Hosea Rosenberg: The Boulder Chef Who Turned New Mexican Roots Into Restaurant Gold

TRANSCRIPT

Kirk Bachmann: Hi everyone, my name is Kirk Bachmann, and welcome back to The Ultimate Dish. Today, we’re honored to have Hosea Rosenberg, award-winning chef, culinary entrepreneur, and owner of two celebrated Boulder restaurants: Blackbelly and Santo.

Renowned for his commitment to local, seasonal ingredients and sustainable sourcing, Hosea’s culinary journey began while studying Engineering Physics at the University of Colorado – let’s go Buffs. What started out as a job to pay for school quickly became a lifelong passion.

After training with legendary chefs such as Wolfgang Puck, Kevin Taylor, and Dave Query, Hosea rose to national fame as the winner of Top Chef Season 5. He went on to found Blackbelly — first a catering business and food truck, now a full-service restaurant, butcher shop, and market known for house-made charcuterie and ethical sourcing.

In 2017, Hosea launched Santo — a tribute to the Northern New Mexican cuisine of his childhood in Taos.

In 2024, he opened Blackbelly Market Denver, a deli-forward outpost focused on meat curing and daytime fare.

His accolades include a Michelin Green Star for sustainability, Michelin “Recommended” status for both restaurants, and recognition as Best Chef at the Denver International Wine Festival.

He’s also been honored as a Guest Chef at the James Beard House, 2022 Hero of the Year by Conscious Alliance, and Outstanding Philanthropist by the Colorado Restaurant Association. The U.S. Small Business Administration has recognized him as a leader who inspires entrepreneurs nationwide.

So get ready! Get ready for a powerful conversation about integrity in cooking, honoring your roots, and turning passion into purpose.

And there he is! How are you, chef?

Hosea Rosenberg: I’m great. Thanks for having me on today.

Kirk Bachmann: Absolutely. There’s a lot there. We’re going to try to dive in and get through it all. First I have to ask about the backdrop. Is that virtual, or is that real? Is that at the restaurant?

Hosea Rosenberg: This is real. This is our wallpaper in our private dining room. It goes way up.

Kirk Bachmann: I love that. I love that.

Hosea Rosenberg: We have a private space here in the restaurant, trying to find something quiet.

Kirk Bachmann: Because there’s usually noise everywhere. “There he is. There he is.”

Hosea Rosenberg: I was just in the kitchen. You would not be able to hear anything if I tried to talk in there.

Kirk Bachmann: Can I just tell you before we kick off, as a Boulder local for at least the last fifteen years, it means so much to have someone like you, your team, your family, Blackbelly, Santo as part of the community. Your presence, your philanthropy, your popularity. I remember eating at Jax when you were probably a teenager, running that show, having the time of my life. I just want to say thank you. I’ve been hoping to get you on the show for a very, very long time, and here we are. I may not let you go. Thanks so much.

What’s going on today? You’re at the restaurant. Just to set the tone for our listeners.

Hosea Rosenberg: Sure, yeah. Sort of a typical day for me. As you mentioned, I’ve got a number of irons in the fire. We’re also a couple of weeks away from opening Santo at the airport – at DIA. There’s a lot going on there. We actually have another project in the works that my wife will kill me if I bleed too much of this. We are going to be doing another project here in Boulder soon.

Kirk Bachmann: I love it. I love it.

Hosea Rosenberg: I’ll be hitting you and your students up for an army of helpers when that day comes.

From Engineering to Restaurants

Kirk Bachmann: I double-checked that. We’re so blessed and so fortunate that you’ve been able to provide experiences for our students over the years. I was telling earlier how much my family – my wife, Gretchen, is probably more excited about this. Every other week, it’s “Well, when are you going to have Hosea on the show? Well, I thought you were a big shot. When are you going to have Hosea on the show?” She’ll be super, super pumped. I threw a little love out there for the Buffs.

Your story is anything but ordinary, chef. You went to the University of Colorado. Tell us about Engineering Physics. What is that?

Hosea Rosenberg: Well, I’ve always been good at math. I’ve always liked math – one of the odd ones, I guess. I didn’t exactly know what I wanted to do when I grew up back when I was a teenager. And thank you for saying that, but I’m fifty-one now, so I’m far from that. Back when I was in school, I wasn’t really sure what to do. I was very interested in astrophysics, astronomy, that kind of stuff. I was going to school, and I had a really cool experience at CU. Loved going there. I worked in restaurants the whole time I was in school because I needed money. It was something you could do at night and on weekends and still do well in your classes. I always loved restaurants. I made a lot of lifelong friends during those years.

I was thinking my purpose was science and engineering. I had a job that was funded by NASA. I had a NASA grant to study solar flares up at NOAA, doing what I thought I wanted to do. But I was bored to tears. I was in front of a computer all day just filling out spreadsheets. It just wasn’t fulfilling me. I kept thinking about the restaurants and kitchens and cooking. I was thinking that I actually needed to go to culinary school.

Ironically – and I’m talking to you today about this – but one of my mentors, I was trying to pick his brain and figure out what I should do. He was like, “You owe all this money for college. You’ve got student loans you’ve got to pay back. You’ve been cooking for years now. What you really should be doing is applying what you’ve learned and working under someone really good. Find someone that will teach you.” And that’s what I did.

I’ve done some guest teaching at your school and I deal with students all the time. I would never tell you not to go to school. You have to look at where your life is at that moment. For me, at that time, it was time for me to just work. I learned on the job. I bought all the cookbooks I could afford. I invested in a few knives and a couple of aprons. I just went to work every day, and I would go home and study all the things that I saw happening in that kitchen. I’m a fast learner. I was really, really motivated to make this work. I worked for a number of people over the years and just tried to absorb it all as I went. You put your head down and you work really hard, a lot of times that’s the American dream. You work at something, and you’ll be rewarded later in life for it.

It’s worked out really well for me. I’ve got a number of businesses. I’m married with a child and own my home. I grew up very poor. I didn’t have any money. That’s one of the reasons I worked the whole time. It feels really good that cooking, food, and hospitality have allowed me to create a life that I’m very happy with. I’m very proud of all the things that have happened so far.

Kirk Bachmann: And you should be. Thank you for being so humble and transparent.

You said before that cooking started as a means to pay for school. You said it today again, but it became that passion, that pursuit. Was there that one moment where you just knew, “I’m going to walk away from NASA. I’m going to walk away from studying science. This is it. This is what I’m doing?”

Hosea Rosenberg: There have been a couple of those moments in my life. Those early days when I had been cooking for a while, and I had worked in a number of different restaurants – it wasn’t so much the food. It was the people. It was the fact that I wasn’t really making friends in this quote/unquote “real job” that I had. I wasn’t really that connected with those people. Everybody I worked with in restaurants I just really adored. We had so much fun together. I felt like it was my people. I wanted to be around the people, spent those days working with people I actually wanted to be around.

This isn’t a slight on scientists or anything like that. For me, I needed to be doing something with my hands. I needed to be standing up and doing more physical work. One of the things I love so much about cooking is there is a lot of science involved and a lot of math. Especially as an owner, I’m looking at spreadsheets as much as I’m looking at recipes.

On the other hand, you get to exercise that creative freedom. To me, it’s the left and the right brain combined. If you can apply the science and the regimen and be very pragmatic, but also get to work with farmers and learn about new vegetables and get really creative when it comes to flavors, to me that’s just the perfect combination.

Kevin Taylor and Dave Query

Kirk Bachmann: None of that is scripted, as I say to my audience. The combination of talking about food and farmers and numbers is so important. We say it over and over and over and over again. I was up saying hi to Eric Skokan last night. It was like ninety degrees. I’m sweating. He’s just got a big smile on his face as always, getting ready for the next day. They butchered nine hots last night. It was really, really busy.

I have to ask: years ago when my family moved to Colorado from Chicago, we moved to the Gunnison, Crested Butte area originally. I had a restaurant there with my dad for a while. I just remember, any chance I had to drive to Denver to go to a Kevin Taylor restaurant. There were a handful of them. What was that like, working for that group? I don’t know where that has all landed, but there was a time when any restaurant that you went to was a Kevin Taylor restaurant.

Hosea Rosenberg: No, I was part of that during the heyday. One of my jobs when I was still in college was at Dandelion, which is obviously not around any more. Down on Walnut and Tenth – Ninth. It was a really, really amazing restaurant, and it was one of the places that I worked at at the time that made me realize that you can make a career out of being a chef and a restaurateur. It’s not just a stepping stone; it can actually be the destination. I really loved that restaurant. It was the first place I’d worked at that the menu was always changing. They were being incredibly creative, involving ingredients and techniques from all over the world.

I worked at Dandelion when I was in college. I left. I actually took a road trip with one of my best friends at the time. We were gone for months. We were traveling around the country, and that’s when I made the decision that I wasn’t going to go back to that old work. I was going to become a chef. That’s when I was trying to figure out how to do that, if I should go to school or if I should just work. I ended up coming back to the area.

I ended up moving to Denver for a while, worked for Wolfgang Puck opening one of his restaurants, but I left to go work for Kevin Taylor. He was opening up Restaurant Kevin Taylor, which was his flagship restaurant. I figured at the time, he was the number one guy, the number one name in Denver. If I was going to stay here, I should work at the best restaurant from the best chef. Those were the most formative years of my career. I think I had the biggest growth curve. I learned a ridiculous amount. I got to be exposed to fine dining, really high-end fine dining.

But it was also one of the hardest periods of my life. It was excruciatingly long hours. I was working six days a week. I’d be there from ten to twelve hours a day. That went on for a couple years, and that was tough because he didn’t pay us very well. I couldn’t afford a car. I had a bike, and then my bike got stolen. I had to take the bus because all I could afford was rent and food. In my mind, it was okay. I wasn’t bitter about it. I wanted to learn, and I figured I was learning so much every day. I was learning how to butcher and make sauce and bakery stuff and culinary arts. All of it was all in that kitchen, in addition to learning a little bit about service and front of the house, and the wine, and the whole lot. I felt like I was in a school getting paid just enough to survive. I was cooking real food for real people, and that really made me happy.

Kirk Bachmann: That’s incredible. Where does Dave come in? Was he with Big Red F at that time when you worked with him?

Hosea Rosenberg: Dave Query? Yeah. I worked for Kevin for a few years. Then, I left to work at another spot here in town that isn’t around any more. At the time, I was dating a girl that worked for the Big Red F. The restaurant I had moved to wasn’t doing very well. They were already kind of going under when I joined up. She helped facilitate this meeting with Dave. He was in expansion mode. This was back – man – mid ‘90s – no, it was early 2000s. I had worked for Kevin for restaurant Kevin Taylor during the millennium. I remember that, when it turned the year 2000.

So, it was like 2001, 2002, somewhere around that time. He had just bought the West End Tavern. The chef of Jax moved over to the West End, and I jumped in as head chef of Jax. I ended up working for Dave for five years. That was a really incredible time.

Like I mentioned, when I worked for Kevin, I learned a lot of the mechanics of being a chef: how to run a kitchen, how to order food, how to butcher meats, how to understand food costs, that sort of thing. What I learned from Dave was how to run a very successful business. The most important part of it all is keeping your staff, keeping them happy, keeping them bought in. He likes to talk about drinking the Kool-Aid. When I worked for Kevin, it was very militant. I think I needed that at the time to really get my head straight when it came to how hard this is and how much work goes into it. But with Dave, there’s a vibe in his restaurants. People are happy to work there, and they’re happy to eat there. I came into this team that was very welcoming to me. The managers, the other staff, the cooks, everybody was just so awesome. In fact, when I’m done with this, I’m going home and I’ve got to cook pizza for my friends Rachel and John who I worked with when I started at Jax.

Kirk Bachmann: Isn’t that something?

Hosea Rosenberg: It’s been over twenty years. Made a lot of great friends. I learned so much about how to treat other people and how to grow a business. Since then, he’s opened ten more restaurants. I really admire how he’s done it because a lot of people in his company have been around for decades at this point. That, to me, is the key to success.

Kirk Bachmann: I can remember dining at Jax while you were there. I was there with a friend from Portland, Oregon who came to visit. What always amazed me the few times I was there was that it was kind of crowded. There were people around that horseshoe bar, and then people up and down the walls. There was just so much happiness in that dining room! It was kind of loud. There were all kinds of seafood. People were just sharing stuff across tables. Lots of deuces set up.

Hosea Rosenberg: They had a disco ball over the bar.

Kirk Bachmann: Yes! That’s right. That’s right.

Hosea Rosenberg: Jax. The whole room was dancing.

Nothing Comes Easy

Kirk Bachmann: Everybody wanted to be a part of it.

What did those formative years – super important for young people to hear – teach you? You’ve touched on it a little bit – leadership and creativity – but even just – I’m going to use the word – grind of professional cooking. It’s easy for us to sit here and talk about how successful you’ve been and all the positives, but what people don’t feel or see – and I always say this to thought leaders like yourself – man, they didn’t experience those twelve-hour days. You said six days, but there were probably more seven days a week than six days a week when people call off and stuff. Just from a mindset, what did all of that teach you about professional cooking?

Hosea Rosenberg: Well, nothing comes easy was the main lesson. It’s so hard to learn all of this. There is so much involved in cooking and running restaurants. A lot of people forget that it’s the restaurant business. Just because a restaurant’s full and popular does not mean it’s actually making any money. A lot of people understand that owning a business is hard and owning restaurants is incredibly hard. Most restaurants don’t make it. The majority of them fail within the first two years. It’s because what we do is walk a tightrope every day.

My philosophy has always been if I’m going to be your boss – if I’m going to be the chef, or the owner – I need to understand everybody’s job that works for me. So as the chef, I made it my mission to not only know this for myself but that the staff would know that I can wash dishes as well as any dishwasher that works in our restaurant, probably faster than them. I can work every station in the kitchen. I know how to make every recipe. I know how to mop the floors, and I know how to clean the drains if they get clogged. I do all those things on a fairly regular basis. I did more so when I was just a chef. Now I’m an operator; I’ve got other bigger fish to fry, so to speak, but I can still do all those things, and I have no problem doing those things.

I guess the lesson is that if you’re looking to get rich or you’re trying to be famous, this isn’t the job. Most chefs, most culinary professionals, you can get by and you can make a living for yourself. At the very minimum, there’s food at your fingertips; you can always feed yourself if you’re in a kitchen. But this isn’t for the fame, and it’s not for the money.

I was fortunate enough. I got very lucky to get picked for Top Chef, and it did change my career trajectory and my life. But I always like to tell people, especially during that period right after the show – I was getting a lot of appearances on TV. I was getting paid to travel and go to places, a lot of autographs and pictures with folks – and my thing was nobody wanted my autograph when I was watching dishes. I had to do that and work hard at that and all these other things before I got this opportunity to get on television and do this work.

Most successful chefs out there will tell you that there were years and decades that went by of the grind of working your tail off for very little money and no real celebrity status, whatever, no attention. Then, if you do it long enough and work hard enough, then hopefully one day someone will notice, and then you get a bigger opportunity. We use a lot of sports analogies in our kitchens because it’s all about teamwork and it’s all about a collective goal. There’s a lot of professional sports people out there – baseball players, football players, tennis players – that work their tails off for years. Musicians do the same thing. I was reading an article about Nate Bargatze this morning, who is a world famous comedian, but he grinded [sic] it out for twenty-five years, just scraping by, until finally he had his chance.

Kirk Bachmann: I love him, by the way.

Hosea Rosenberg: Great! He’s like the most popular comedian in the world right now, but he wasn’t [five years] ago. Nobody knew his name. You’ve got to find some love in what you do because everything else is going to be hard for a while. You better really enjoy the work.

Music or Motorcycles?

Kirk Bachmann: I have to go off script for a bit because you said music. We’ve done about 150 shows over the last four or five years, and more thought leaders, more chefs, more restaurateurs than not have a love for motorcycles, music, cooking, or all of the above. Is music part of your jam?

Hosea Rosenberg: Absolutely. I’ve always played music. I used to play piano when I was kid. In fact, we’re getting one – I can’t do it for my daughter because she won’t listen to what I say, but one of our bartenders at the restaurant is a very good musician. He comes to our house once a week and teaches her piano.

Kirk Bachmann: No way! That’s great.

Hosea Rosenberg: It’s really fun. I’ve always loved music. I can play guitar and piano. I always have something on. I go to a lot of shows. I don’t play as much as I used to, but I do love it. I think there are a lot of similarities. You have to spend a lot of time working on your craft, learning the fundamentals, learning the theory, and learning different instruments and how to play them. Maybe one day you’ll get really good at it. Even if you’re not, it’s still fun to do. It’s just like cooking. You may not cook for a lot of people, but if you enjoy it, then you’re a chef.

Kirk Bachmann: Have you seen the Led Zeppelin documentary, the recent one.

Hosea Rosenberg: No, but it’s on my list.

Kirk Bachmann: It’s so good. It’s so good.

Behind me I have these tiny little albums: Dave Matthews, U2, Fleetwood Mac. Then I’ve got – you recognize him over there, right?

Hosea Rosenberg: You kind of cut off. I don’t have you on speaker.

Kirk Bachmann: Marco Pierre-White. Yes, hanging on the wall. Motorcycles too, or no? Fast cars?

Hosea Rosenberg: My wife will not allow it.

Kirk Bachmann: Good reason.

Hosea Rosenberg: Once you’re married, you have to make some sacrifices and that’s one of them. She wants me to stay alive.

The Cooking is the Easy Part

Kirk Bachmann: That’s a smart one. I have one in the garage, and my wife, unfortunately saw the insurance bill the other day, and she’s like, “Why are you still insuring this thing?”

I imagine when you were engaged in the idea of engineering and studying space and science, there is probably a lot of problem solving in that field. Solution seeking. Did that background influence or have some impact on the way you run a kitchen in addition to what you learned?

Hosea Rosenberg: Absolutely. I have this whole fleet of young chefs at Blackbelly in particular that see this as a great restaurant, a place to earn their stripes. One of my comments to them is always, “The cooking is the easy part. All this other stuff that you have to deal with.” I consider myself a problem solver more than probably anything else any more. For instance, when we go to catering events – and that’s how I started Blackbelly – we’ll go to a field and have to set up in the middle of nowhere with no water, no electricity, no services. You have to think on your feet and really get creative, but be practical.

Pragmatism is a big part of what I do. I always have lists and timelines. I try to stay organized and make sure everybody’s following along. Here at the restaurant, we have very hard timelines for things. We change our menu basically daily, at least some of the meat cuts and whatnot, so we’ve got this big dry erase board in the kitchen. That’s got to be filled out by two, sharp. You’ve got to have all your stuff there. If you’re planning on running a special, it needs to be up there in writing. If it’s 2:05 and it’s not up there, then it’s not happening tonight. We stick to these really strong timelines because that keeps everybody rowing in the same direction.

Because other things are going to come up. The power might go out, or a fridge stops working, or somebody doesn’t show up. If you don’t have everything else in line and working smoothly, the curveball that inevitably comes everyday – like I mentioned, it was raining a second ago and I’m just waiting for the roof leak – you’ve got to be ready to deal with that stuff, too.

For me, I think I’m actually becoming more of a handyman around here than a chef. I can fix most things. I know where everything came from. I know who to call when something breaks. The two things I never mess with are gas and electricity. I’ll call the experts in for that. If a table leg breaks, I’ll get the glue out or whatever, drill, but I’m not messing with something that will kill me.

Kirk Bachmann: Gas and electricity is tough for me, too. I’ll set up an oven. I’ll go up on the roof. I’ll do all that. There’s a limit.

It’s interesting, you’re talking a little bit about mise en place, too, a common term in the kitchen. My father is a master pastry chef from the German standard. Came over in the ‘60s. When we were working together in the restaurant, it was the same thing. He would challenge me on things like, “What are you going to do if the gas does go out?” And it happened. “What are you going to do if the ice machine breaks down?” And it happened. The only time that he really, really got upset with me is we were big on making our own stock. We would buy the bones and cook them down. They would be in an Alto-Shaam for hours. Every once in a while – I was young – I’d throw some base in there, and it just threw him through the roof. “Why did we just pay a buck twenty-five for these special bones and cook them when you’re going to throw base in there?” But he’s right! Respect the craft of cooking, think ahead.

Many of us met you, chef – I want to connect all this – when you first won Top Chef, Season Five. Sixteen seasons ago! It was a long time ago. I imagine, like you mentioned, that experience, that new show really catapulted your career in a very public way even before social media was as crazy as it is now. I’m curious how that experience in your mind challenged you even more to become the chef that you became? Because you’re under the spotlight.

The Crazy Experience of Top Chef

Hosea Rosenberg: Yeah. That was a crazy experience top to bottom. I had done a couple of local cooking competitions here, little things, and been on TV a couple times, like the local news station promoting some festival or whatever. I’d had a little dabble in those sort of things, but I’d never done anything like this. I’d thrown my name in the ring, and nothing happened.

A very good friend of mine, Melissa, who at the time was working just down the street at what was then called Rumba. Now it’s Centro. I was at Jax. We both applied, and she got picked. She was picking out her clothes and some new knives, getting all ready to go on the show. I was admittedly pretty jealous. I’m also an incredibly competitive person, and I couldn’t help but say to myself, “I’m better than her. I would beat her. How did they pick her?”

A week before she flew out, they called me and said, “Hey, congratulations! You’re on the show.” Turned out later, I found out that I was an alternate and somebody couldn’t make it for whatever reason. They only gave me six or seven days to get all my affairs in order. I had just found out that my dad had cancer. I had just gotten the news like the day before. I had a job. How on earth can I go with this short of notice?

I called my dad. He was like, “Look, I’m sick, but I’ll be around in six weeks. You don’t have to worry about that.” I checked with Dave. This is another big props to my old boss, Dave Query. He supported it. He allowed me to do this. Frankly, I couldn’t afford to do this unless I was getting paid, so he actually kept me on payroll while I was doing the show. I think he knew it would be good for the restaurant, too, as long as I had a decent showing.

So I did it, and I really had no clue what I was getting myself into. I didn’t understand the magnitude or the breadth of this show. I didn’t realize how many millions of people watched. I hadn’t even really seen the show; I just knew it was some cool competition that they were letting people apply for.

I flew out, and I was totally oblivious to how this whole thing was going to shake out. It may have worked in my favor because some of the chefs I met had just been practicing, and thinking about all the things they were going to say on TV, and picking out their clothes. Whatever. I just sort of grabbed my stuff and went.

I was naive, and I definitely felt a little out of my element. Some of these chefs had been working in really big cities. We were filming in New York. A few New York chefs there that had worked for the best chefs in the world, and I was coming out of Boulder, Colorado working for people that no one had ever heard of. I didn’t know how I was going to stack up.

But I’m smart, and I’m a problem solver, and that’s how I approached it, like a problem. Not who’s the best chef, but who can understand this challenge and work it to your advantage. I’m also a poker player. I have been for a long, long time. I think of it as a little bit of a poker game. You see what cards you have, and you’ve got to play the other people. You’re in competition with these other chefs, and you’re also in competition with yourself. The clock is a huge part of this challenge, and a lot of great chefs that I’ve seen go on this show just can’t handle the time challenge. All of a sudden, you may have the best dish in the world, but if you don’t get it on the plate when the buzzer goes, that’s it. It’s a mental challenge. You’ve got to stay cool and collected. I feel like I did a decent job with all that.

Food is Fleeting, but It Means Something

Kirk Bachmann: Such great advice. You’ve said in the past, and it probably resonated through your performance on the show, you said, “I love to feed people, I love hospitality, and I love delicious food. That’s never going to change.” What does that quote mean to you today, chef, after winning Top Chef and everything that you’ve built over the years?

Hosea Rosenberg: It rings true still. I still love all of it. I love the fact that we are a part of other people’s stories. We have folks come in here – we’ve had people get engaged in this restaurant. We get hired to cook for weddings, for birthdays, for big celebrations. In fact, we were catering in a private residence last night for a kickoff for Sundance. Now we’re part of these stories that people will remember. It’s this human touch. If you’re having a wonderful wedding that all your family and friends come to and the food’s delicious, it just makes that story so much better. Then we become just a little part of their story. That to me is just so touching. It feels like it matters.

What we do really does matter even though food is so fleeting. It’s gone. You eat it, and it’s gone. It’s not like music where you record an album, like Led Zeppelin, and it’s going to be around forever. What we do is just – Poof – it’s so fleeting. But everyone eats and everyone gathers for food. Some of the best memories in your life happen around the table. That’s why I chose this line of work. We can really be a part of these wonderful moments in people’s lives and make it better.

Kirk Bachmann: Yeah. So well said. Memories is a great word, emotions. Curtis Duffy has been on the show a couple times. We’ve done a lot of things with him over the years. The one time – and I’ll ask you this question later, but the big question is what is the ultimate dish. He was really sincere and very emotional about a memory. That memory is being able to sit around the table with his family because chefs are busy and they’re often not home at night because that’s when people come to see them. Really, really well said.

Let’s talk about Boulder. Let’s talk about Blackbelly. Began as a food truck and as a catering company.

Hosea Rosenberg: You know, you asked me earlier about the moments. There was a moment after Top Chef. I was really having a wonderful time because I was able to travel and do all these food festivals. I met every famous chef there is in those two years after the show, going to Aspen Food and Wine and all these wonderful places.

I was bumping around and I had connected with some Boulder local people who had started this food truck, which I thought was a really cool idea. Food trucks were all the rage back then. We ran into a lot of snags because there were a lot of ordinances that we didn’t really consider when we started it out. We couldn’t be near restaurants. We couldn’t be near other food trucks. You had to get these permits to cook anywhere. It was really cool what we were doing, and it was really fun to be an entrepreneur and start something, but I didn’t feel like that was what I was going to keep doing for much longer.

The point of my story: I went to Sonoma to this Heirloom Tomato Festival. It was a three or four day event in Sonoma, a hundred and fifty varieties of tomatoes, and everyone was cooking tomato dishes. It was really fun. A bunch of the chefs were staying at this big, beautiful house. At the end of the weekend when the show was over, they cooked for us. They wanted to celebrate all the chefs that were there. We had a party at this big house that we were staying at.

They hired this husband and wife team that had a farm and a catering operation. They were cooking in our kitchen. It all came down to this bowl of beans, really. It was pork and beans. It was sausage from the pigs that they had raised. It was heirloom beans that they had grown. They had this bottle of hot sauce that was house-fermented hot sauce. They were just doing everything off their land. That light bulb went off. I was like, “I can do this. I can do something like this.”

I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to open a restaurant or keep trying out food trucks or try to get back on TV and turn that into my thing. But I don’t actually love being on television. Maybe I’m not pretty enough; I don’t know what it is. My wife tells me I wave my hands around too much when I talk, something like that.

Kirk Bachmann: It’s probably why you’re good at it because you approach it from a place of humility and sincerity.

What and How Blackbelly Grows

Hosea Rosenberg: I realized that to me, when we talk about Colorado and when we talk about what our food identity is, it’s the farms. It’s the ranches. It’s the meat. It’s the livestock that we grow here. We have a very, very short growing season when it comes to produce, but we have amazing produce. People like Eric at Black Cat are just growing amazing stuff.

I decided I wanted to do something centered around these things that are growing here, a time and place. Something that represents Colorado. I partnered up with a friend of mine who had a bunch of land in Longmont. We started raising some animals. This whole thing happened organically. We started raising pigs and sheep. I started my own little catering company. That’s where the word Blackbelly came from; it’s a breed of sheep that we were raising. I think our Colorado lamb is the best lamb in the world, so why not name it after something that means something great to a lot of us.

About a year into doing the catering, I kept growing. I had to move out of one commissary to another. I was doing some consulting as well at a couple of places. I helped some friends start their businesses up. I found this location where I’m out. It’s kind of a weird spot in Boulder. It’s in east Boulder in an industrial area, not many restaurants, not a ton of businesses out here, but this space was perfect for a catering operation. Big kitchen, lots of parking, good access to getting to Denver, right by the highway. It was just going to be the catering outfit, but as we were talking to the landlord and trying to figure out what to do with the space, [we thought] maybe we do want to put a little cafe in here or something. Well, if we’re going to do daytime, we might as well do some dinner, and we might as well have a bar. Then it all sort of grew into this grand restaurant.

Over the years, we grew. When we moved in, it was the restaurant, and we were still doing catering out of the space. We wanted to have an emphasis on butchery, so we had our own little butchery operation. It was all in the same kitchen. It was very tight, very small. We quickly were outgrowing it. There was a doughnut shop next door, which is the space that I’m sitting in right now, so we moved into the old doughnut shop and built a proper butcher shop here.

A few years later, which is two years ago now, the Quiznos which was located in the wall behind me – there are three units in this building; we now have all three – Quiznos moved out, and we moved the butcher shop and market over there. It’s three times the size that it used to be. This space that I’m in now is a private dining room. We also have a dedicated prep kitchen for the catering crew because they’ve always worked out of the restaurant kitchen in the past. Now everybody has their own space, and we have lots of different rooms and three patios.

Over the course of twelve years – ten as a restaurant and two more as catering – it started off as just me and a vision and a couple people that would work part-time for me – I had this little trailer that I towed around – to multiple businesses, a hundred employees, lots and lots of sales and things going on all the time.

The Story of Sustainability

Kirk Bachmann: We like the location because I’m just a little further east in Lafayette. We were there probably a month ago now, maybe a little longer, a time before. We just got really lucky. We had three grads that were in the kitchen that night. I don’t want to get anybody in trouble, but they snuck [sic] a lot of food out that night. We had a great time.

I’ve got to talk about the sustainability practices you’ve [got.] You’ve been recognized for them. I know they’re really, really important to you. They matter. You’ve built that into your daily operations. My question is around how do you train your staff to be aligned with those practices and your vision.

Hosea Rosenberg: That’s such a core part of what we do here. Even when we were catering, I wanted to set myself apart and only do events where people actually cared about the food. We weren’t just there to fill up chafing dishes and move on. We wanted to do events for people that wanted to have food that was amazing, and by amazing I mean have a story behind it. Not just delicious, but local and fresh.

Over the years, I have made sure that everyone that works in this kitchen understands that we’re working with very fresh ingredients, very expensive ingredients, very special ingredients. Everything that goes on the plate has a story and has a reason to be there. We’re trying to be really, truly in the season. The best way to know what’s in season is to go down the street to the farm and find out what they’re pulling out of the ground.

Kirk Bachmann: Absolutely.

Hosea Rosenberg: We have this wonderful meat, so we’ve become very close with Clint Buckner[of Buckner Family Ranch], and [with] Big Daddy at McDonald Family Farms, who brings us all his pork. Then the guys that bring our beef. We have these people bringing us fresh animals that we’re breaking down. That’s also a big part of our philosophy. We’re not telling people to eat a lot of meat. You should eat meat where you know where it came from, where you can actually talk to the people that raised these animals and can tell you how they were treated. We bring in one animal at a time, so the cuts change every day. We get through that animal; we go to the next animal.

Then, to make it good, we have to have more than just a piece of meat on the plate. We work with all these wonderful local farms, and we’ve had quite a few connections with different farmers over the years. A lot of them are the same people that we were buying from when we opened the doors. For me, if I can tell you these carrots came from Mark at Esoterra and this lamb came from Clint at Buckner, and there’s a sauce made from the bones, and there’s some fresh herbs from our herb garden right out the back door, that’s a plate that tells you a story of the time and place you are. If you take a picture of that, you can say “that was June 17 in Boulder, Colorado. They had these carrots and this lamb, and it was all from a couple miles away from the restaurant.” That has always been our core belief, that anybody who comes in here, when they eat the food on the menu, everything that they’re getting tells them where you are and what time of year it is.

Santo: Real New Mexican Cuisine

Kirk Bachmann: Yeah. So well said. It’s such a good lesson for students to understand that. We’ve got the farm to table class where we’re out there talking to the farmer. I don’t know if you’re familiar with – I loved your comment about the seasonality – Farmer Lee Jones, the Chef’s Garden in Ohio. It’s really connected with a lot of great restaurants around the country. His favorite question in the world is when a chef calls him up and says, “What should I put on the menu?” It’s all dependent on what season it is. It’s an easy, easy, easy question.

I want to talk a little bit – I’m intrigued by Santo. I remember the first time my wife and I went. It’s a busy plaza, I’ll call it. Always has been there in North Boulder. We sat at the bar, and we met some people to the left – my wife talks a lot – and we met some people to the right. The drinks were great. The bartender was amazing. I can’t remember if it was that time when we came in with the family, we would have this one portion – I can’t remember. I think it was duck. It was like steamed. I don’t know what it was, but literally falling off the bone. What I loved about that – listen, it’s great food. It’s a great vibe, and it means something to our family – but to sit there and have this beautiful dish where all four of us were just [amazed]. Was that the idea? That this is a little neighborhood spot where you can eat with your hands, you can have a great drink, and everybody’s smiling. I’ve taken the team from here. We’ve sat outside. We’ve sat inside. We like sitting at the bar when my wife and I come alone. I’m curious. I love the idea that you just don’t hear: a love letter to your hometown of Taos. I love Taos, New Mexico by the way. What inspired you to bring that authentic cuisine with an open kitchen right there to Boulder? Did you do research? Was it like, “I’m going to make this work?”

Hosea Rosenberg: It’s the food I grew up eating. I love New Mexico. I always have. Let’s face it: Colorado and this area doesn’t have a lot of culture so to speak.

Kirk Bachmann: You’re right. You’re right.

Hosea Rosenberg: We’re not New Orleans where there’s this story of the Native Americans and then the slave trade. All these things created this mash up of cuisines. We’re out here where the plans meet the mountains. We’re mostly white people here. What’s the story? That’s what Blackbelly was all about, celebrating the ingredients that are grown here.

But I grew up in New Mexico, and I feel like there really is a culture around the food there. I wanted to bring that here. There aren’t a lot of restaurants here that specifically focus on that. There are a lot of great Mexican restaurants, but in New Mexico you learn at a very young age that the green chili is king. Everything needs green chili on it. If it’s not green chile, it’s red chile. Red or green is the state motto. We have a lot of very unique dishes in New Mexico that are familiar but a little bit different. It’s our own sort of spin on certain dishes like posole, or biscochitos, or sopaipillas. You name it. I really missed the food.

And I also remembered a restaurant. I remember when it was Masa Grill and then Radda [00:43:38] was there for many years. It was Italian, and such a fun restaurant. It was one of those places that I used to go after work. I actually lived near there. I remember the vibe was so great when Radda was just banging. They were super full, a lot of industry people, really good pizza. The landlord, Steve, had reached out to me. We had talked about another space a couple years before. Nothing really materialized. When that place, a couple people had turned over a few times, and it wasn’t doing well. The landlord reached out.

“Hey, I’ve got the space. The current tenant hasn’t paid rent in a few months. He owes me a bunch of money, so I’m holding the space, and I’m going to keep everything in it. If you want to take it over and start paying rent, it’s yours.”

I jumped at that. I feel like it’s in a really good location. It’s got good parking. It’s got great views of the Flatirons. I knew the space was good. Then I had to figure out what to put in there. I’d been talking so much about New Mexico at that time. I proposed to my wife down in Taos.

Kirk Bachmann: Wow! That’s great.

Hosea Rosenberg: We take our daughter down there all the time. I miss it. I miss the green chile in particular. I wanted to open up a restaurant that celebrates that food but also with the Boulder aesthetic. We’re going to do a little more farm to table, a little fresh, make sure we’re mixing in all these cool really amazing dishes, but also have some seasonality to it and make sure it’s healthy enough for the Boulder lifestyle. Some of the food down there can be pretty cheesy, pretty filling. I was trying to strike that balance and bring a little heat. I just wanted some spicy food that made me feel like I was home.

Receiving the Green Star

Kirk Bachmann: Mission accomplished. How did it feel to receive the Green Star distinction? Do you consider that a milestone?

Hosea Rosenberg: Absolutely. Not everybody gets the opportunity to even have Michelin to look at them. We didn’t [have them] in Colorado until a few years ago. What’s funny is we knew they were around. I would love nothing more for this restaurant to get a Michelin star, a red star, but at the time – and I still feel this way – I feel like we’re close, but we have some polishing to do. We’re kind of a neighborhood restaurant. We’re high-end enough to charge decent prices for our steaks, but I wouldn’t call us fine dining. You often think of Michelin starred restaurants as fine dining restaurants.

Anyhow, we knew they were swirling around. I wasn’t expecting anything, to be honest with you. I try to keep my expectations reasonable, that way if something happens, I’ll be pleasantly surprised. I don’t want to expect something and then not get it. They had reached out to us to ask some questions, so we knew we were being considered for something. Then they reached out and asked if we would want to serve some appetizers at the awards ceremony.

“Yeah, that’d be great.” In my mind – and I don’t know if I was being self-defeating or what – I figured, “Okay, they’re not going to give us anything, but they’re going to allow us to be there and cook for everybody. That will be our spot. We’ll be there among the great winners. We’ll be able to be in the conversation.”

We showed up. We made some really beautiful little bites. We had caviar and wagyu tartare and a couple things like that. We were setting up at this little table that was pretty close to the stage. Everybody started showing up. People were really dressed up and excited for this moment. When they started the awards, they started with these individual awards. The very first one they gave out was to Kelly, our butcher. She was there with us, and she was flabbergasted and so was I. She won the Young Culinary Professional Award. Then they did the Green Stars right after that. Then I got to go up and get the Green Star. Then they named both Blackbelly and Santo as recommended restaurants. We got the plaques as well. It was wild. It was really, really cool. I had a number of my staff with me, so we were all celebrating. We were just over the moon.

It was also beautiful because some very close friends of mine who met here at the restaurant, they’re now married and they have their own restaurant in Denver called Glow. It’s like a ramen shop. They were there, too, and they won the Bib Gourmand. We were all like, “Oh my God! This is so cool.” It was just a really, really wonderful moment. It is definitely a milestone.

It is definitely a thing for us to be very, very proud of because, to be honest with you, if there is anything we deserve, it’s Green Star. We’ve gone out of our way to make sure we’re sustainable. We really walk the talk. Something we talk about all the time to people is that we could buy pre-cut steaks. We could buy all these vegetables ready to go right off the Shamrock truck, and we would probably make a lot more money if we did it that way. But we want to be proud of what we’re doing. We want our work to matter and to resonate and to be an example for other restaurants, that you can do it the right way and still be successful. That’s been our story the whole time, and it works.

Sophie’s Neighborhood

Kirk Bachmann: It does work. It does work. Continued congratulations. I’ve chatted with Kelly a couple of times at the market. Amazing. I had chills the entire time you were telling the story.

On a personal note, chef, if I could, I want to thank you on behalf of not just Escoffier, but my wife as well for the transparency and the advocacy that you’ve shown around your daughter, Sophie. This is where I get emotional. The nonprofit that you started, Sophie’s Neighborhood, has raised so much awareness and funding for research. I read that you once said that your proudest accomplishment is being a father. Regardless of everything we’ve talked about – and I agree with you. I have four kids. It is the proudest moment. Nothing else comes close. How has fatherhood, chef, and your work with Sophie’s Neighborhood shaped the way you lead both inside and outside of the kitchen?

Hosea Rosenberg: That’s a lot to answer. I’ll try my best.

I think if you ask some of my staff, people who have been with me for a long time, it’s made me nicer and more patient. When I was a younger chef, I was pretty hardcore. Everything had to be perfect. I was definitely mean to people. I can occasionally blow my lid as many chefs can. I think it’s given me a new perspective on life and what really, truly matters, at least for me. Somebody cut something wrong or overcooked a steak, it didn’t ruin my life, and it didn’t ruin my daughter’s life. The show will go on. We just need to learn from these lessons.

I always wanted a family. I got a late start on that. I worked a lot. I think things happened the way that they need to happen, so I didn’t meet my wife until I was in my early forties. We got married. Before we got married, I proposed to her, then a few weeks later we found out she was pregnant already, so it was a bit of a shotgun wedding, if you will. Everything went into rapid speed. We also opened Santo the same year we got married and had Sophie. That was a very full year. Everything was great. We had two restaurants. We were starting our family. When we got married, we bought our first house. Then things got really tough.

The same month that Covid struck the world, but in particular when Colorado announced that all restaurants had to shut down for indoor dining was the same month that we got Sophie’s diagnosis. She was around two at the time. She wasn’t walking, and we were trying to figure out what was going on. Every test we had had up to that point had shown normal results. We had done genetic testing before she was born; everything seemed fine.

We knew something was wrong, so we did this more elaborate test. It’s called whole genome sequencing or whole exome sequencing. That’s when they discovered that there was one little error in her genetic code. It’s a mutation. It’s just one letter. You’ve got these genes, and they’re all spiraled up in the DNA. Ironically, the doctor that told us what the analysis was, she described it as a recipe. If the human body is a recipe, you’ve got all these different ingredients and all these techniques, and this is just one ingredient that was wrong. Instead of salt, it was sugar. It’s one out of tens, even hundreds of thousands of genes in your body – just one, and one protein is off. It can cause myriad problems.

She’s got what’s called MCTO. It stands for multicentric carpotarsal osteolysis. It’s in this specific gene that controls a number of functions in the body. Her kidneys are affected. Her kidneys don’t work exactly right. Luckily, there’s a lot of good information about kidney diseases out there. She’s on a kidney medication that seems to be holding them pretty normal. It’s Proteinuria – I don’t need to get into all the details, but basically her kidneys seem to be working fairly well. They are affected, but they are holding steady.

The other part of this disease, or one of the other parts of this disease, the most damaging, is what happens with the bones. Your bones, your body, every cell in your body is constantly regenerating. Your old cells die off, and new cells grow, just like people that have hair, it grows.

Kirk Bachmann: Same.

Hosea Rosenberg: You cut it off; it grows back. With your bones, there’s a constant re-absorption happening. The bones are basically sloughing off and new bone cells grow. Well, her body is breaking down the bones faster than they will grow. It starts with the small joint bones for whatever reason. We still don’t understand that completely. In your wrists you have the carpal bones and in your ankles you have the tarsal bones. The bones are deteriorating in her hands and legs. It can affect all the joints in your body. If you take an X-ray now of her wrists, there are really no little bones left in her wrists. It’s just the finger bones right to the arm bones. Her hands are very small. Even all the long bones in her hands, too, are sort of disintegrating. It’s almost like if you had a sugar candy and you were sucking on it, and it was getting smaller and smaller.

What we were told when she was two when we discovered what it is is that this is a progressive, crippling disease that won’t stop. It will get worse over time. There’s no known cure. There’s really nothing you can do about it. That’s what we were told.

We said, “No way. We’re going to fight this, and we’re going to figure something out.” It was incredibly scary because, at the time, we didn’t even know if our restaurants were going to make it. We didn’t know how we were going to make money anymore, and we had this kid that was sick with this awful diagnosis. At the time, there were only about twenty known cases in the world. There’s no real research. There was some research done but not very much. All that they knew was that they can’t stop it.

So we, fortunately in Boulder, there are a lot of biotech startups. A lot of very, very smart scientists in this town. We went out to dinner that night because everything was about to close. We went to, at the time, one of our favorite restaurants, Arcana. When we were at dinner, we sat across a table from Dr. Larry Gold. He was an investor in Dave’s restaurants, and I just know that he is a very famous scientist and something to do with genetics. He was sitting with another friend of mine for dinner. We didn’t want to interrupt them at dinner, but I reached out the next day.

“Hey, can you put me in touch with Larry? I think he might be able to help us.” He had Lauren and I in his office the very next day. He looked at her report, and he said, “I’m going to give you the help you need and deserve.” Talk about a moment in time that I’ll never forget because we felt so hopeless. When he told us, “We’re going to figure something out,” it was just amazing.

The process has been slow. Medical research is extremely difficult. It’s time-consuming. It’s expensive. It takes just a ton of work to do these things. You think about something like cancer: for decades, people have been pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into cancer research, and we still don’t have a cure for cancer. We’ve got this little girl and a couple dozen other people across the globe that have this awful, crippling disease. What hope do we really have? But that doesn’t stop us.

We’re learning so much to try to wrap this story up.

Since then, we have started our foundation. It’s called Sophie’s Neighborhood. It’s a 501(c)3 nonprofit. We have raised a lot of money doing events with famous chefs, famous people, local celebrities, just good people all over. We do everything from little cookie bake sales to these elaborate celebrity chef dinners. We just raise as much money as we can, and every single penny goes into medical research.

We’ve got a number of research grants that we’ve given to scientists all over the world. We’ve got people in Japan and England, Harvard, Australia. A lot of local scientists are doing different things. Cell lines. They have mouse colonies. They have these really high tech things happening in these laboratories. They are just trying to understand all of the functions, all of the genetics, the cause and effect of all these different systems.

The human body is very complex. There are a lot of systems. A lot of these systems are intertwined. Sometimes you can figure out a pathway to solve something, but then you create a different problem. There are certain medications that she could take that would hurt other parts of her body, so we have to be very careful with what we do.

All the same, we’ve made a lot of strides. We’ve learned a lot. We don’t have a cure yet, but she is on two different medications that seem to be slowing the disease down. One of the things that she does is this infusion, this phosphonate that she does. It used to be every six months; now she’s having to go every six weeks. She gets infusions. She takes two medicines twice a day. She wears splints on her legs and arms. She sleeps in night splints, and then she wears bracing on her feet. She always has braces on when she walks, but it helps her stay upright.

She’s got a ton of friends. She swims. She’s in acting camp this week. In many ways, she’s a totally normal little girl. She just had her eighth birthday. She’s got a crew of very, very wonderful friends that are very supportive of her. They know that she’s different. They know what she has, and they help her. They help her carry stuff. They open doors for her. She’s not as mobile as most kids. She has a very slow gait. She can’t ride a bike. She can’t run very well. Stairs, she needs a handrail to get up and down stairs. You see little kids her age riding their bikes off cliffs and jumping off trees. She can’t do those things, but she can do a lot of other things. She loves to play music, and she’s very silly.

I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy. I just know that we’re making progress, and I spend every moment I can with her just trying to make her happy. That’s what’s going on with Sophie.

Kirk Bachmann: I can see the joy in your face when you speak about Sophie. I just want to thank you for your transparency and your genuine honesty. I think Sophie is very, very fortunate because her daddy is a problem solver.

Hosea Rosenberg: That’s right. That’s right. And so is her mom.

Looking Toward the Future

Kirk Bachmann: So is her mom. So is mom. Yeah.

I don’t know where the time goes, but I can’t let you go. Two more questions if you have another minute.

The first question is what dreams are still simmering. What’s next? I know you hinted about it a little bit. I don’t want to upset Mama Bear. What’s the next milestone professionally?

Hosea Rosenberg: Something I learned years ago when I was working for Kevin Taylor is you get a good reputation, you get a good restaurant, Michelin, whatever. You attract talent, but there’s only so much room in this restaurant for people to grow. If we want to maintain talent, if I want to maintain these wonderful people that have helped me build this company and give them raises and give them new opportunities, we have to grow. We have to do this slow and steady. I’m not trying to open fifty restaurants, but I want to make sure that we slowly grow so that these people have growth opportunities with me and they stick around and help me do what I want to do.

Part of that has been growing Blackbelly. We’ve just gotten bigger over the years. Now we have another Santo opening up at DIA. We opened up Blackbelly in Denver. Now we’ve got another project. It’s actually going to be in your neck of the woods by the school there.

Kirk Bachmann: No way!

Hosea Rosenberg: That’s all I’m going to give you for now.

Kirk Bachmann: I’ve got chills. Oh my gosh.

Hosea Rosenberg: We’re going to do a totally different type of cuisine, something that we haven’t done yet. Something that’s very familiar with people, and it’s something that I love to eat all the time.

Kirk Bachmann: Oh my gosh.

Hosea Rosenberg: I’ll give you more later, but I do need to make sure I do this right.

Kirk Bachmann: You’ve got to be careful.

Hosea Rosenberg: I need to control the narrative.

Kirk Bachmann: I love it. I love it.

Hosea Rosenberg: But we’re going to open up another restaurant. What my dream is – and I’m halfway there. For so many years as a chef, I worked all night, every weekend, all the holidays, minimum five days a week, sometimes seven. Once I got married and had a kid, I realized I need to spend some time at home, too, or that marriage probably won’t last too long. For me, I just want to be around my kid.

What I’ve been able to do, getting bigger like this and having really good people working for me, is that I can sort of step away. I’m not really cooking on the line anymore. I am cooking for a farm dinner tomorrow, and I do some events here and there. I’ve got a whole crew of young cooks on the line that can handle this. I’m too old! So I go home and eat dinner with my family most nights. I work banker’s hours now. I show up. I usually get here pretty early in the morning, and I bounce around between my restaurants. I check in with everybody. I have a lot of meetings, taste a lot of food, check in, fix things, buy things, just keep the business going.

My goal is to be able to let all of these wonderful people who have helped me build this company run it and slowly take over. I can just step back and be an adviser and a mentor, and everybody has what they need and they’re taken care of, but not have to be in the throes of it. Like I say, I’m about halfway there. If I take too much time away from the restaurants, things start to get a little haywire, so I have to jump back in and fix a few things. I still feel like my presence is needed and necessary, but we’re getting there. My goal in the next few years is to just be spending more and more time with Sophie and just making sure that the restaurants are covered.

Hosea Rosenberg’s Ultimate Dish

Kirk Bachmann: That’s the right answer. I love that you said growing the business. It’s not a bad word. You have a lot of families that depend on your growing business.

I have to honestly say I’m older than you, and I’m going through the same metamorphosis as well. I always used to think that I had to be here to welcome the truck that delivered the food in the morning, make sure that the purchasing department had what they need, to make sure the chefs had what they need. I recently brought on a wonderful person by the name of Adam to run the operations. Now I spend most of my time on innovation and AI and how [we can] help our teachers be even better as they engage with students, and then go to work for Hosea.

Hey, one more question, and then I’ll let you go and Matt can get after it. The name of the show is The Ultimate Dish. In your mind – I think I know where you’re going to go – what is the ultimate dish?

Hosea Rosenberg: I’d say the most joy I get is cooking with my daughter. We do a few things together. She likes to make pasta with me. We created this hot dog ravioli. That’s our little secret recipe now. We make ravioli, but we just put rings of hod dogs in there and make a cheese sauce.

But I’d say the thing I love to cook the most is just outside over the grill, whatever’s in [season], go to the farmers’ market, and then make some pizza dough, and make a pizza, and have some grilled vegetables. I love nothing more than being outside and cooking outside over a fire. Just having a glass of wine in my hand while I’m doing it. I’m hanging out with my family. I don’t need much else beyond that.

Kirk Bachmann: That’s such a solid chef entrepreneur answer. You checked all the boxes. Family, outside, cooking, wine. I love it. I love it.

Chef, thanks for taking some time with us. Very emotional, very inspirational. This is going to go out to thousands of people and continue to inspire them to try to achieve even a portion of what you have in your career. I can’t wait to hear more. You’re welcome to the school any time. I have your contact information. The next time that we pop in, I’ll make sure you know.

Hosea Rosenberg: Yeah, let me know. I love having the students here. We’ve had big groups come through for tours. I let them see what we do. I love going to the school and talking to the students as well. We just love having them here because we want to teach them young. We want to make sure that we give them the habits that we want them to have rather than coming in with habits that may not mesh with what we’ve got going. It’s great having a culinary school in town. I encourage people to support that. Thank you for talking to me and letting me be on your show.

Kirk Bachmann: Just great. So awesome. Thanks so much, chef.

Hosea Rosenberg: Absolutely. Thank you.

Kirk Bachmann: 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.