Lessons in Hospitality: How Kevin Boehm Builds Award-Winning Restaurants

TRANSCRIPT

Kirk Bachmann: Hello, everyone, my name is Kirk Bachmann, and welcome back to The Ultimate Dish. Today, we’re honored to have Kevin Boehm—a James Beard Foundation Award-winning restaurateur – and one heck of a cool person.

Kevin is one of the world’s foremost hospitality visionaries with a career spanning three decades and over 40 restaurants opened.

Growing up in Springfield, Illinois, he dreamed of opening a restaurant at just 10 years of age. That vision led him to launch restaurant ventures in the Florida Panhandle, where he opened his first six-table eatery by age 23.

Today, Kevin and his partner Rob Katz helm the acclaimed Boka Restaurant Group, known for earning 13 consecutive Michelin Guide stars for their flagship, Boka, and accolades such as TimeOut Chicago’s Restaurateurs of the Year and Eater National’s Empire Builders of the Year. They also claimed the James Beard Award for Best Restaurateur in America in 2019.

Kevin has spoken at the National Restaurant Show, Miami Food & Wine, Kellogg School of Management, and Lincoln Center’s Welcome Conference. He’s also been named one of Chicago dining’s most powerful influencers.

So get ready for an insightful discussion on the evolution of dining, the power of vision, and the art of exceptional hospitality.

And there he is! How are you?

Kevin Boehm: Hey! I’m good. I’m good. I’m cold today. Chicago is famously cold. Sometimes I think it’s a bit of an exaggeration. It’s no exaggeration today; it is bitter cold.

Kirk Bachmann: It is chilly. I saw that. It’s the one-degree factor, the two-degree factor. And I’m a guy that’s in Boulder, Colorado, and I shouldn’t be complaining about this at all. But I get it. I get it.

Hey, can I just tell you, from a very personal perspective, I’m beyond excited to chat today. I am so appreciative of your time. I can tell you’re in beautiful Chicago. I do see blue skies behind you.

Kevin Boehm: Yeah. It’s sunny.

A Roots Reflection

Kirk Bachmann: Although it’s cold. What people won’t know is that I’m probably out of breath because we had to run to a new venue for better internet. That’s the art of innovation.

What a lot of people don’t know, Kevin, is that we met a couple of Septembers ago at the Roots conference, at the Chef’s Garden. I’m diving right in, buddy. I’m diving right in.

Kevin Boehm: Yeah. Dive in.

Kirk Bachmann: I was so moved just by your presence. Given how busy you are. I am seated again this past year. It’s a very, very special event. It brings some really, really beautiful people together, including Farmer Lee, my buddy. But I thought you brought such insightful conversation around food and sustainability. It really struck me. I don’t work for the Chef’s Garden; I work with the Chef’s Garden. I love them. I believe in what they’re doing.

I’m curious, right off the bat, what did that experience – and the bigger question is experiences like that – mean to you, and how do they shape our future? How do we get this narrative out to more people?

Kevin Boehm: I want to start by saying, if you go back to the 22-year-old version of me, my main goal, what I wanted more than anything, was to be able to sit at the table with great people, the people who were the best at their craft. You go to Chef’s Garden, and you take the bus over from the hotel, and I’m sitting next to Ruth Reichl. Then you go, and twenty minutes later, I’m embracing Farmer Lee Jones. There are two people right there that very few people in history, whether it be critical writing or regenerative farming – there are two of the best of all time right there. One, I’m just grateful to be in the company of those people and to be at the table – this kid from Springfield, Illinois.

But also, I like any event where there is real conversation, not just polite conversation. There was a long time where I would go to events and sit on panels, and nobody would say anything. That’s changed a bit in these last years. When you go to an event like that, people are having real conversations and pushing each other a little bit. This is the tough part of our world right now. We live in a very cruel world sometimes; just check out the comments section on anything on social media. It bothers me because I think we’ve lost the ability to use our collective intelligence to find an answer. Instead, it’s all this black and white where this is what I believe and this is what you believe, and because we have two different beliefs, we must hate each other.

I love it when the restaurant business gets together because we have a lot of issues. People who can throw a bunch of ideas against the wall and see where the conversation leads us.

Kirk Bachmann: What are you doing and how can it impact me? To your point, you had the tent there where there was some formality, but quite honestly, the majority of the really great conversations happened outside of the tent: on the farm, in the corner. Really, really well said.

Before I go any further, I want to nudge and let you know that Stephanie Izard, who I met years and years and years ago before Girl & the Goat. She had recently graduated from a school that I was working with at the time. I was driving back from Aspen a couple of weeks ago, and I listened to her podcast with Andrew Friedman, who you know. He was at Roots this past September, my partner in crime. It was so good. If you haven’t heard it yet – you probably have –

Kevin Boehm: I have.

Kirk Bachmann: It’s so good. I told Noelle that it really raised the bar for me. I’m going to have to listen to that ten times before I get on Andrew’s.

Kevin Boehm: Andrew’s a very close friend. Steph and I have been partners for fifteen years.

Paying Attention

Kirk Bachmann: Isn’t that something? Obviously, we’ve done our research; we’re not stalking. Believe me, we’re fascinated by your story and your history. I’m quoting here, but you mentioned that “Hospitality is about making people feel seen.” I’ve heard a lot of quotes, but I’ve never heard that. I’ve never even thought of it that way. I think it’s so powerful. It’s a powerful idea in an industry that really is all about networking and connection. Can you share, if you don’t mind, where that philosophy came from and maybe how it shaped your approach to building restaurants and relationships?

Kevin Boehm: I think just conversations with people is a microcosm of this. When you have a conversation with someone, and they actually ask you questions and active listen when they are talking to you, it makes you feel seen. Instead of them just waiting for you to end to make their next point.

The restaurant business is sort of the same way. I’ll give you an example. If your restaurant gives somebody a free dessert for a birthday, they can tell that that’s just an automatic SOP. [Standard Operating Procedure] That every time it’s a birthday, it’s in the notes. That goes down. It doesn’t really make you feel seen; it makes you think that you’re part of a set of rules.

If you can do something that shows them that you’re paying attention – and it can be very, very small. Open Table notes, I’ve said for many many years, are only as good as you feed them. If you have something in there that’s personal – I know that their son, John, is now attending Indiana, and I go up to the table and go, “How’s he liking being a Hoosier? I’m going to root against them when they play Illinois, but I hope he’s happy.” That’s a very, very small thing because of a note I took the last time they dined that makes them feel like I remembered them. Their mind doesn’t automatically go to a set of rules or that I even stored it in Open Table. They just think I remember them from a conversation. These are the kind of things that make a meal taste better and make a dining experience feel better. It’s very, very subtle.

Years ago, I went into a restaurant, and the hostess had a newspaper in front of her face. She didn’t hear me walk in. I said to the person I was with that I wanted to see how long it took. A couple of minutes before she put the newspaper down. I knew I was going to have a terrible meal. I knew that if the manager was allowing her to sit and read a newspaper at the host stand that there was probably a whole [set] of different aspects at that restaurant that they weren’t paying attention to.

When you show somebody that you’re paying attention, they think that that aspect hits all the different areas: design, cleanliness, the way we store our food, the way we order everything.

Kirk Bachmann: That triggered a memory for me. I grew up in my family’s restaurant business. My father was adamant about the bathrooms. He was adamant about the bathrooms being perfect: clean, good aroma, thoughtful. We’d hang menus in there. That’s real. You want the bathrooms to be spotless. I think it improved during the pandemic out of pure panic.

Kevin Boehm: Well, one of the first things I ever heard was “hot food, hot; cold food, cold. Keep your bathrooms clean.” That was the core competency of having a decent restaurant.

Still the Same Kid

Kirk Bachmann: And to come back to what you said about being said and just the subtle little thing about being a Hoosier, man, the serendipitous halo effect of that is them telling someone else. And then them telling someone else. You can’t pay for that sort of marketing. Yeah, that’s great. I appreciate that.

I want to talk a little bit about – I’m going to try to make you blush a couple of times today. Rob Report, “50 Most Powerful People in American Dining.” Wow! Kevin, being named one of the individuals on this report in American dining, that alone is a remarkable achievement, and I’m sure you’re incredibly proud, but what a testimony or testament to your influence on the culinary landscape, on the dining landscape in our country. Do you ever think about it like that? Like, “I have an impact. I’m making an impact on something far beyond Chicago.”

Kevin Boehm: There were so many years where I just buried my head and went in and walked a dining room and just did the job. Sometimes these things would happen, and they were really exciting. There are certain things that happen that are very impactful because when I first started out, I would read about the James Beard Awards or even just read about Ruth when she first started, in the New York Times. That’s when I first got a subscription to the New York Times, and I would read her writing about, say, Union Pacific in New York, and it was like I was reading science fiction. It was like, “I know that this is for real, but I’m never going to see it.” It didn’t seem real to me. I was on the back deck of a little restaurant in rural Florida.

When we’re on a list or something like that, I’m certainly grateful, and it still kind of seems like science fiction a little bit. Is that real? Am I really influential at this point?

When my mom turned fifty years old, I remember saying to her, “Mom, you’re fifty? How do you feel?”

She was like, “I have the same insecurities and pre-wiring that I did when I was eighteen years old. I only know that I’m fifty by looking at myself in the mirror.”

Kirk Bachmann: What a great response. Wow!

Kevin Boehm: In a lot of ways, I’m still the kid on the back deck with a little bit of a chip on his shoulder, a small-town chip on his shoulder, with a serious [case of] imposter syndrome trying not to get caught.

Realistically, I look at our company now. We have so many talented people who work for our company. Fortunately, a lot of what these really talented people do shines a bright light on the whole group, which also shines a light on me. I’m fortunate that some really smart people also make me look very good.

Humble Beginnings

Kirk Bachmann: I so love how you deflect to your team. Super humble. I’m not surprised. I appreciate it.

Let’s go back a little further to those early ambitions and the entrepreneurial beginnings. Ambition is a really powerful word. It’s important for people to understand that the work that goes into that is not formulated overnight. Tell me if I’m wrong. Stop me, but your desire to be incredibly successful ran in your DNA if you will. Before we get into Boka, I’d love to hear a little bit more – and our listeners would love to hear a little bit more – about the upbringing to get the full picture. Take us back to 1982, your first job of selling tomatoes in your driveway and the dream that you told your mom about opening a restaurant. Where does that come from?

Kevin Boehm: I have a book coming out…

Kirk Bachmann: Oh! I love it.

Kevin Boehm: It comes out on Abrams. It’s called “The Bottomless Cup.” It comes out in the fall. I had a really crazy childhood. I’m not going to tell all my secrets here because I’ve never told them. I’m telling them in the book for the first time, but I will say that I had a tough childhood. My mom was one of fourteen kids who grew up on a farm. My mom did not suffer fools and lazy people gladly. She was tough in a really great way. She was a hard worker. She was farm labor at age six. We didn’t have very much money, and she was like, “Well, kid, if you want to make some scratch, you better figure it out.”

We had a garden plot at Sangamon State University, my mom did, that they were giving to people. I was like, “Can I have a patch of this to grow my own stuff?” I grew tomatoes and ended up selling them.

Starting at about age twelve, I had two paper routes. I sold tomatoes. As soon as I was able to, I took a job at Hardee’s shaving roast beef. I always had three, four, five jobs going on at the same time. That’s where I got my early self-confidence from: how did I perform in a work setting? Most people think that happiness in life is tied to pleasure, but it rarely is. A lot of times it’s how we feel about ourselves, and a lot of times that’s doing a job and a job well done. I kind of figured out that me working and being successful in a work environment – because I had a lot of other problems – was what made me happy.

Coming out of that, I spent a few semesters at University of Illinois, but I knew I wanted to open up my own restaurant. It seemed like there was a lot of hurry up and wait that was going on. “Oh, I’ve got to get an education. Then I’ve got to interview, and I’ve got to work my way up.” I was like, “No.”

I woke up one day, and I dropped out of college, ill-advised. Didn’t really tell anybody. Didn’t really tell my parents. I just dropped off, and I dropped out and drove to Florida. It went very poorly. I couldn’t get a job at a restaurant. I ended up working in an amusement park. I ended up living in my Jeep and was homeless. It started out terrible.

Eventually, I wrote this beautiful piece of fiction that was my first resume with a bunch of restaurants that had mysteriously gone out of business that they couldn’t call for a reference. I talked my way into a captain’s job at a fine dining restaurant in 1991 or 1992. 1991, I think. That’s where it all started, and I knew within two weeks, “Okay, this is what I’m going to do.”

A Fascination with Fine Food

Kirk Bachmann: I want to come back to a couple more influences, but before that: I read in an interview with Esquire, you said, and I quote: “For me, the restaurant business saved my life. I often found myself keeping the peace in my own home growing up. It was a training ground for hospitality.” I’m just curious. Coming back to your entrepreneurial spirit and the motivation from your mom and such, were there any other influences? Was it a movie? Was it in your DNA? Was it an uncle? Restaurant business, twelve years old, tomatoes: where’s it come from?

Kevin Boehm: Okay, it’s just kind of funny. Because we didn’t have very much money, the landscape of television at the time had a lot of wealthy people in nighttime serials. Most notably, “Dallas” and “Dynasty.” I remember Alexis Harrington having caviar and getting so giddy about it. I was like, “What is happening? What is it about the caviar that makes her so crazy?”

Then I remember on “Fantasy Island,” Mr. Roarke – somebody having him describing oysters as an aphrodisiac. I’m like, “I don’t know what that means, but supposedly it does something to possess these people’s bodies.” Or whatever. I was just fascinated by these tales of either these proteins or these gifts from the sea that I didn’t know about, that seemed so foreign to me. There was a fascination for me with things I didn’t normally see in my own life, including food.

So here I was living in a house where we never entertained. There was nobody who ever came over. We drank powdered milk. If we did go out to eat, it was Arby’s or McDonald’s. I had this vision of a different world, and in that world I entertained and threw parties and ate interesting food. Some of that was the early foundation of me wanting to do this.

The biggest thing was I wanted to throw a party every night and have a bunch of people come and have a really good time. They would make a huge mess, we would clean it up, and we would do it again the next day. Okay, sign me up for that.

Kirk Bachmann: That’s DNA. I can remember being pretty young and thinking I was going to play center field for the Chicago Cubs. That didn’t pan out, but it was the same thing.

Kevin Boehm: Me too! Seriously, that’s the other thing I wanted. I describe it as, when I was young, I loved a lot of things that didn’t love me back, including baseball. I was like, “Well, I don’t have the bat speed, and I can only throw 68 miles per hour, so it’s never going to happen.”

Flipping Restaurants

Kirk Bachmann: But we loved it. Thank God we had some DNA for other avenues. I’ve got all these quotes, and all these facts. It’s all kind of coming together for me. You start your first restaurant in ‘93, wherever the motivation came from. You opened and sold four restaurants by the age of thirty. Most people, let’s just say almost no one, accomplishes that. So many people will listen to this and be like, “If he can do it, I can do it.” I don’t ever want to discount the amount of heartbreak and work and sleepless nights that goes into this.

How do you navigate something like that at such an early age, and then go on to do the amazing things that you’ve done? It’s remarkable, to be perfectly honest.

Kevin Boehm: I was flipping houses, basically. [With] six tables and a back deck, I was never going to make a lot of money with that restaurant. I was paying myself a thousand dollars a month. My lucky break there was Seaside, Florida was on the doorstep of becoming a very famous small town. They filmed The Truman Show there. Time magazine did a huge article on it. Architects were studying new urbanism and the way they planned that little community. Somebody wanted my building and bought me out.

I took that money up the street. There still wasn’t a lot of commercial property. I did a wine bar/sushi bar/rock and roll bar. Some guys from New Orleans were obsessed with my bar and wanted to buy it from me. I was like, “Okay.”

I took that, signed a non-compete, went to my hometown of Springfield, Illinois, opened up a restaurant, and within four or five weeks, we were the busiest restaurant in Springfield. No independent restaurant at that point, I think, in Springfield was on a wait every single night, seven days a week. People didn’t even know what to do with it. They understood waiting at Olive Garden, but they didn’t understand why they were waiting at this kid’s restaurant called Indigo.

I was in the right place at the right time, and some luck, and a lot of hard work. I worked seven days a week. I worked every service. Good things just kept happening. To me, the way I looked at it was, eventually, I’ve got to get to Chicago, San Francisco, New York, one of those three cities. Those were the three main restaurant cities at the time. In order for me to get there, what do I need? I need capital, and I need expertise, and I need my passion to stay intact. [Those were] the three things. The passion was going to be no problem. I was hell-bent and obsessed. The capital was going to be hard. The education was constant.

I made up fifteen cards that were all the different aspects of what I thought the perfect manager was. I took an old Bicycle deck of cards, and I took the outside of it. I turned the card into whatever the aspect was of the manager. It might be touching a table. It might be financial acumen. It might be cocktail knowledge. It might be food knowledge, whatever. The idea [I had] going was that a full deck for me was fifteen cards. At that point, I figured I had three of them. I was issuing myself a card and I was using those as the way I would hire managers. When I hired them, I would assess them for two weeks, and I would give them the amount of cards I’d think they’d mastered. As they mastered another card, I’d give it to them until they had a full deck.

Kirk Bachmann: That’s a whole business right there. We’ll talk offline. “The Full Deck” by Kevin.

Kevin Boehm: The full deck. I haven’t done it in a long time. I still have one of the decks somewhere, but I haven’t done that since the late nineties.

For me, that was the idea. How do I get to Chicago? To quote Simon Sinek, “It’s an infinite game.” There’s no winning or losing at it; you just try to get a little bit better every single day. And for the most part I did that.

Kirk Bachmann: I’m a huge college sports anything fan. I went to the University of Oregon. Eugene, Oregon, probably 125,000 people. Boulder, Colorado 125,000. How many people were in Springfield? I’m just curious how a college town was able to support you.

Kevin Boehm: Springfield, Illinois is 140,000 people, city proper. About 400,000 in the surrounding areas.

Kirk Bachmann: Much more.

Kevin Boehm: At the time, it was the second-biggest city in Illinois. Now, I think Naperville is two, Peoria is three, and Springfield’s four.

Not a Hardware Store

Kirk Bachmann: Yeah, Naperville is absolutely huge.

I just want to get your opinion on this. It just popped back into my head. I was listening to Bobby Bones – the Bobby Bones Show, out of Nashville – on the way to work. They were talking about the restaurant industry. It was a really interesting thing. They’d done all these studies. They were trying to suggest that if the server – it was kind of bugging me a little because they were calling them “waiters” – but between you and me, it was the server. If the server was slightly overweight, the customer was going to order more food. I wanted to call in and say, “You guys have lost your minds. You’ve absolutely lost your minds.” The reason I bring it up is because – a flight attendant, a server – I have such a respect for this industry that going back to what we said earlier: it’s about connections. It’s about making people feel seen. I wasn’t going anywhere there. I just wanted to mention it. It just popped into my head. I couldn’t believe how ignorant – and even Bobby Bones, who I love usually, completely missed the boat here.

Kevin Boehm: I spent a good part of the pandemic as part of the independent restaurant coalition. We were on the phone constantly with senators and lobbyists and chiefs of staff and reps. I felt like I constantly had to explain the restaurant business to them. There’s such a lack of understanding across the board of what we did for a living. I had a stock line that I used all the time.

I remember one of the senators, a prominent one, said to me, “Well, Kevin, I don’t understand. If you get the green light tomorrow, don’t you just go in and turn the lights on and you guys are open that night?”

I’m like, “Senator, we’re not a hardware store. I don’t have power-saws on the shelf. That demi-glace that you had on your steak last night is going to take a little while. I’ve got to go in there, open everything up, clean the kitchen, reorder all the food, prep for a few days. We’ve got to retrain the staff.” I constantly hear people writing about restaurants that don’t understand restaurants. Even people that profess to be in the business, they just don’t really get it. It makes me crazy.

Kirk Bachmann: We’re not a hardware store. I absolutely love that. I absolutely love it.

My father’s a master pastry chef by German standards. He’s still alive today. I just remember my upbringing. Education was really important to me because he didn’t have one. I was going to go to school. You really focused a lot on when we opened the restaurant every day, what are you going to do if…? What are you going to do if you run out of ice? What are you going to do if there’s a power outage? People don’t often give this industry enough credit for how much critical thinking is really involved to try to make every experience for every guest spectacular.

Kevin Boehm: One of my favorite stories: my buddy was in a play on Broadway called “Joe Fearless.” In the play, a basketball court was the stage, and then a man’s small apartment. He had supposedly bet a lot of money on the game. It was a real full court. When my buddy went out there and he was in the play, he was shooting jumpers and choreographed dunks and stuff like that. While they were warming up, he noticed that Philip Seymour Hoffman sat in the front row.

At the end of the play, my friend gets a twelve-foot jump shot. He makes it. They win the game. The guy in the apartment goes crazy. It’s the end of the play. My buddy goes back. He changes clothes. He goes out the side door, and Philip Seymour Hoffman is leaned up against the pole, and he goes, “What happens if you miss it?”

And Michael goes, “It’s a different ending.”

He goes, “What’s the other ending?

He goes, “You’ve got to come on a night when I miss.”

They had written different endings. When he told me that story, I was like, “You’re describing my whole life. We write multiple endings.” We try to think up all the possible situations. What happens if the woman at table seven catches her hair on fire on the candle? Which I’ve seen. What do we get into? She might have the greatest meal of her life; she might catch her hair on fire. Let’s know what we’re going to do in both instances. We’re script writers. It’s a little bit of improv, and it’s a little bit sometimes like a Tarantino script and you don’t want to change a word. When this happens, this is exactly what you do.

Kirk Bachmann: I just love that story so much. Is that show still on Broadway?

Kevin Boehm: No, this was a long time ago.

Kirk Bachmann: Freaking brilliant.

Kevin Boehm: Obviously, the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. An actor friend of mine, named Michael Ealy. He’s a great actor. I think this was like fifteen years ago.

Boka

Kirk Bachmann: What a brilliant concept.

Let’s talk about building Boka Group. Let’s mention Robert Katz. 23 concepts in the portfolio. Namesake Boka. Many stars that have come. Stephanie, who we mentioned earlier. Lee, who I think went to Madison Park. Eleven Madison Park.

Kevin Boehm: Lee was El Bulli in Spain and then when it was the number one restaurant in the world, then he went to Eleven Madison Park was the number two, beside Daniel Humm there. If you look at that Eleven Madison Park beautiful cookbook, all that was plated by Lee.

Kirk Bachmann: Oh my gosh.

Kevin Boehm: That’s where I met Lee. I actually met Lee at EMP when I was dining there. He reached out to us later asking if we were interested in him joining the group.

Over the years, at one point, we had three “Food & Wine” Best New Chefs under one umbrella when we were partners with Paul Virant, Giuseppe Tentori ‘08, and Stephanie in ‘12. Paul was in ‘07. Now, Gene Kato, who has been nominated for a Beard Award, is a chef at Momotaro and at Itoko. Chris Pandel, who has won Jean Banchet Awards with us. Obviously, Stephanie, Lee, Michael Solomonov, who’s won the James Beard for Best Chef in America, and he’s won for Best Restaurant in America that we’re partners with in New York. Yes, some really amazing chef talents that I get to hang with on a daily basis. It’s pretty awesome.

Kirk Bachmann: I just love it. Can you take us back to the early days when your partnership formed with Robert and what the vision was? And also maybe, Kevin, how that has transformed over the years. Maybe even how your role has changed a little bit as time has gone on?

Kevin Boehm: People joke that when Rob and I first became partners, when Boka first opened, that I would walk in, and I would turn the lights up and the music down, and he would turn the lights down and the music up. That said a lot about who we were in the beginning. I was a little more fine dining. I was a little more country, and he was a little more rock and roll. We’ve kind of found a happy medium with each other.

But in the beginning there were more stark differences than there are now. I think he was more macro-business; I was more micro-business. I was more the guy on the floor, even though he was on the floor, too. It all bleeds into each other now after 23 years together. We agree 97 percent of the time. That’s why the partnership worked.

Editing in Life

Kirk Bachmann: Are there different endings when you don’t agree?

Kevin Boehm: When we don’t agree, the rule always was “nobody draws a line in the sand.” If you disagree, you need to make a compelling argument to the other person. The other people need to show grace every once in a while. If the other one is super passionate about something, we let them have it, and we don’t hold it over them if it doesn’t work out. We go with our instincts a lot, him and I. We’re very good friends, which certainly helps. We’ve really only had one or two fights in 23 years. It’s remarkable.

Kirk Bachmann: It’s amazing.

Kevin Boehm: We don’t take that for granted. We’re grateful for it.

It’s different today because we’re 3000 employees in several different states. The work is different. I walked a dining room six days a week for about 24 years. I worked 9 a.m. to midnight six days a week for like 24 years. It’s a little different now. After back surgery and all that stuff, I have to pick my spots more. I work earlier. We’re a big company to run. I travel more. I don’t walk dining rooms quite as much anymore. At openings, certainly, I’m there all the time. When we opened Laser Wolf in New York, I worked 30 straight services in a row.

When you get this big, you really have to decide, “Where is the most important place for me to be tonight? What needs me the most?” In some cases, what needs me the most is my kids at a basketball game. I have a little more balance in my life now, thank God. I still work really hard, but I’ve got more balance.

Kirk Bachmann: My wife, Gretchen, who adores everything you guys do by the way. We met in Chicago. She’s going to love that you just said that – what matters most – for that reason. Because the Oregon Ducks were in the Rose Bowl, I dropped everything I was doing, and I was at that Rose Bowl even though it didn’t end the way we wanted to.

Kevin Boehm: As well you should have been. You have to pick those spots. Where should I be tonight? There’s a great line at the end of “Against the Wind” with Bob Seger. He says, “My life now is what to leave in and what to leave out.” I think he was talking more about editing in songwriting and editing in life.

I make some really smart moves these days. Even the way that I schedule my meetings, I’m very intentional and very deliberate about the way I do everything, so I can buy little pockets of time back that I need so I can keep mentally strong. That’s been a big part of my journey. It’s a big part of the book. I was kind of a troubled kid who threw all of his insanity at ambition. That worked for a while, but then eventually, it can combust. And it did during the pandemic.

Music and Culinary Superstars

Kirk Bachmann: I can’t believe how many notes I have here, Kevin, talking to you. So many nuggets. I love Bob Seger by the way. I’m going to come back to Boka in just a moment because I want to talk about maintaining status quo while inventing for the future. But when you brought up Bob Seger, sometimes I bring this up on the show, sometimes I don’t. Almost anyone that I talk to in the business is either really into music, or they’re into motorcycles, or both. Which is it for you? I’m thinking maybe music is a big part of your life.

Kevin Boehm: It’s music. Music’s a huge part of my life. I’m just looking right now inside my house, and there’s a painting of Joni Mitchell on the wall. There’s a picture of John Coltrane on the wall, and there’s a picture of the Buckingham Nicks on my wall. The guitar in the corner. Music’s been a big part of my life my whole life. I did have a restaurant in Nashville at one point. I did live music for a long time.

I have a private club here called Beyond and the foundation of it is wellness, but we’re just starting to do big name shows there. We just had Sarah McLachlan play there a couple weeks ago.

Kirk Bachmann: Oh my goodness.

Kevin Boehm: For a hundred people, which is amazing. I’ve been very blessed to be in some fun musical rooms in my life.

Kirk Bachmann: I have this constant chill running through me. When you walk into our home – it was a gift from my wife. I’m a little older than you, buddy.
Kevin Boehm: You sure about that?

Kirk Bachmann: I have the lyrics to “Rapper’s Delight” framed up on the wall. It’s a conversation starter.

Kevin Boehm: What year were you born?

Kirk Bachmann: ‘62.

Kevin Boehm: Okay, you’re a little bit older.

Kirk Bachmann: I love you more and more all the time. I love you more and more all the time.

You know Bobby, Bobby Stuckey, right? You worked a little bit with him during the pandemic and such.

Kevin Boehm: Absolutely. We worked a lot together during the pandemic. I’m going to say we were on at least 500 Zooms together.

Kirk Bachmann: Isn’t that something? You guys worked so, so hard – and it’s so appreciated – particularly for us here in Boulder. I wanted to bring him up because he has a super sexy, cool place in Denver called Sunday Vinyl. I was telling Curtis Duffy – this was a year ago, Curtis was coming to Red Rock to see Nine Inch Nails for a couple of shows. I said, “You’ve got to stop in Denver and see Sunday Vinyl.” He absolutely loved it. Just loved it.

Kevin Boehm: I also have a Macintosh sound system and a listening room in my private club. Bobby and I have gone back and forth.

Kirk Bachmann: I love it. I just love it. He’s so good to us, too. One of our classrooms is named after Frasca.

Kevin Boehm: Aw, I love that.

Kirk Bachmann: Super cool, the Frasca Learning Lab. Yeah.

Kevin Boehm: At the Boka 20th anniversary, we had this idea that we wanted to have the best of the best working that night in the front of the house and in the back of the house. We do in the back of the house a lot of the times [have] chefs guest-chef, but I was like, “Bobby, would you come and actually work the floor as a somm [sommelier]?”

He was like, “Sure.” Then I called Will Guidara, one of my best friends, and I was like, “Will, you want to work the front door?” He was like, “Absolutely.” Then, I was like, “Ivy Mix you want to bar-tend that night?” She’s like, “Yeah.” And then Donnie Madia was running food. I was working all those positions with them. It was amazing.

Kirk Bachmann: Think about the work that went into develop[ing] those [people], because they are telling those same stories about Kevin being at their [sides]. It’s so fun to watch, right? 20 years for Frasca this year, 20 years for you guys. We do some things with Kristen Kish now, so she comes to town now and again.

Quick Bobby story: we have a film studio in Chicago, so the next time I’m there, if you’ve got five minutes, I’m going to show it to you. It’s where we do all of our online cooking content and stuff. It’s in River North, right on Orleans street.

Kevin Boehm: I live at Orleans and Huron, that’s where I am right now. Mr. Beef is right there. I’m right next to him. I live right next door to Mr. Beef.

Kirk Bachmann: I love it! So yeah, you literally could throw a pebble over to the studio. It’s called Studio E. Last year around this time, we did this investors’ dinner, very intimate. Maybe twelve people. I flew chefs in to cook the food and all this. I was like, “I need wine. I need wine. What am I going to do?”

I go home, and I’m stressing with my wife. “What do I do?” She goes, “Call Bobby. Just call Bobby.”

So I call Bobby, who calls somebody who is a rep in Scarpetta in Chicago. This amazing human being showed up and poured all the wine, talked about all the wine. Very successful event. It’s all about relationships.

I’m getting way off track here.

Kevin Boehm: Let me know when I can come to the school. I’ll come anytime and talk.

Kirk Bachmann: Oh my God, I would love that! Our online population is a little bit older, career changers, things like that, but our ground campuses – Boulder and Austin – very young. 24 years and younger. They hang on every word. The fact that we have young people today that want to do this is fascinating to me.

Kevin Boehm: My favorite people are the people that have got the bug and have the fever, and are so excited about it because I feed. It’s contagious behavior. I feed off of it. Love young people who’ve got the bug and are ready to rock.

What’s really funny is that I know there were some critics in the early going that were going, “Oh, “The Bear” is bad for this business. Blah. Blah. Blah.” It’s actually been the opposite from where I stand. I’ve had so many people who watched that show and have been inspired to be in the restaurant business because of it.

Kirk Bachmann: Right? It’s so funny that you say it’s right down the street there. I ran Le Cordon Bleu right down the street there for many, many years. We lived there. We lived there. Season Four, Episode Two, I think it was, “Forks” of “The Bear” where the cousin learned the importance of…

Kevin Boehm: Yeah, Season Two.

Kirk Bachmann: Season Two. Season Two. I’ve been doing this a long time. It sort of changed my life. You mentioned Will. It’s standard equipment for every employee here in Boulder is unreasonable hospitality. It’s got to be on their shelf. It’s hard to explain. You have to live it.

Kevin Boehm: Will and I are exceptionally close friends; we talk every week.

Making Space to be Creative

Kirk Bachmann: Isn’t that something? I just love hearing about those kinds of relationships and those kinds of bonds.

Along those lines, Kevin, I was going to ask. You’ve sort of touched on it, but it’s one thing to manage your portfolio with Robert. It’s a lot. How do you arrange your calendar to know that you have time set aside to think about what the future looks like? What’s next? How do you even think about it?

Kevin Boehm: You know, it’s so interesting. I don’t arrange my calendar specifically. I don’t intentionally put in there “Spend these two hours to think about what’s next,” but I do give myself space that I didn’t used to. I used to just fill up the calendar until it was full. I give myself two-hour windows every single day in order to either return emails, or if I’m having a rough day, go take a yoga class or whatever.

The way I stack meetings now is a lot of times I have seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven and a twelve, and maybe some half-hour meetings in there, and then I keep twelve to two open for myself. Then I’ll book a two, three, four, and five. That’s a lot of times what the schedule looks like, anywhere from eight to twelve meetings in a day, but I give myself these little two-hour windows. That way, if I need some wellness or I need to think about something, or if I need to brainstorm, or if I need to be creative. Also, an airplane. I love being on a long flight. It allows me to just think and be creative.

One of the dangers of social media is when somebody does something good and unique, then 18 other people do the same idea. It’s like TV used to be. “Beverly Hills 90210” would come out, and then you’d see “The Heights.” And then there would be eleven other TV shows that were just like it but not as good. Same thing with the restaurant business. Having truly creative ideas now? Throughout the years, we’ve had some weird ones; ones that didn’t work and ones that [do]. We just talked about this the other day. We still need to be weird. Even if we poke holes in the idea, let’s still be weird sometimes and come up with things.

When we opened Boka, we had to get a cellphone booth inside the restaurant. It said on the menu, “If you’re going to use your cellphone, please use the cell phone booth.” It was in the foyer, and you went in. It had this really great reception. It sounded great in the room, and it was all padded. It didn’t really work as a cellphone booth – people went in there all the time. A lot of times they’d sit across from each other – but we got a ton of press for it. It was worth it.

Kirk Bachmann: I can’t believe I’ve never heard that before. That should be on television.

Kevin Boehm: That was on “Today.” I was on “The Today Show.” I was on “Good Morning, America.” It being great press; it was better press than it was functional.

We did a wine list back then that for every grape varietal, there was a female winemaker and a male winemaker.

Kirk Bachmann: Thoughtful.

Kevin Boehm: If we were having to replace a cabernet from Costa Rica, we might have to find a female winemaker that was making it. It was a very difficult list to maintain and look at, but it made things interesting for people. Whenever we’re doing a concept, we’ll look at the core competencies of what it needs to be to be a steakhouse, and here’s all the ways we can bend it.

Having those moments to be creative and think about weird ideas and then send a text to everybody. “Hey, what if we had an on-deck circle for the next table that’s coming up? And what if there’s a kitchen person behind it, and we actually did an amuse in the on-deck circle.” It was like a half-circle. It had six spots, and right before you got sat, you got there, and you got the little amuse course, and there was a little welcome drink. Then you went to your table. Then everybody starts to poke holes. “What if we get backed up? What if we’ve got to seat two tables at one? How does that person get tipped out?”

Kirk Bachmann: What if, what if, what if. Yeah.

Kevin Boehm: It’s all the what-ifs.

Kirk Bachmann: But that unreasonable hospitality. Before I come back to Will and that whole concept of the art and science of hospitality, I have to say – not this past Christmas, but the last year, the family and I all came to Chicago to see the Rockettes and all that. Maybe we were in New York; that’s where the Rockettes were. We were in New York. I have four kids, and my son’s fourteen. He saw a payphone in this hallway at the bottom of this giant convention center. He had never seen a payphone. Of course, it became an Instagram moment and all of that. I’m going to put a cellphone booth into the school. I absolutely freaking love it.

Kevin Boehm: There you go.

The Basics for Success

Kirk Bachmann: Let me come back to hospitality. You’ve mentioned in the past that hospitality is not always a two-way street. One of your mantras is “Be nice, be calm, get cold drinks in their hand and hot food on the table.” Quote-unquote. I love how intentional that is, Kevin. There’s nothing to be questioned there. “Be nice. Be calm. Get cold drinks in their hand and hot food on the table.”

Kevin Boehm: You solve 99 percent of the issues that you have inside of a restaurant.

Kirk Bachmann: Right. One hundred percent.

Kevin Boehm: Because people come in cranky, or they have high expectations, or they’re hungry, or they want something right away, or they’re nervous. All of those things are usually solved by getting something in front of them. Part of the reason Laser Wolf is such a brilliant concept is because immediately, you get salatim and warm pita, and that comes out very, very quickly. It’s conversational. It gets some food in people’s bellies right away. People are happy in some way.

Kirk Bachmann: Because there’s anxiety sometimes coming into a restaurant, wondering if you’re going to get a table. “I don’t want to sit over there.” I absolutely love it.

Kevin, for students and others that will listen to this podcast – and again, I come back to it doesn’t happen overnight – but for those who are passionate enough to want to become hospitality professionals, in just a couple of moments or less, how should they prepare? What do you need to think about on a day-to-day basis to be somewhat successful – at least satisfied – with this industry?

Kevin Boehm: I’m going to start here. First of all, you have to decide who you want to be. There’s a whole bunch of different archetypes and people and jobs that you can be within the restaurant business. A lot of times when I’m talking to a chef, I’m like, “Who’s career would you like to emulate?” [It] tells me a lot about who that person is. Are they a real kitchen chef? Are they somebody who wants to be the tough guy chef? Are they interested in being a TV chef? There are a whole bunch of variables there, but we’ll take it more broadly.

I’d say, if you want to be great – if you truly want to be considered great by people, you have to have a foundational knowledge of everything. If somebody came to me and they go, “I want to be in the restaurant business, and I don’t know anything about it,” I’d go, “I’m going to give you twelve jobs in twelve months. Try to get as good as you can at all of them.”

Month one, you’re going to expedite. You’re going to expedite with a really tough executive chef. You’re going to learn how to expedite. He’s going to teach you a lot of stuff. You visually are going to be able to see the food. You’re going to see how the line works. You’re going to be able to call out an order. You’re going to see how timing works from the kitchen to the front of the house.

Then I’d go immediately from expediting to the front door. I’d say, nothing controls the economy of a restaurant more than the front door does. If you are aggressive at the front door, you can make a million dollars more in sales every single year. If you sit back and are worried that everything be exactly perfect all the time – everybody gets sat, there’s never a table not ready – you’re going to cost yourself a lot of money that a little hospitality could have taken care of. You’re going to learn how to deal with people, talk to people. You’re going to have to manage people that are out here.

Then I would have them serve. They’d have to learn about food, they’d have to learn about wine, and they’d have to learn how to talk about both of those things. They’d see the timing of the restaurant from the other side.

Then I’d have them go work in the accounting office, so they understood that there’s a financial aspect to this thing, that if we can’t make this thing pencil, you can’t continue doing the art.

Then I’d have them do an opening because an opening is just pure chaos, so they would understand what a critical path was. How you create a culture, and how in each restaurant it’s different. You can’t blueprint it.

That’s it, to me. It’s really hard to manage people or be successful if you don’t know all the little intricacies. If you don’t know how to build a slot system on Open Table, or a flex system, rather. If you don’t know how to map that out and book it and how it works, you’re ultimately going to cost yourself money if you can’t manipulate that system. I’m constantly telling people in my company, “become an expert in all these things. It’s the only way, if you want to be a great operator someday and really make money – because it’s really freaking hard to make money in this business.

Kirk Bachmann: Do you have this written anywhere? The front door controls the economy of a restaurant.

Kevin Boehm: It’s in my book.

Kirk Bachmann: I can’t wait until the book comes out. “The Bottomless Cup,” Abrams Press, right?

Kevin Boehm: Yes.

Kirk Bachmann: It comes out in the fall, right?

Kevin Boehm: Yeah.

The Addiction of the Restaurant Business

Kirk Bachmann: You said, Kevin, once, “Scratch at most restaurants and you’ll reveal an addict.” What does that mean?

Kevin Boehm: Scratch most restaurateurs, and you’ll reveal an addict. A lot of us have taken a circuitous route to get to the restaurant business, but what I’ve found out is that the people who have had real trauma in their lives are pretty good at the restaurant business. When I got into the restaurant business, I wasn’t emotionally affected by a 20-plate pickup or getting triple-sat. It was just like, “Okay.”

There are a lot of people in the restaurant business that I’ve met over the years that have addictive personalities, especially the people that I grew up with in this business. They loved this idea of nosediving the plane just to pull it back up again at the last moment. We would run so close to it going off the rails, but it never would. Then we’d get done, and we’d be like, “Well, that was worth it.” It was this adrenaline rush.

Kirk Bachmann: The rush. Yeah.

Kevin Boehm: I was an adrenaline junkie. I was lucky enough to be in a small part of “The Bear,” the season finale, and that was actually my line. I said, “I’ve been an adrenaline junkie my whole life.”

Kirk Bachmann: I remember. I remember.

Kevin Boehm: And I have been. I’m not as much anymore, but that’s what I found. Most of these people, they have an addictive personality. It worked within the restaurant business, and a lot of restaurateurs get addicted to these openings. That was [it] for me. I was constantly trying to build manic moments. I would get one restaurant done, and I’d be like, “Okay, how do I feel that again? Give me that feeling again. I loved that rush. Let’s go.”

I’m one of many.

Celebrity Moments

Kirk Bachmann: I think right after that last part of “The Bear” – they kind of did it in two sections – I was in a hotel in downtown Chicago. I was just returning from breakfast or something, and I looked over at the fireplace, and Jamie Lee Curtis was sitting there. I’m like, “What do I do? What do I do?” So of course, I went right over to her. Can I just tell you, she was amazing. She was just amazing. She was by herself. No drama. Waiting on an Uber. She couldn’t tell me.

Of course, me, I’m like, “Freaky Friday. I loved Freaky Friday.” She’s like, “What about ‘The Bear.’”

Kevin Boehm: I’ve had a lot of amazing celebrity moments in my life. Probably my favorite – also because of where I was, I was at Gotham, and sitting right behind me…my favorite comedy of all time without question is “Tootsie.” Jessica Lange is sitting right behind me. Not somebody that you would see out a lot. She was married to Sam Shepard. She’s royalty. She’s amazing, an Academy Award-winner. We were up in the little platform where there are only two tables at Gotham, us and Jessica’s table.

At the end of the meal, I was like, “Ladies, I’m so sorry to bother you, but Miss Lange, I just want to say to you, I think you’re magical.”

Her friend goes, “You nailed it. She is magical.”

She goes, “Aren’t you just lovely?”

As I was leaving, I turned around off the platform to look back and her, and she went *kiss sound* and blew me a kiss!

Kirk Bachmann: Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!

Kevin Boehm: It was like from a movie or something.

Kirk Bachmann: Life is good.

Kevin Boehm: The whole dialogue couldn’t have gotten better. I got in, I got out, I was efficient, she blew me a kiss. It was pure magic.

Kirk Bachmann: Memory.

Kevin Boehm: That’s my favorite non-being inside my own restaurant experience.

Kevin Boehm’s Ultimate Dish

Kirk Bachmann: And sharing with us.

Well, I’m having a celebrity moment right now, I want you to know. You don’t have to blow me a kiss, but I’m so appreciative. I want to be cognizant of your time, but I can’t let you go until I ask you one more fun question. The name of the show is The Ultimate Dish. In all your travels and all your restaurant openings, and all your experiences, Kevin, what is the ultimate dish?

Kevin Boehm: My gosh. What’s the best dish I’ve ever had in my entire life?

Kirk Bachmann: It could be a memory. It could be a specific dish. Yeah.

Kevin Boehm: Man, oh man. I have so many. I’m a believer in the emotional moments that can happen within a meal. Really pushes it over the top. At the end of the day, who was with you, who did you encounter? I’ll actually tell you a night of service that’s really important to me.

When we opened Laser Wolf, I looked on the books that night. Amanda Kludt was at a table, who was a national editor of “Eater” at the time. Kate Krader was in the dining room, who was the food editor for Bloomberg, used to be the editor for Food & Wine. Dana Cowin was in the crowd.

Kirk Bachmann: Wow.

Kevin Boehm: Ottolenghi was having dinner, and Ruth Reichl was having dinner.

Now, Ruth I had never met before at that point. When I first started my very first restaurant, I had subscribed to the New York Times because it made me feel really cool. I would read her reviews. I have a review of hers that’s framed on my office wall because she had written about a restaurant, and then I had gone to New York and dined at that restaurant. I got to match up her experience with mine. It was an incredible moment for a very young restaurateur.

I went up to her, and I go, “Miss Reichl, you don’t know me, but my name’s Kevin. I’m one of the owners here, and I want to tell you a story. My favorite review of all time, I actually have it framed, and it’s yours. It’s on the wall of my office.”

She goes, “What review?”

I go, “Union Pacific.”

She goes, “’The woman next to me is moaning.’” That’s the first line of the review. She knew it instantly.

Kirk Bachmann: Oh my gosh!

Kevin Boehm: I said, “That’s it.”

She goes, “Why do you have that up there?”

I go, “For several reasons. I thought the review was funny. I thought it was well-written. I thought it was amazing. Then I dined at the restaurant. It speaks to who I was a long, long time ago, and when I look at it, it makes me feel very innocent in this business again. It’s an honor to meet you. When I would read about you writing about restaurants, it inspired me. It made me dream. I’m just so honored to be here with you tonight.”

At the end of the dinner – at Laser Wolf, you get soft-serve at the end of the night. We have a different soft-serve every couple of weeks. I dropped it in the center of the table. She had told me that the fries there were the best fries she ever had.

I go, “And just if you want to dip them, here’s some fries as a vehicle.” I kept walking. I cleared a couple of tables. When I was walking back, she grabbed me by the arm, and she leaned in and she goes, “Kevin, this time it’s me that’s moaning.”

I was like, “That’s it!”

Kirk Bachmann: That is! That’s close to the Jessica Lange moment.

Kevin Boehm: I can retire now!

Kirk Bachmann: Oh my gosh.

Kevin Boehm: It wasn’t my dish, but a dish that I served. That moment was the most fun I’d had working in a dining room in a long, long time.

Kirk Bachmann: Can I tell you? We’ve done over a hundred of these shows, and your ultimate dish will be remembered as a night of service, and it is a perfect answer. An absolutely perfect answer.

I think, Kevin, we are coming in right under the wire, so that we’re not going to delay you. Kevin, thank you.

Thank you for listening to the Ultimate Dish podcast, brought to you by Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts. Visit escoffier.edu/podcast to find any materials mentioned during the podcast, including notes, links and other resources. And if you can, please leave us a rating on Apple or Spotify, and subscribe to support our show. This helps us reach more aspiring individuals ready to take the next step toward their dream careers. Thanks for listening.