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- [00:12]
Tom Edwards
Hello and welcome to the Entrepreneurs on Monocle Radio. The show all about inspiring people, innovative companies and fresh ideas in global business. On today's program we celebrate excellence in hospitality with Michelin starred restaurants on both.
- [00:26]
Interviewer (Monocle Radio Host)
Sides of the Atlantic.
- [00:28]
Tom Edwards
First we're pulling up a chair with the founders of a London institution to hear how their expanding their horizons with a new restaurant.
- [00:35]
Johnny Lake
It took a lot of conversation to kind of draw that out of us, like what is it? What is our restaurant? And once we had that and then kind of then, you know, going to the more practical things of finding like where is it going to be? And things like that.
- [00:47]
Tom Edwards
And later we'll cross the pond to hear from a restaurateur shaking up the traditional American steakhouse scene.
- [00:54]
Simon Kim
People didn't know what to expect. You went to Korean barbecue because you. It was a casual and fun Andover, not because it was refined Andover or refined experience.
- [01:05]
Tom Edwards
This is the Entrepreneurs with me, Tom Edwards. You're listening to the Entrepreneurs. Johnny Lake, Annie Sabel are the co founders of the two Michelinstadt Trivette, the acclaimed restaurant in the heart of London's Bermondsey. Their partnership began years ago at Heston Blumenthal's the Fat Duck. And today they're celebrating six years of Trivet. While preparing to open an exciting new project in Mayfair. Johnny and Issa stopped by Midori House to reflect on their long standing collaboration, the values that guide their work and how they've redefined formality in fine dining. Jonny began by telling me about Trivet.
- [01:52]
Johnny Lake
This year we'll be celebrating our sixth anniversary of Trivet. But I think in a lot of ways, you know, the timing of when we opened, it's six years, but it doesn't feel like it because, you know, we opened in November 2019 and four and a half months later we were shut. So it was really weird, that whole trajectory. Issa and I met each other, we, we both worked at the Fat Duck, Heston Blumenthal's restaurant in Bray. We both started there in 2005. Within two weeks of each other. I think maybe I started. Yeah, you started a couple weeks before. You know, that was a very intense and exciting period in the life of that restaurant. All of a sudden like all the world's attention was on this like really tiny restaurant. I mean we, I think just kind of got along really well. We talk about it now as it was like an unspoken thing. I think it was, yeah, maybe meant to be. But I think for us it was a lot of work just to figure out, okay, what is It. It's great. Let's try to have our own restaurant. What is our restaurant? And I think that took us quite a long time.
- [03:03]
Isabel (Issa)
Couple of years.
- [03:04]
Johnny Lake
Yeah. But I think we. Plus, we didn't really know what we were doing so operationally. So there's the concept and then there's actually, you know, doing it. But, you know, we worked with some really good people, and it took a lot of conversation to kind of draw that out of us, like, what is it? What is our restaurant? And, you know, going to the more practical things of finding, like, where is it going to be? And things like that. So, yeah, I mean, that took quite a long time, but, yeah, there's. There's a huge element of being, you know, true to it, knowing that you don't know what you're doing, but just, you know, asking a lot of questions and trying to figure it out. We learned a lot through that experience, and maybe we would do things differently another time, but it was really valuable that time, for sure.
- [03:51]
Interviewer (Monocle Radio Host)
It's amazing how many entrepreneurial folk we talk to here at Monocle on this program, sort of if they were to describe a superpower that is a facilitator, it's naivety. And they're like, oh, my God, if I'd known, I never would have. Or actually, it was liberating, because I just didn't take no for an answer. I was just like, well, why can't we do it this way? How scary did it get, though? Did you have regrets, or did you always have this confidence, a conviction? We said, even with the pandemic comes this absolutely unprecedented thing. You still were happy you were on.
- [04:18]
Isabel (Issa)
I think it was more than being scared. I'm talking about myself here. It brought out the fighting spirit in me. I used to think, no, I'm not gonna let this one ruin it. And you just then do what you need to do. If it means you get up in the morning, go there and just toil, just do whatever you do that, it's easy to say, yeah, this is happening. And I respect people who did that. They are saying, this is happening. Let's give it up. Fine. Okay. For me personally, it was not gonna happen. It's one way or the other. We were gonna find a way to make it. And that was the mindset. And if you start with that mindset, whatever comes, you fight it off foolishly or just determinedly, whatever you call it. But sometimes you just ignore everything else, and that becomes the focus. So.
- [05:15]
Interviewer (Monocle Radio Host)
Well, you make it sound easy, but it is tough. But there's a real kind of steel. Like I said, there's a glint in your eye that you want to be messed with. Presumably, then we sort of ride out the pandemic. You stick to your vision, you know, great response to the restaurant, I guess, from your local community and then more and more wide and the recognition flows and. And so forth over the next couple of years. What's the conversation, the pressure maybe from outside, also from friends or other sort of partners in crime and so forth to say, well, what's next? Where next? Bigger, bigger, more, more. Is that something, again, Johnny, that you have to be. You have to stick to your foundational principles. You have to shut out that white noise a bit.
- [05:53]
Tom Edwards
How do you navigate that?
- [05:54]
Interviewer (Monocle Radio Host)
Because presumably, once it starts going great guns, there's all kinds of people knocking on the door saying, how about, how about, what's that process like?
- [06:02]
Johnny Lake
I think when the opportunities come, it's good to explore them. But, yeah, within what you do, you know, and I think that's what was really important to us, because for a long time there weren't any opportunities. Right. You need to kind of, you know, not take that for granted. You know, that when there is interest, you know, you got to try to at least figure out if it's a good fit for you or not. But I think, you know, right from the beginning, we had ideas beyond just the one restaurant. Trivet is a very, like, personal project. There's a lot of us in that we could never do another one of those. And I think we knew that from the beginning. So, you know, coming off of that, there's other elements within that that we can explore. And I think over the years, we've explored a few different ones of varying size, different projects, and, you know, they just didn't come to fruition for different reasons. And some were from, like, our point of view, where it was like, okay, that's. It's not going to be it. Right. And then others were, you know, the other way. But I think, you know, this opportunity we have now to open a new restaurant is. It's actually worked and it's good for us, and it's what we wanted to do. So we're excited about that.
- [07:17]
Interviewer (Monocle Radio Host)
Well, let's talk a bit about that. That was where. Thank you for following my. My road signs there. Talk to me a little bit about La Bombe, because it's funny. I think it's a really. It is. It's a really good expression of the values that we've kind of been alluding to already. And yet it is different so it shows your appetite for innovation and change. It seems to adhere to a lot of these values. But you, you guys should do the telling. Tell me about what La Bombe is all about.
- [07:42]
Johnny Lake
It was I think around probably 12 or 13 years old growing up in Canada in French class I as like French language class. A project was to you know, write a menu for a restaurant. I mean I think just understand like restaurant French and things like that. I don't really remember doing it but I, you know, very like. Luckily, luckily I guess I, I found this project in my parents basement when A couple of years ago. No, maybe two and a half years ago. I'd gone there to move them from one house to another and I didn't keep this thing so I don't know. But anyway found it and yeah, I called my, my restaurant restaurant La Bombe.
- [08:28]
Interviewer (Monocle Radio Host)
And you were what like 12? 13?
- [08:30]
Johnny Lake
Yeah, I think about 13. Yeah. And I was like what is this? And, and there's a menu inside and a description.
- [08:37]
Interviewer (Monocle Radio Host)
Is any good?
- [08:38]
Johnny Lake
I mean keep in mind I found, I obviously found these dish titles in books somewhere at the time. But when I actually look up what those dishes are now like some of them are like dead simple bistro food. Others are like these crazy dishes that would have been served at you know like royal multiple day preparation type things.
- [09:01]
Interviewer (Monocle Radio Host)
Take your, prepare your swan this way. Yeah.
- [09:04]
Johnny Lake
So just, just in name but I guess it fit and looked good but you know, and it was, it was fantastic. There was very little other than that. There's you know, prices and things like that. And it's all in like French francs and things like that. The one, this thing was just beautifully preserved, you know and it's, there's a, there's a post it note on it and with handwriting and red pen from the teacher and the only comments on it are ou sans les boissons. So like I said, part of the project was like to you know, basically you know, my restaurant was only food, it listed no drinks and, and it was so perfect because you know, there you go like and here we are 35 years later or whatever. I've got the guy who can answer that question and you know, put together the missing pieces of this project. So you need to write back to.
- [10:02]
Interviewer (Monocle Radio Host)
That, track down that teacher, whomever he or she may be.
- [10:05]
Johnny Lake
No idea.
- [10:05]
Interviewer (Monocle Radio Host)
And say isi.
- [10:06]
Isabel (Issa)
Voila.
- [10:07]
Interviewer (Monocle Radio Host)
There we go. That is a great origin story. I absolutely love that. And he said tell me then obviously, yeah, here are the drinks.
- [10:13]
Isabel (Issa)
But so he brought this folder back to London and then one Day he put it in front of me at the restaurant and as soon as I saw it I said, that's it, that's what we are going to call the next one. At the time we were also looking to do one more day at Trivet because we were shut for two full days at the time. But it was impossible to be honest, for us to open another full day as a Trivet. We had to think about what we can do to make this work with less people, less sort of work. Because to open one more day, it really puts a lot of pressure on the people who work there and everything. And then we always enjoyed sort of wine bars, sort of wine focused restaurants and things like that. Then we thought, okay, let's do La Bombe on Monday evenings at Trivet with a simpler menu, which turned out to be quite complicated as we went along. And then we would always select a few wines to highlight but the whole list would be available and things like that. So that's how it basically started. And from Monday evenings at Trivet we are coming to Como Metropolitan at Mayfair now. And did we think about it? It did cross our mind, I think that one day this might have to be housed in its own shell, if you like, somewhere else. And here we are talking about it. And yes, it will be very much wine and food focus place again in good sort of relaxing setting. Informality will continue. So yeah, looking forward to it.
- [12:13]
Interviewer (Monocle Radio Host)
Let me just ask a bit about your kind of approach to wine. This is a bit of your personality, which is this interest in the sort of the. The chronology of the story from the kind of origins of wine. And lots of sommeliers or lots of winers aren't at all designed that way. Often that's not even a reference point. It's just about a geography or it's just about one particular focus point the given smelly may have. But that seems to be something that underscores your approach for a long time. I don't know if you'd agree with that, but this idea of this history, the richness of it going right back to and these other markets in Georgia or Armenia or if it might be. Tell me a little bit about that chronology, why that's so interesting to you.
- [12:50]
Isabel (Issa)
You know, when I was at the Fet Duck, I had this good fortune of trying wines that people sort of worship every day to the point that it was getting boring or it wasn't getting boring, I was getting bored. The wines were the wines. So they are either you like them or you don't like Them or you are excited by them or you aren't. So it was coming to a point I was losing that excitement towards those wines. And it kind of worried me a bit as well, because here's a thing I really love, but I'm getting bored with it. And then I look at it and I go, wine world is so much bigger. And I'm just focusing my entire sort of working Life to probably three, maybe four regions and reduce it further to maybe 20 producers. And that kind of made me think, how can I make this more exciting for me? So I wasn't thinking about the people who would come to restaurant and eat. I was being very selfish and thinking about myself and keep that enjoyment. Go, go on. And it took me a good sort of eight, nine months, I think, to think about the. How I would lay out the concept of the wine list. Many people, when they do wine list, it's not so much a concept thing. You just list your wines, what you have prices, anything else you want to do with it, you do it. But I felt there needed to be something done to make it more interesting for me, but to also increase the communication between the guest who is dining and the staff who is working in the restaurant. And then being from Turkey, it's got a long history of viticulture, very long. One of the oldest in the world. And many years ago, I listened to Patrick McGowan, sort of molecular archaeologist from US and he was giving a lecture in Turkey about the origins of wine and fermented beverages. That talk was the inspiration. I thought maybe I could list my wine in this order. I did a chronology, emailed him, asking him basically to check if the chronology was out or to the point. He said, it's pretty good at maybe these two regions in here and there, and that was it. And what then became turned out to be a very sort of engaging and interesting, informative wine list without necessarily pretending to inform people. It really worked very well for us. And that kind of approach will continue in the next restaurant, although in a slightly different manner.
- [16:13]
Interviewer (Monocle Radio Host)
I love that, I guess, look, it's a bit like great storytelling, whether it's on the page or in wine or on the plate. It's about not burying people with stuff, right, Johnny? It's about taking them by the hand a little bit and taking them on a journey, whether it's through time or through regions. You've got to retain that curiosity. And sometimes it's about re. Engaging your own excitement. Did you recognize that feeling of a bit of like, not inertia? But sort of ennui almost. With food, do you sometimes have to take a step back and be like, I need to recharge my own enthusiasm and experiences so that I can keep freshness coming to the plate or.
- [16:48]
Johnny Lake
Yeah, I think, you know, you get inspired by anything. You know, ideas can come from anywhere. And I think, you know, not just like ourselves, like when we're developing new dishes and for any menus, you know, we always do it together quite early on. But the ideas can come from anyone in the team. It can come from. But, you know, we work on them together and that always ends up being, you know, beneficial in terms of the end dish. But I think you draw, you know, inspiration from experiences, like you're saying. But at the same time, weirdly, like, what we found is that we don't look outside of what we're doing that much as much as we probably should. Like, do, you know, see what everyone else is doing? We don't keep up with that as much. And I don't know, weirdly, it's worked for us over the years, and I think what we've ended up with is a style of food that's ours. Without really thinking about it, you just as challenging as everything has been and as scary as it's been to kind of go out on our own like that and do something on our own, there's a real, like, beauty in it as well in terms of, you know, I'm gonna do this today. You just do it. There's no checking. You know, you gotta be really confident and to put it out there and be ready to listen to any feedback that comes back. But however we've got here, that's what we've ended up with.
- [18:25]
Interviewer (Monocle Radio Host)
And listen, the next step, so exciting. Very, very quickly because we're out of time. But what are you most excited about? Is it give me a moment when, you know, you welcome the first guest in. I don't know, you set down a particular plate, somebody asks you for a particular selection. Maybe it's a little bit more of an out there selection you've made. What's that moment like? Do you have. Do you visualize that and be like, oh, that first. On that first service or whatever? What's that sense of anticipation? Like, what are you most excited about?
- [18:51]
Isabel (Issa)
I really enjoy the process of getting it from idea into a sort of solid reality in front of you. And once you open the doors and you see the reservations coming and you see people walking in, that very moment, you open that door and the first few people are walking in. And even before that, for example, if you have an opening party or something like that, then you see all your sort of colleagues, friends coming to toss their glass with you. And I think that's a, that's a sort of an amazing moment of realization that it has become a reality. So that creative process is very exciting for me. Fab.
- [19:36]
Tom Edwards
And Johnny, what about you?
- [19:37]
Interviewer (Monocle Radio Host)
When will you be like, yep, we're here. Is it after the first service? How does it work exactly? And I know you've got, obviously you are a team with whom you work. You'll be doing stuff day to day, but do you give yourself that moment of like, okay, a little pat on the back or.
- [19:51]
Johnny Lake
I think we will this time. I think, like maybe look around a bit more. I think more than the first service. I think it'll be, you know, inviting people in that we've worked with before, friends, colleagues, to kind of just show them what we're gonna do. I think that at that moment when you're really in it, maybe wearing a different uniform and kind of like showing people everything that you've kind of done. I think that'll be the moment. And that's pretty soon actually. So super excited for that.
- [20:28]
Tom Edwards
That was Johnny Lake and Isabel, the co founders of La Bombe by Trivet, which officially opens its doors on, on 16th September. You can find out more by heading to la bombe.co.uk you're listening to the entrepreneurs where we continue our celebration of restaurant excellence. Simon King is the founder and CEO of Gracious Hospitality. The Korean American restaurateur sought to shake up the traditional American steakhouse when he opened Cote in 2017. The New York original plus outposts in Miami and Singapore are the first and only Korean steakhouses to earn a Michelin star. Along the way, Simon's challenged much of the conventional wisdom about Asian cuisine. Monocle's Gregory Scruggs caught up with this modern day meat maestro and began by asking Simon what he loves about steakhouses.
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Simon Kim
So American steakhouse, I love it. It's a real place of decadence. You know, they double down. What it is is you get USDA prime beef, which is top 5% of American beef cattle, which is really, and it's solely graded based on the amount of marbling. So it's really well marbled, rich meat and then they double down with cream of spinach, which is rich and mashed potato, which is rich. So what you have is a true fat cat experience, if you will. A Korean steakhouse is, you know, we procure the Best beef, you know, we get USDA prime beef. We dry age in our house, and we get American beef, American wagyu, which is crossbred between Japanese Wagyu and American Black Angus, which is also rich. And then we also get Japanese A5 Wagyu directly shipped from Japan as well. So we get this really well marbled beef, and we serve that with leaf. So it's beef and leaf experience. So it's pickled vegetables, that's cold, that's refreshing, that's crunchy. So it's almost like the. Which is a Korean word for yin and the yang. Right. So you get something really decadent. Pair that with something that is really refreshing and light, and what you have is pretty well balanced dinner.
- [22:44]
Gregory Scruggs
How was this concept first received, especially given a reputation in Western culture for Asian food as a more economical sort of cheap eats type of option?
- [22:57]
Simon Kim
Yeah, when we first opened, people didn't know what to expect. And it was a fancy setting with a big wine list, so people were confused. But people caught on pretty quickly. And what's really ironic is people who didn't catch on quickly were Koreans. Korean Americans had a lot stronger perceived notion what Korean barbecue restaurant should be. And they wanted something very specific. Whereas the New Yorkers, they were like, oh, wow, this is cool. And I think they really accepted it. When we first opened Gold, you know, Asian food had a preconceived notion. You know, there were no really fancy Korean barbecue available. Right. You went to Korean barbecue because it was a casual and fun andover, not because it was refined and over so or refined experience. So in the beginning, people didn't know what to expect. But ultimately they caught on very quickly.
- [23:50]
Gregory Scruggs
So the New Yorkers, they're open to fusion, to new ideas. Maybe the Korean, Korean Americans are a little bit confused. You take the concept global, you open a cote in Singapore, a global city, obviously in Asia, and exposed to Asian flavors. How is this concept received on that side of the world?
- [24:08]
Simon Kim
So go. Going back to going closer to Asia, we have thought that people would accept it even easier than in New York. I think in Asia, people also have a lot of preconceived notion of what Korean restaurant ought to be. And Western, like European fine dining. I think Japanese fine dining is also an exception. You know, that should be very expensive. But everything else, they have a conceived notion that it should be. They have a threshold of what they want to spend. So initially it was a little confusing and a little shocking and little new. But ultimately, once again, I think the common language of all humans are Food. And slowly and surely Singaporeans started to really love code Korean steakhouse experience.
- [24:52]
Gregory Scruggs
When you earned the Michelin star, was that a watershed moment for a certain kind of fine dining take on on Asian cuisine in at least certain food cities around the world? I mean, was that somehow a sign that you've transcended those perceptions around Asian food in Western cities as again, a more economical option?
- [25:14]
Simon Kim
Absolutely, Gregory. I think Michelin guide is definitely the holy grail of our today's restaurant world. Right. So in USA there's five steakhouses with the Michelin star and two of them is Goat New York and Goat Miami. Right. So I feel like that was a giant triumph and gave steakhouse or Asian way of presenting the highest priced food item, which is, you know, the fine beef. They showed the potential. I think once our industry sees potential, there are many way to get there. Right. So I think it kind of showed what you can be right, how our Asian food can be interpreted as or received as. And I think that I'm very proud that it opened a lot of possibilities.
- [26:04]
Gregory Scruggs
Korean fried chicken has taken the world by storm. And you have your own take on it. How do you approach the famous kfc?
- [26:12]
Simon Kim
First I named it Gokoda. C O Q in French means chicken. Daq in Korean means chicken. So Kokodak is. And then I put the Korean character for tak in the middle of that.
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Isabel (Issa)
O.
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Simon Kim
So it's chicken, chicken, chicken. But it also is a sound that chicken makes, you know. So the mission of Cocodag was to create the cathedral of fried chicken. We wanted to elevate fried chicken. Fried chicken is one of the items along with a hamburger and pizza, I think is the three trifecta of American food, if you will. So our mission was to really kind of take that something that everybody loves and evolve it and make a better version of it. And when I say better, it's better chicken. We found this farm in Pennsylvania that grows chicken in a regenerative agriculture way. Pasture raised, no antibiotics, no hormones, certified humane. So it's a small farm. So we procure better chicken and we made a batter that's naturally gluten free. So it's a gluten free batter. And we found this really unique oil called cultured oil. So it's a certified non deforestation, a non GMO sugarcane growing wild in Brazil. And they ferment it and they create this oil that is. That doesn't have the negative qualities of a seed oil. And compared to seed oil, on average it uses about. It takes about 10% only of the environmental footprint. So we use better oil. So together we create really amazing fried chicken experience. But it's not complete. The fried chicken experience is not complete unless you pair that with the largest champagne list in America. We have about 450 labels of champagnes. And of course, you can't eat chicken nuggets without topping that with Petrosia and caviar. I'm just kidding. Chicken nuggets are great without, but that's one of our biggest sellers.
- [28:12]
Gregory Scruggs
So that's quite a juxtaposition of high and low, if you will, of food of the people and luxury goods, at least luxury food and drink. What do you derive out of pairing such extremes under the same restaurant roof on the same table?
- [28:31]
Simon Kim
Yeah, Gregory, I think you hit the nail on the head. I think it's literally chicken nugget, I think, is the lowest of the brows of a food, Right. And the Petrosian Char Durangi caviar is probably at the highest brow, food totem pole, if you will. And by putting that together, I think it creates a lot of fun. It creates a lot of big dynamic environment. And it's definitely one chicken nugget is $26. So it's not, it's very, very expensive. But you know, when I create this experience of low brow, high brow, because you can definitely get chicken nuggets without the caviar. So when you're going to go Kodak on any given night, my favorite part is there's a billionaire sitting next to NYU students and both of them are having the best time of their lives.
- [29:23]
Tom Edwards
That was Simon Kim, the founder and CEO of Gracious Hospitality, talking to Gregory Scruggs.
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Interviewer (Monocle Radio Host)
Thanks to Greg for his reporting.
- [29:32]
Tom Edwards
And you can find out more about the restaurant by heading to cotekoreansteakhouse dot. And that is all for this episode of the Entrepreneurs. We'll be back at the same time next week. Do look out for Eureka. Available every Friday. The program's produced by Laura Kramer with audio editing this week by Steph Chungu. Listen again and find out more about the show@monocle.com or follow us and catch up wherever you get your audio. And if you'd like to get in touch with the team, send an email to Laura or on lrk at monacle. Com. I'm Tom Edwards. Goodbye and thanks for listening to the entrepreneurs.