Eli Sussman On Memes, Mistakes, and Making Fun of Restaurant Life!!

He is the chef and partner of Gertrutes and Gerties in Brooklyn. He's also a cookbook author and food industry meme lord. On this episode, we ask Eli about being a hero to line cooks everywhere. You wouldn't believe how many people between the ages of 29 and 40 that are degenerates want to talk to me when I am at their restaurant.

Watching Michelin star heat from some of the biggest names in the world would Daniel Humbwann hang out with me like probably not and how his satire is reaching a new level with his upcoming buffs. There's a chapter on how to cook your books. Your social media is hilarious and we feel like you capture so much of the industry,

so much of like the perspective of chefs, current day, modern sentiment like your memes with waiting for somebody to show up for an interview just everything everything is good. I saw that one the other day and I was like this is this hits too close right now. Like I can't, you know what I mean? I just happened to do a restaurant like six weeks ago and just like the waiting for somebody

to show up for an interview. I was like, oh, no, it's weird all. Thank you. I cut too deep. I appreciate that and it's it's fun that they're universal and that seems that everyone

can identify with them. I hope that what that means that everybody doesn't feel like they're doing this all by themselves. We are all unfortunately going through the same rituals daily and the same hardships daily and so I use the memes and the reals to kind of centralize everybody's angst about what they're doing with their jobs and everyone's like, oh my god, the same

thing happened to me and so we are all going through it together even if we are alone while we're going through it. Right.

“And it's funny because like a kitchen is a kitchen everywhere, right?”

It's the same shit. You know, if you go stashing in another country if you're here, you're in Chicago, New York. It's just funny how like it's the same thing.

So like everybody's bitching about the same problems, the front of the house is always

the front of the house. Totally. Line cooks are always line cooks and like the weird shit is just like always the weird shit. So it's just like that.

The same fast, the caretakers. Totally everywhere. I find it interesting. Incredibly satisfying when people from like a small independent restaurant where there's like four back of house and it's in, you know,

whatever, a small, really small market, the middle of nowhere. And then you've got someone who works like two, three Michelin star in a huge city. And they're telling the same story. And it's like, how does this happen in, you know, these totally different environments as these same sort of levels and stopping points and the same things happened to everybody,

which is pretty miserable, but it's true. So we're going to do turn in burn and then we'll get into some deeper questions about what you do. Okay. Okay.

So what is a kitchen tool that you swear by that you think more people should use fish spatula, you call it a fish batter of pelthx. I call it a fish bat.

I actually never heard of a pelthx.

Okay. We'll get into that later. What? What are the three Michelin stars? Yeah.

Yeah. Totally. What is what do you read on your podcast? It's a very neat, like we talk about meat soup, like that's very neat.

“What is one ingredient that you always keep stocked at home?”

Salt. Yeah. Okay. I chili crisp. Chili crisp.

Okay. I mean salt. That's a, that's a damn good. When you get a little bit of that. I keep them.

I'll five pound box of diamond crystal at my house. So, you know. Keep the shit up. Yeah. Yeah.

I think the box of kosher salt is ubiquitous in every chef's home. Totally. That's a nice meal that you had in the last month. This is tough. Um, I love foccio Italian specialties and I had a sandwich from there.

“I think that place is like the perfect sandwich shop.”

Uh, that's my go to if I'm in that part of Manhattan. So, yeah. Nice. What is one assumption about the food industry that you are irrationally tired of? That because you work at a fine dining restaurant, you are more skilled than someone who does not work at a fine dining restaurant.

Oh, 100% of great. Yeah. 100%. Wow. That's great.

That's such a good answer. What is the worst advice you were ever given as a young chef? That you need a bunch of knives in order to do your job properly. Don't overstock your tool kit before you know how to properly use these things. Like, you don't need eight knives if you don't know how to use eight knives.

If you do a great buy-on, but um, you know, my first year I didn't need like a, you know, a fish knife to break down fish because I was never doing that.

Right.

Because no one was going to let you touch a fish.

I don't even even do that where I work. So what was the point, you know? I mean, like, those, those early years have felt like you're like, if I just had the right knife, that's going to change everything.

“Oh, I was like, or if I asked me to do anything and it's in my tool kit like, they'll know that I'm serious, you know?”

They're right. I don't know that I'm ready. Yeah, I've got three pillars in case my other two pillars go down during service. I've got that. Somebody said that.

I've got, I've got three. I can play that. I've got to be offset. Yeah. Yeah. It's a rosewood handle.

It's a little more expensive, but I think it's a little more comfortable in the grip. I'm a hoggony. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And last one Eli, since you are such a sandwich, a fishianato, what makes a great sandwich to you? The bread. Mmm. Great bread. Okay, meat.

Good sandwich. Great meat. Bad bread. Terrible sandwich. That's, facts.

Yep. That's, yeah. Spitting knowledge today Eli, I like this. I could talk about sandwiches for an hour, but, you know. Okay.

So I'm going to introduce a new segment, Joe. I know you love when I do this. This one is going to be called in the weeds. Okay. So Eli, we're going to get in the weeds a little bit because there's a lot that you do.

And there's a lot that we want to ask you about and hear your perspective on.

So let's start with this one that I'm always curious about.

If you're at an event as a guest, you're not hosting, you're not on the red carpet there. You're talking to someone who doesn't know what you do.

“When they ask you what you do, what do you tell them?”

I say that I'm the executive chef and partner at a restaurant in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. Because that feels like something that they can wrap their head around. I usually don't jump into the social media stuff. Okay. Right.

You like the king. I'm the king of the lion cooks. The king of the, the memes for all lion cooks everywhere. Everybody the light touches that is my king. Yeah.

You wouldn't believe how many people between the ages of 29 and 40 that are degenerates want to talk to me when I am at their restaurant. That's, that's what happens. Yeah. We're all dirt bag lion cooks. Yeah.

Right. I feel like it's like you wildly become like one of the most well known chefs like among lion cooks. Like through, you're going to be like what you've built. Yeah. It's just awesome.

And like hilarious. You know, I mean, because it's like the number of you guys see like my cooks like share. You know what I mean? Like they post your videos all the time. That it's hilarious.

That's awesome. I mean, that makes me feel good. That's who I'm doing it for. I'm doing it for people in the industry who are having a crappy day and want a little bit of levity before service. And it makes me feel good when people say like, Oh, you know,

at lineup or like during the staff meal. Somebody watched your video and we all thought it was funny. And the same thing happened during service.

“You know, last week, I think that means that I'm doing my job properly.”

You know, and I do consider it a job. Honestly, I do feel like a certain amount of responsibility.

And I do treat it like a second job.

It is. Yeah, you really, you really do a great job of nailing it. It seems like there's a lot of thought that goes into them. It's not just, you know, they're well done. They're well thought out.

They're well articulated. It's like you hit the nail on the head so well. And I want to know, like, be honest. I want to know what you're doing. I want to know what you're doing.

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I want to know what you're doing. I want to know what you're doing. You want to open up a restaurant. Why would you ask that question? If that was your answer.

Damn, because Eli before, so you currently are the chef and partner at Gertrubs. Before that, you've had other restaurants.

“Can you take us through a little bit about the restaurants you've owned and all that?”

Sure. I moved to New York to become a line cook. I had been living in Los Angeles and I had been working in the advertising and marketing industry. A Jason to record labels. So that was our clients.

I really loved working with musicians and music. And that was something that I was super passionate about. Straight out of college. So I lived in LA. I did that.

I did catering on the weekends to earn extra money because I cooked in high school and college as well. And the catering companies turned into me hosting dinner parties on weekends with my friends in Los Angeles. Just like for ourselves, not to sell tickets. And I realized that I liked cooking more than I liked sitting at a desk. My brother was a cook in New York and said, come crash on my floor.

He worked at the Brezlin at that point for April Bloomfield. We went there, Joe. And I moved to New York. I got a trail. My brother set some up for me.

I was unaware that you were supposed to attend all the trails that someone sets up for you before I was going to tell you that.

So I accepted the job at my first trail while on the trail.

And it was the right decision that I think I sort of burned my brother a little bit.

“Because he had gone out on a limb and been like, my brother doesn't know how to cook.”

And can he come mess around in your restaurant. So you blew off the other ones. I did. And I feel bad about it. But I was like, well, I accepted a job.

And we're not going to say, because it's still not going to be about it. He has literally held the grudge this day. And then another place has since closed. But so I started at my own. I started as a prep cook.

And it was like the most magical experience of my entire life. I walked into our production kitchen. There's someone over there baking bread.

Someone was making hot dogs. And I was like, I found my people.

“I wanted to be deeply immersed in like hands on production of large scale meat,”

smoking and fabrication. So it was like the perfect place for me to be because they were doing some butchering, a lot of curing, smoking. And I love sandwiches. I love meat.

And I wanted to learn how to make pastrami and smoked turkey and make hot dogs. So this was like my dream job. It was amazing. I worked my way up the ladder there. I ended up becoming the executive chef of both locations that were open.

So I really just stayed. You know, I became a brunch cook. Dinner, lime cook, sous chef. Like I went through all the stations there. And while we were opening these new locations,

my boss was incubating black seed bagels along with our head baker at the time. So I got to see what bagel operation looked like. It was very thrilling to be a part of something that was both popular. And also a satisfying culinary pursuit. I did that for a long time.

My brother and I branched off to open up Samisa, which is our was our Middle Eastern fast casual concept. And we did that for eight and a half years. Multiple locations around New York, various permutations. In between opening up Samisa and leaving Milandelli.

I ran the restaurant at Rush Myers in Montauque, which was like a very high-end seafood. Operation at a hotel. Chelsea hotels owned that at the time. And that was an insane operation that I kind of got thrown into the.

The fire because I went from managing Miland, which was like a lunchtime spot. And we had about 40ish employees total.

And never did more than like 200 covers at a brunch.

And Rush Myers was 75 employees. And some days we did like 600 covers. And it was like there were like celebrities. And the tickets were higher. And the turn times were insane.

And like, you know, people would sit down with a 12 top. And they would order like all their food at one. Like it was an insane operation. And I really truthfully like didn't really know what I was doing. And I leaned a lot on sous chefs.

And people that I had brought in that were either friends of friends. And I was just like, hey, I'm doing this thing. I know I can make food tastes good. But I need help with just I need you to step up in a real dramatic way. And like, I'm not ashamed to admit even now.

And then like, I don't know how to do everything. I'm at the most technically proficient chef in the entire world. But what I can do is like, I can lead people. And I can get people to do what I want them to do.

“And I can stay on budget, which are two important skills.”

Oh, hugely, hugely important. So I know what I'm good at. I know what I'm not good at. And I'm really good at delegating things out that I'm not good at. And a way where those people feel empowered to do the work.

So I did that. And then we opened up Samisa and ran that for many years. COVID happened. A real big challenge. We opened up in Rockefeller Center.

That was like my last big swing at fast casual. I thought I'm going to open up in Rockefeller Center. I'm going to track venture capital. I'm going to get that big infusion of cash. And I'm going to open up a bunch of Samisa's.

That did not happen. It was sort of a big failure from my perspective. And something that I will have to sit with forever. But that just did not work. I ran something for a really long time.

And it just never got to the level of where I wanted it.

And around the last year that Samisa was open. I got a drink with my now business partner. And he said, I've got a space. And it I'm percolating on the idea.

“And that's how good treats was kind of born.”

Nice. I mean, eight and a half years. You may, you know, obviously closing a restaurant is hard. I, you know, I was by my mother side when she opened and closed restaurants when I was growing up. It's never easy, but running a restaurant for eight and a half years.

Like you can't see that as a failure. That's got like there's a lot of success in that that a lot of people don't reach. Totally. I think the short answer is that it was it was both at the same time. Sure.

But there are a lot of things that I can hang my hat on there.

But it never, you know, you're talking about Roman Empire.

Like I can't actually say that materialized into the thing that I desperately wanted it to be. And I saw some other, you know, you, you shouldn't compare yourself to others, but we always are in this industry. And I saw some fast casual concepts that I think have like an inferior product and not as diverse flavor profiles. Really excelling from a marketing and expansion standpoint. And the back of my head, I'm thinking like.

Samisa's better. It tastes better. It looks better. We just, we couldn't connect with the right people.

And I think what ends up happening is like there's a lot of restaurants.

Like that, we all know really talented chefs and really talented operators. And the restaurants close. And one of the best pieces of advice that I've ever got in this entire industry is. You have to know when to close. And the thing is is like, it was my child before I had children.

I went there every day. I opened and closed it. I did everything, you know. And so it's almost impossible to say, well, this thing isn't working anymore. Because you're too in the weeds about it.

You're too head down. Being like, if I just tweak one more thing, I think that'll be the thing that will make it work. And I really just started to realize that that was echoing in the back of my brain. That this person that I knew would close things before.

He said, you got to know when to close it. And I just thought, this is not working. This is silly. I got to stop putting all of this time and effort and money into something that I'm truly not getting anything back out of, you know.

So we shut it down, which is incredibly sad. But it allowed me to focus full time at Gertrude's. Because when Gertrude's open, I would wake up in the morning. I would drive to Rockefeller Center. I would work a couple hours at Rockefeller Center for Samisa.

I would get to Gertrude's around 1 o'clock. I would prep until service. I would expo until close. And then I would wake up and do that the next day. And that is not a reasonable thing.

A reasonable thing to ask of yourself. And it is also an insane thing mentally to manage. Physically it was okay. But mentally I was probably breaking down. And you could only do like so much of that before they both start to suffer.

Right. And I think like emotional weight of it all too. Right. It's like something we undervalue so much. Like I was talking about chefs before companies.

“The emotional weight of it like the capacity you have to have like during an opening”

or running multiple spots is so tremendous. And it's so hard to like, you know, quantify, right? Like the toll that takes on you. Yeah. After I left La Bernadette and I went to work for Marcus.

I would open its street bird. His fast casual concept. Make sure operates. I would get there like between five and six. Make sure people showed up.

Make sure the prep was getting started when the sous chef came in. Linen's were delivered. Grease trap got cleaned all that. Then I would spend the rest of my day at Red Rooster closing. And I would get maybe four hours of sleep a night if I were lucky. But I usually had prep packing and planning to do for Marcus's off sites.

So I'm going over prep listen my head all night. So I might have actually gotten two hours of sleep a night. And this was like two years. I, you know, it's not sustainable. Even though physically you're like, I got this.

I can push through. You look back on it. And you're like, I probably shaved like three years off of my life. Yeah. And the thing is about our industry is you tell that story to a bunch of people.

And a bunch of people are going to be like, wow. You are incredible. You're a heavy hitter. They're going to like give you a lot of positive reinforcement. And you are.

And that's incredible that you did that.

“But I think it's also important to note that what we're talking about is completely psychotic.”

Yeah. Absolutely. There is nothing about that. That is logical. And also there's no way that you or I or anyone who tells that same sort of story.

Like, we probably weren't doing as good a job as we could have been doing. If we could have just slept seven hours a night and been razor focused on one thing. And it's like, you know, a hedge fund guy sits at his desk for nine hours a day. And he makes a million dollars a year. And you were working 16 hours, 17 hours a day.

You were not making that type of money. You're putting everything you can into something. Whether it's your concept or someone else's concept. And it's like the return on investment is poor for your body, for your mind. Truly financially, like all of these things suffer.

And then at the end of the day, all we really have is like a good story to brag about it. And I'm kind of a bra I'm bra I'm I'm I'm over bragging about the good story. It's like I want to be known as someone who can do something successful. And also one of the smartest things my brother ever told me is.

A restaurant is not successful until the owners do not have to be there every second of operation.

“If you have to be there every second of operation.”

Your restaurant is not successful because you don't actually know how to run a business when you're not there. And I think about that all the time. It's like it's I thought at first when he told me that I was like, that just sounds like a lazy person. But actually it's someone who it's just someone who's really wise. And value you personal time in a way so that when they're at the business, you can be totally present for the business.

You can't really do that when you work 17 hours a day. Right, but I feel like that's how we came up in this industry was like if you were a chef and you weren't there seven days a week and 17 hours a day. Like you weren't serious. You're in a mean, you're some bullshit, you know, just name on the door and you're not really committed and you're, you know, like a lax a day's owner and all that.

And then like you can hire people to do their jobs and then get the fuck out of their way.

“So they can do the thing that you're paying them to do.”

And so they can experience the growth you've experienced. You know what I mean, you can give them the trust that somebody gave you at some point to say like, hey, you got this right. I'm going to leave you got this and like, but it's hard. People want to be empowered and no one likes to be micro managed and also no one wants to feel like they are not trusted in their job. And look, some people are new and some people are good and they need to be hand-held to a certain extent for some of the time.

But there are quality people and if you can delegate to them, they will be happier because they will feel like they have some value within the business and that they provide, you know, a positive benefit on the operations. And then you don't have to close every single night. You don't have to be there at 1230 at night, like doing inventory. When somebody else who's hungry and younger wants to learn how to do that, teach them how to do it so they can do it and then pay them a little bit more money. And like everybody wins, just pay them what they're worth.

And then you don't have to be there all the time because they'll work hard, you know.

“Eli, I really think that I know your new book, what is it called, what, me chef, you chef, we chef.”

Indeed. Which is hilarious. I know people who have like we chef tattooed on their knuckles. I think that like yes, this is satire and it's totally not serious, but you have such a mature perspective on so much of this. I think maybe your next book should be a little bit more serious. Because you have a lot of good info to share.

Like bleed into the satire as well. Well, Eli, we are going to, we're going to skip talking in the walkin because we are just going to go into the walkin for a confession. Okay. We want to hear, this is our segment. So, you know, we all love walkins in our industry.

You go there to cry, you go there to vent to scream, whatever. We go to the walkin to confess something that we have either not fessed up to before. We have not admitted a mistake that we made back in our younger days, but, you know, we're here now. We learned from it and we moved on. So, we want to take you to the walkin so we can get your confession.

Okay. Well, you know, when I was opening up these businesses, the Samisa and another operation that called Edmbeves, when we had this thing in the rockaways, we had locations in Brooklyn and then locations down in the far rockways. And I was sort of, it was intoxicating to have multiple locations. And what I didn't really realize is that if you don't create systems and you're bumping around from location to location,

it's real cool and it looks great to own a bunch of spots, but you're not really doing a good job at any of them. So, what I didn't do was basically make any of them work properly. And that is something that really wore on me as I looked back. And I was like, all I really cared about was the fact that I had multiple locations. Instead of doing one thing well, I was just like, let's open stuff, let's open stuff.

And what I would basically do is we would run out of stuff all the time. And so I was like a chicken with my head cut off and it made it so that I had to drive in my car and buy stuff.

I had to go to restaurant depot because we never ordered properly and we would run out of stuff in the middle of service.

And I was running back and forth and I kind of glamorized this like owner chef where I would like come in to save the day. But I wasn't really coming in to save the day. I was mostly just causing more problems for myself. And then being the only guy, I'd be like, I'm the only guy that could fix it. You know, put myself on this pedestal as being this like amazing operator.

And then I very clearly realize when I looked over at other people's operations and I never saw the owner there. And they always had their stuff stock. If they were selling more product than me and they never run out, I was like, wow, I really don't know what I'm doing.

“And I'm a bit more often I can chew. And I think about that a lot, which is that people rush into opening things.”

They rush into leaving a position to chase a new position or open their own business. And they haven't really stopped to think about whether they're ready for it. And at a lot of junters in my career, I've moved way too quickly. And the advice that I would give to people is actually slow it down, make a plan, formulate a plan, bounce it off. Some people have more experience than you and not let your ego do the driving, which is for the beginning of my career.

I really let my ego do a lot of the driving and I think it ended up to the detriment of a lot of things that I did.

And so that is my that is my confession that I really wasn't doing a very good job for the first several years that I was in operation.

Oh, dude, there's so many of those moments where I think about it, you're just like, oh, man, like what, like you like cridge, you know, it's like those things that we are things you're never from like you.

You're just like, you're like, you're like, show it up in the case of chicken, like, oh, yeah, I got you guys don't worry.

It's like, well, you're the asshole and we're not enough chicken and you're like, right, no, I know, but I got the chicken now. So like I solve the problem to save the day and they're like, we've been standing around for two hours because you don't know how to do your jobs. Right, right, you're like, you know, but he's even thankful that I showed up. I drove all the way across south with this fucking chicken. You're the reason we don't have chicken. It's like, right, but I've also the reason you do have chicken.

“So like, you know, let's give me, let's throw me some fucking flowers here, huh?”

That's such a valid confession because I think a lot of people can learn from that because we've all been there, we've all done that. And hopefully we've all learned from that as well, you know, at some point in our careers, we're like, hope so. Oh, I didn't even realize at the time how many mistakes I was making.

Well, I think the amount of like chef friends who I've had who I've talked to were it's like when they opened their first restaurant and it was something where they weren't ready for it.

Or they, you know, and they've told me over the years, like, they just got so obsessed with the idea of like, I needed to own my own place. And I wasn't ready and I didn't do all the work ahead of it, but I just was, I couldn't get this obsession out of my head that it just had to be mine. So then I compromised and wait too many things on the way in and then so when I got there, I wasn't really ready for it. And like, those are usually the ones I feel like where it doesn't work out.

“Or they figured it out over time if they're fortunate enough to have that time, right?”

Yeah, but it's like everybody doesn't get all the time to figure it out.

Sometimes you gotta, you know what I mean, pack and then move on to the next thing. Totally open the restaurant, shit had gone to therapy, you know? Open the restaurant, shit had just done one more year and another restaurant. All right. Well, I mean, the the Susman's IG account, that is therapy for a lot of us.

“So Eli, thank you so, so much for joining us today.”

This is been so great talking to you. Just a blast. Thank you for coming up. My live cooks are going to be super fucking geeked about this. Well, there's a little shit. So I'm really thrilled that you that you asked me to come on. It's it's an honor and I've been listening and watching and it's really cool.

What you guys are doing with this program and thanks for including me. I appreciate it. That's it for this episode of The Chefs Cut. Be sure to subscribe wherever you're listening and especially if you're watching us on YouTube, where you can find full length video of every episode of The Show.

And be sure to follow us at The Chefs Cut pod on IG on behalf of Joe Flam. I'm Adrian Cheetam and this has been The Chefs Cut. Life beyond the past.