get
to empty the greenhouse and let things start growing again. And aw, I love it.
Q My question's completely silly. It's related to the Top Chef Masters.
Do you know how to use a microwave? When Hubert did not know how to use a microwave,
we were just -- that's just -- it was -- the reason I mention this is because, again,
my wife who doesn't cook at all couldn't even conceive of someone who was so trained and
just -- it wasn't part of their lexicon to use a microwave in their everyday life.
Rick Bayless: Right. The answer to the question is -- will become obvious when you think about
a restaurant kitchen. If you put a microwave in a restaurant kitchen,
it gets abused all the time. Because a customer sends something back and
it's not hot enough. Where does it go? Into the microwave.
Well, as you all know, most food doesn't really like the microwave very much.
And so, you just wreck food by throwing it in a microwave.
So any very self-respecting restaurant will not have a microwave in the kitchen because
of the potential abuse. If they have one, they will have one only
in the pastry station and they use it there for melting butter or melting chocolate, because
it's a good device for doing that. So that's the only place that you will see
it. We have no microwaves anywhere near our restaurant
kitchen. But we have a test kitchen above where we
have a microwave because, occasionally, we'll test things for books and stuff like that
in a microwave. And so, we need to have one for that.
But I think, if it weren't for that -- if it weren't for the test kitchen microwave
-- I would probably have been in Hubert's -- Hubert is not a techno geek at all.
It's really hilarious, because I had to show him how to use a pressure cooker on one of
the things. But remember, this is the guy that got into
the shower in the dorm room and rinsed his pasta off, okay?
Now, that does not -- [laughter] -- that is one of those moments that you kind of --
you go, "Really? You're going to..." I don't know.
There's nothing wrong with it. It's just the whole idea does not make me
want to eat that pasta, okay?
Olivia Wu: So we're at zero. Thank you so much.
Rick Bayless: Thank you all. Thank you very much.
>> [Applause]