[Music]
let’s talk creativity the age-old
question of where are we gonna have
dinner tonight it’s something that
thankfully we get to experience by
cooking that answer and we love to be
able to do that there’s a lot of choices
and there’s a lot of competition among
restaurants around the world
especially around the different cities
in the different countries so I have one
called spoon in stable I actually have
two in fact what’s crazy is thank you
what’s crazy is is that the statistic is
in the first year of opening up a
restaurant seventeen percent of those
restaurants closed it used to say ninety
percent which was a false number but it
sounded very dramatic and I that’s great
but it’s not true the reality is though
you put all that blood sweat and tears
and energy into a restaurant and
seventeen percent of them in the first
twelve months goes away as food as
stable is almost three years old but I
opened up a new one called delcor which
is four months old four and a half
months old so it is still you know in
that area that could be a statistic this
is one of our first days it’s been
disabled when we opened up the
restaurant and what’s crazy is I turned
around and I looked at this and I
watched this line grow I never read any
of the press when I opened up that
restaurant I was afraid that I would
believe it whether it was positive or
negative I was afraid that I would
believe what people are writing about us
and about me so I turn around and I look
and I see this line for 20 people 30
people 40 people deep
immediately I think to myself how do you
create a hospitality moment really
important in our business my ego would
love to tell you it’s all about the food
it has nothing to do with the food it
has everything to do with the
hospitality moment so I walked out there
to this stance of people and I said okay
fine well can I give a I had hot cider
I had bourbon that was good I walked out
I gave everybody shots a hot cider a
bourbon what’s funny is the light kept
getting longer because I think they all
figured out that they’d give free booze
so then I realize I’m just gonna open up
at 4 o’clock and they can start paying
me for this liquor creating those
moments is really an important thing but
what’s interesting about subunits table
is that the facade of the building is
very very small it’s very narrow
so when I first looked at this space I
thought to myself the inside was equally
small it was gonna be cozy and quaint it
looked great the snowstorm it would look
great when it was nice outside and then
I walked in and I saw this I saw this
sort of over-the-top space it was
25-foot floor-to-ceiling
it had 90-foot skylight that that ran
the length of this space and I kept
walking through it this is sort of
through our build-out what’s fascinating
is we actually didn’t do a lot to this
space when we took it over it was an
office building
I had cubicles we just walked in and we
demoed all the cubicles out which took
three days because it’s very easy to
demo office buildings and we started to
build it but what as we’re starting to
build any of these restaurants we’re
looking for stories we’re looking for
moments in which we can create the
hospitality moment for the guests or as
I like to call the majestic moment for
the guests this this area here that
front table is a great story it was an
area of the restaurant that was unusable
it was tucked by the bar we had six
seats perched up at the bar and then we
had sort of this dead space my brother
who happens to be a furniture maker an
artist as well and he builds a design
sets for TV and film said I can build
you a table so he built me this table
except the front part that looks like
the privacy flap there that front part
actually flips open so I could put six
more chairs on the sidewalk so I have
both inside and outside dining but again
it’s an opportunity for us to create a
moment for a guest when they walk into
our space this is looking at seeing what
spoon is stable is this is what you walk
into so this right here and a couple of
people just started to gasp a little bit
when they saw that that’s the moment
that we wanted more than anything else
will you walk in and you see that space
and it’s small and you walk in and you
see this you immediately say wow and for
me that’s the clean slate any
expectation that a guest had when they
walked into that rest
anything that they read any Instagram
post that they followed remarked on
anything everything changed when they
walked into that building and I would
watch it and I still watch it and I’m
very blessed to be able to see it every
night these guests walk in and they say
wow look at this space that for me sets
a clean slate whatever it is that we’re
going to create we have them at the zero
point and we can go up when the
expectation is very high because it
takes two months to get a reservation on
our restaurant the expectation I can’t I
can’t live up to that this allows us
ground zero this is looking into the
space now that ladder I want to show you
kind of a better picture of it so this
ladder right here to the right of the
bar this is one of those moments when we
walked into this space it was a horse
stable built in 1906 okay so it has a
lot of history to it
there’s 18 horse stalls I know that
because I paid for all the fire did
drywall to fix all 18 of them and it was
incredibly expensive but as we were
building the the the station where the
beverages are they’re jackhammering the
ground and also in the jackhammer it
fell through the ground it dropped 20
feet below literally 20 feet now that’s
an issue are two things ones we thought
were slab on grade number two that’s a
$25,000 fix because we’re also we’re now
we’re not slab on grade well we
discovered as we discovered 9
prohibition tunnels below our restaurant
that ladder led me down to those tunnels
there’s not much there there also most
of them are all sealed off we do rent a
majority of those tunnels in Minnesota
Health Department is here don’t worry
there’s ham down there but it’s fine
we found a wide room there about six
months ago that I felt was an electrical
room – all beautiful four-foot wide
stone walls the temperature does not
change no matter what time of the year
it is but this ladder brought me down 20
feet below my space and let me explore
these nine prohibition tunnels and made
me read about the history of this space
even more more than that it gave us a
story when people walk in and they see
that ladder they might not necessarily
think that this is the story behind it
when they asked they’re always blown
away now creating the Majestic moment is
one of the hardest things for us to do
and we try to do it through a lot of
ways through food there’s the latter
again this is my grandmother’s pot roast
now I cooked my grandmother Dorothy’s
pot roast since I was 7 I put it in a
crock pot before I’d go to lunch or
before I go to school I’d come back to
school and I would have dinner what’s
crazy is is that I left that that pot
roast recipe when I went off to live in
Europe and then when I lived in New York
City and worked there for close to a
decade and then when I came back to
Minnesota we started to do this pot
roast again and we changed a little bit
of it just to make it easier on us
because my grandmother’s recipe was a
lot harder so we figured out ways what’s
fascinating to me is that my grandmother
who’s no longer with us her pot roast
recipe that she gave to me on an index
card with the written recipe with her
hand handwritten notes was the top five
most downloaded recipe on the New York
Times website last year and again that
for us is an incredible moment that we
can tell our guests and we explain to
them how much energy we put into
something as simple and as pedestrian
really as pot roast another thing that
we tried to do is we finish everybody
off with cookie tins so this is another
ode to my grandmother when I started
baked you know it was seven years old
and we baked all these cookies Christmas
cookies it didn’t really matter but we
just baked them and as my cousins and my
brother and everybody would come in we
would give him this tin of cookies and
watching their face and their expression
and seeing how simple it was to make him
happy is what got me in love with food
and watching that moment happen every
single day sort of changed my
life for the better so at the end of
every meal its food and stable you get a
little cookie tin filled with all these
treats that our team put together I will
say we’ve had to stop giving the lid
because everybody would steal the whole
tin so now we just give the tin without
the lids so people don’t take it but
it’s a really special moment for us
because it’s the last impression of
spoon unstable but it’s a lasting
impression that my grandmother had on me
that we’re trying to give to our guests
every single night this is a story about
a majestic moment that happened for me
and this is up outside of Lyon France so
every other year this cooking
competition that I was helping run is in
Lyon every two years it’s called the
Bocuse d’Or and I would go to Lyon and
there was one year that we were asked to
go to someone in the Fuad which is just
outside of Lyon it’s about an hour and a
half drive from Lyon so we ended up
taking this drive this exact drive at
the start of the driver was not as
beautiful we were going to go to a
restaurant called Regis and Jacques
Marconi Regis is a three star Michelin
chef to use teaching his son Jacques
Jacques could take over the restaurant
and as we left Lyon it was pouring rain
just point and then else we get halfway
up this mountain and the Sun sort of
starts to come out the clouds spread
apart and also we roll our windows down
and we start to smell and breathe we’re
breathing in this fresh air from the
rain and it’s like this you can smell
everything about the terroir of this
space you smell the peat moss you smell
the mushrooms you smell just the lands
that were driving through what’s amazing
to me is that before I even got to that
dinner I was already so blown away by
just that experience I couldn’t wait to
get to the dinner these people had
created this majestic moment for me and
I hadn’t even shown up so we show up to
the dinner after we go through this
mountain
there’s no artwork the restaurant is
filled with picture windows and all you
do is overlook these mountains you just
drove through and you still have that
sense and that smell and you have
lentils that are all over the ground
that are
you know they’re methodically and
strategically as artwork in plants etc
and you sit down and you eat and it’s
mushrooms and it’s Lloyd lentils it’s
everything that you were just
surrounding yourself as you were making
that drive and they sort of took us off
this path that we just never expected to
be a part of that moment always stood
with me and it made me create two
majestic moments at Sunan stable and the
first one was when we opened up the
restaurant we had a little issue with
with our reservation company they turned
the reservations on one week before we
actually opened so I’m sitting in a
photo shoot and all of a sudden one of
my managers comes up he says chef we
have 250 reservations for this week but
we don’t have a liquor license and I
said how do we have 250 reservations he
said well they they turned the system on
too early I looked at the lady taking my
picture I said you’re done thank you and
I walked away and I said turn it off so
they turned it off and I said okay we
have no liquor there’s no liquor license
we have no staff everybody’s not a week
break what are we gonna do I said give
me all the phone numbers I’m gonna call
every guest myself so I called every
guest and I said listen there was a
mistake and I’m really sorry I know you
wanted to come in tonight we officially
don’t open til Sunday night you come in
Friday and don’t tell anybody you can’t
tweet about it I’ll take care of your
meal I said okay fine of course 200 like
48 people out of the 250 said yes it
wasn’t really a tough sell because I’m
saying come Friday not Monday so they
show up we give everybody a bottle of
champagne right when they show up we
cooked them dinner we give them a rocky
road muffin on the way out and say sorry
for the rocky start but that was the
logistic moment that moment right there
was 248 guests that have become regulars
as soon as sable in Bell for forever
because I looked at it and thought to
myself how do we change this and it
happens every single night if you’re
coming to my restaurant and you’re stuck
in traffic and you’re 30 minutes late
and you call the restaurant you say
we’re 30 minutes late I’m really sorry
and you feel terrible and now you’re
angry and your wife your husband is
angry at you you walk into the
restaurant you give me an opportunity to
make that majestic moment happen by just
giving you a glass of champagne saying
welcome to the restaurant relax and you
watch the body language just drop down
immediately and all of a sudden
everything’s okay
looking for those majestic moments in
your own life is my call to action for
you it’s great because I have to do it
every day and I look to do it every day
and I absolutely adore and treasure that
time when I can do it I love watching
our guests eat and I love watching them
walk out with that majestic moment my
call to action is for you to do the same
do it to people that you don’t even know
do it to people that you surround
yourself with every single day find
something special about that person to
create that hospitality because it’s not
just about hospitality in restaurants
it’s everywhere you look
thank you
[Music]
you
let’s talk creativity the age-old
question of where are we gonna have
dinner tonight it’s something that
thankfully we get to experience by
cooking that answer and we love to be
able to do that there’s a lot of choices
and there’s a lot of competition among
restaurants around the world
especially around the different cities
in the different countries so I have one
called spoon in stable I actually have
two in fact what’s crazy is thank you
what’s crazy is is that the statistic is
in the first year of opening up a
restaurant seventeen percent of those
restaurants closed it used to say ninety
percent which was a false number but it
sounded very dramatic and I that’s great
but it’s not true the reality is though
you put all that blood sweat and tears
and energy into a restaurant and
seventeen percent of them in the first
twelve months goes away as food as
stable is almost three years old but I
opened up a new one called delcor which
is four months old four and a half
months old so it is still you know in
that area that could be a statistic this
is one of our first days it’s been
disabled when we opened up the
restaurant and what’s crazy is I turned
around and I looked at this and I
watched this line grow I never read any
of the press when I opened up that
restaurant I was afraid that I would
believe it whether it was positive or
negative I was afraid that I would
believe what people are writing about us
and about me so I turn around and I look
and I see this line for 20 people 30
people 40 people deep
immediately I think to myself how do you
create a hospitality moment really
important in our business my ego would
love to tell you it’s all about the food
it has nothing to do with the food it
has everything to do with the
hospitality moment so I walked out there
to this stance of people and I said okay
fine well can I give a I had hot cider
I had bourbon that was good I walked out
I gave everybody shots a hot cider a
bourbon what’s funny is the light kept
getting longer because I think they all
figured out that they’d give free booze
so then I realize I’m just gonna open up
at 4 o’clock and they can start paying
me for this liquor creating those
moments is really an important thing but
what’s interesting about subunits table
is that the facade of the building is
very very small it’s very narrow
so when I first looked at this space I
thought to myself the inside was equally
small it was gonna be cozy and quaint it
looked great the snowstorm it would look
great when it was nice outside and then
I walked in and I saw this I saw this
sort of over-the-top space it was
25-foot floor-to-ceiling
it had 90-foot skylight that that ran
the length of this space and I kept
walking through it this is sort of
through our build-out what’s fascinating
is we actually didn’t do a lot to this
space when we took it over it was an
office building
I had cubicles we just walked in and we
demoed all the cubicles out which took
three days because it’s very easy to
demo office buildings and we started to
build it but what as we’re starting to
build any of these restaurants we’re
looking for stories we’re looking for
moments in which we can create the
hospitality moment for the guests or as
I like to call the majestic moment for
the guests this this area here that
front table is a great story it was an
area of the restaurant that was unusable
it was tucked by the bar we had six
seats perched up at the bar and then we
had sort of this dead space my brother
who happens to be a furniture maker an
artist as well and he builds a design
sets for TV and film said I can build
you a table so he built me this table
except the front part that looks like
the privacy flap there that front part
actually flips open so I could put six
more chairs on the sidewalk so I have
both inside and outside dining but again
it’s an opportunity for us to create a
moment for a guest when they walk into
our space this is looking at seeing what
spoon is stable is this is what you walk
into so this right here and a couple of
people just started to gasp a little bit
when they saw that that’s the moment
that we wanted more than anything else
will you walk in and you see that space
and it’s small and you walk in and you
see this you immediately say wow and for
me that’s the clean slate any
expectation that a guest had when they
walked into that rest
anything that they read any Instagram
post that they followed remarked on
anything everything changed when they
walked into that building and I would
watch it and I still watch it and I’m
very blessed to be able to see it every
night these guests walk in and they say
wow look at this space that for me sets
a clean slate whatever it is that we’re
going to create we have them at the zero
point and we can go up when the
expectation is very high because it
takes two months to get a reservation on
our restaurant the expectation I can’t I
can’t live up to that this allows us
ground zero this is looking into the
space now that ladder I want to show you
kind of a better picture of it so this
ladder right here to the right of the
bar this is one of those moments when we
walked into this space it was a horse
stable built in 1906 okay so it has a
lot of history to it
there’s 18 horse stalls I know that
because I paid for all the fire did
drywall to fix all 18 of them and it was
incredibly expensive but as we were
building the the the station where the
beverages are they’re jackhammering the
ground and also in the jackhammer it
fell through the ground it dropped 20
feet below literally 20 feet now that’s
an issue are two things ones we thought
were slab on grade number two that’s a
$25,000 fix because we’re also we’re now
we’re not slab on grade well we
discovered as we discovered 9
prohibition tunnels below our restaurant
that ladder led me down to those tunnels
there’s not much there there also most
of them are all sealed off we do rent a
majority of those tunnels in Minnesota
Health Department is here don’t worry
there’s ham down there but it’s fine
we found a wide room there about six
months ago that I felt was an electrical
room – all beautiful four-foot wide
stone walls the temperature does not
change no matter what time of the year
it is but this ladder brought me down 20
feet below my space and let me explore
these nine prohibition tunnels and made
me read about the history of this space
even more more than that it gave us a
story when people walk in and they see
that ladder they might not necessarily
think that this is the story behind it
when they asked they’re always blown
away now creating the Majestic moment is
one of the hardest things for us to do
and we try to do it through a lot of
ways through food there’s the latter
again this is my grandmother’s pot roast
now I cooked my grandmother Dorothy’s
pot roast since I was 7 I put it in a
crock pot before I’d go to lunch or
before I go to school I’d come back to
school and I would have dinner what’s
crazy is is that I left that that pot
roast recipe when I went off to live in
Europe and then when I lived in New York
City and worked there for close to a
decade and then when I came back to
Minnesota we started to do this pot
roast again and we changed a little bit
of it just to make it easier on us
because my grandmother’s recipe was a
lot harder so we figured out ways what’s
fascinating to me is that my grandmother
who’s no longer with us her pot roast
recipe that she gave to me on an index
card with the written recipe with her
hand handwritten notes was the top five
most downloaded recipe on the New York
Times website last year and again that
for us is an incredible moment that we
can tell our guests and we explain to
them how much energy we put into
something as simple and as pedestrian
really as pot roast another thing that
we tried to do is we finish everybody
off with cookie tins so this is another
ode to my grandmother when I started
baked you know it was seven years old
and we baked all these cookies Christmas
cookies it didn’t really matter but we
just baked them and as my cousins and my
brother and everybody would come in we
would give him this tin of cookies and
watching their face and their expression
and seeing how simple it was to make him
happy is what got me in love with food
and watching that moment happen every
single day sort of changed my
life for the better so at the end of
every meal its food and stable you get a
little cookie tin filled with all these
treats that our team put together I will
say we’ve had to stop giving the lid
because everybody would steal the whole
tin so now we just give the tin without
the lids so people don’t take it but
it’s a really special moment for us
because it’s the last impression of
spoon unstable but it’s a lasting
impression that my grandmother had on me
that we’re trying to give to our guests
every single night this is a story about
a majestic moment that happened for me
and this is up outside of Lyon France so
every other year this cooking
competition that I was helping run is in
Lyon every two years it’s called the
Bocuse d’Or and I would go to Lyon and
there was one year that we were asked to
go to someone in the Fuad which is just
outside of Lyon it’s about an hour and a
half drive from Lyon so we ended up
taking this drive this exact drive at
the start of the driver was not as
beautiful we were going to go to a
restaurant called Regis and Jacques
Marconi Regis is a three star Michelin
chef to use teaching his son Jacques
Jacques could take over the restaurant
and as we left Lyon it was pouring rain
just point and then else we get halfway
up this mountain and the Sun sort of
starts to come out the clouds spread
apart and also we roll our windows down
and we start to smell and breathe we’re
breathing in this fresh air from the
rain and it’s like this you can smell
everything about the terroir of this
space you smell the peat moss you smell
the mushrooms you smell just the lands
that were driving through what’s amazing
to me is that before I even got to that
dinner I was already so blown away by
just that experience I couldn’t wait to
get to the dinner these people had
created this majestic moment for me and
I hadn’t even shown up so we show up to
the dinner after we go through this
mountain
there’s no artwork the restaurant is
filled with picture windows and all you
do is overlook these mountains you just
drove through and you still have that
sense and that smell and you have
lentils that are all over the ground
that are
you know they’re methodically and
strategically as artwork in plants etc
and you sit down and you eat and it’s
mushrooms and it’s Lloyd lentils it’s
everything that you were just
surrounding yourself as you were making
that drive and they sort of took us off
this path that we just never expected to
be a part of that moment always stood
with me and it made me create two
majestic moments at Sunan stable and the
first one was when we opened up the
restaurant we had a little issue with
with our reservation company they turned
the reservations on one week before we
actually opened so I’m sitting in a
photo shoot and all of a sudden one of
my managers comes up he says chef we
have 250 reservations for this week but
we don’t have a liquor license and I
said how do we have 250 reservations he
said well they they turned the system on
too early I looked at the lady taking my
picture I said you’re done thank you and
I walked away and I said turn it off so
they turned it off and I said okay we
have no liquor there’s no liquor license
we have no staff everybody’s not a week
break what are we gonna do I said give
me all the phone numbers I’m gonna call
every guest myself so I called every
guest and I said listen there was a
mistake and I’m really sorry I know you
wanted to come in tonight we officially
don’t open til Sunday night you come in
Friday and don’t tell anybody you can’t
tweet about it I’ll take care of your
meal I said okay fine of course 200 like
48 people out of the 250 said yes it
wasn’t really a tough sell because I’m
saying come Friday not Monday so they
show up we give everybody a bottle of
champagne right when they show up we
cooked them dinner we give them a rocky
road muffin on the way out and say sorry
for the rocky start but that was the
logistic moment that moment right there
was 248 guests that have become regulars
as soon as sable in Bell for forever
because I looked at it and thought to
myself how do we change this and it
happens every single night if you’re
coming to my restaurant and you’re stuck
in traffic and you’re 30 minutes late
and you call the restaurant you say
we’re 30 minutes late I’m really sorry
and you feel terrible and now you’re
angry and your wife your husband is
angry at you you walk into the
restaurant you give me an opportunity to
make that majestic moment happen by just
giving you a glass of champagne saying
welcome to the restaurant relax and you
watch the body language just drop down
immediately and all of a sudden
everything’s okay
looking for those majestic moments in
your own life is my call to action for
you it’s great because I have to do it
every day and I look to do it every day
and I absolutely adore and treasure that
time when I can do it I love watching
our guests eat and I love watching them
walk out with that majestic moment my
call to action is for you to do the same
do it to people that you don’t even know
do it to people that you surround
yourself with every single day find
something special about that person to
create that hospitality because it’s not
just about hospitality in restaurants
it’s everywhere you look
thank you
[Music]
you
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