Behind the Bluff
Uncover best practices to participate in life on your terms. Every week, hosts Jeff Ford and Kendra Till guide listeners with short conversations on trending wellness topics and share interviews with passionate wellness professionals, our private club leaders, and additional subject matter experts offering valuable tips. Each episode conclusion includes Healthy Momentum, five minutes of inspiration to help you reflect and live differently. Subscribe now and discover the keys to living your greatest active lifestyle.
Behind the Bluff
Navigating the Culinary World with Purpose | Nate Beriau
Chef Nate Beriau from Montage Palmetto Bluff shares his culinary journey, the importance of community-driven dining, and how personal wellness influences leadership in the kitchen. He highlights the unique identities of each restaurant managed by his team and the reopening of Buffalo's as a casual, community-focused dining option.
• Chef Nate's transition from a fine dining focus to a luxury hotel culinary team
• The distinct identities of various dining venues at Montage
• Emphasis on the reopening of Buffalo's with a casual dining experience
• Importance of establishing a culture of wellness in a high-pressure kitchen environment
• Chef Nate's advocacy for simplicity in cooking and food trends
Are you ready to live an active lifestyle? Welcome to Behind the Bluff, where we believe every moment of your life is an opportunity to pursue wellness on your terms. I'm your host, Jeff Ford, and I'm joined today with Nate Barrio, Executive Chef of Montage, Palmetto Bluff. Originally a New England native, like myself, Chef Nathan's career took off during his time in San Francisco, California. There he worked with well-known chefs Ron Segal and Jan Birnbaum, before becoming the executive chef at the Ritz-Carlton, a five-star and five-diamond hotel, for almost five years. Nathan is a supportive husband, active father to his two children and his beloved French bulldog Moose loved French bulldog Moose. In his spare time, he excels as an enthusiastic CrossFit athlete and, more so now, a competitor in the realm of weightlifting. Today, we're going to discuss all things culinary. Nate, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:I'm so glad you're here. I'm sure getting out of the kitchen and the other side of Palmetto Bluff is always a good time right, you know it's always fun to do these types of events and exercises.
Speaker 2:They're great. Yeah, no doubt. I always love to share.
Speaker 1:Before we dive into the culinary scene at Montage, palmetto Bluff, let's allow listeners to get to know you a little bit better. You mind sharing a few more details about your background and your whole culinary evolution? Oh, my goodness, we'll be here for a minute.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it was a very nice intro and definitely a little bit of a snapshot into what I've done. But I've been very fortunate to work on many different kind of avenues of the business. I spent a long time as a young chef and culinary and chasing the fine dining dream that's inevitably led me out of Portland into San Francisco. And I think in this business you you learn very quickly what you don't know as opposed to what you do know, especially when you start to put yourselves in environments where you're, you're cooking, uh, with people that are just much better than you. And then you have to ask yourself it's just like, why am I not there yet? And it's just like, well, because you haven't worked in those environments.
Speaker 2:So you know just one thing led to another of you know just experiences and whatnot, and was was fortunate enough to align with some really really good people and learn as much as as much as I possibly could and work in some really really good people and learn as much as as much as I possibly could, uh, and and work in some really really great environments.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it feels like early in your career you branched out of what I would look as the comfort zone, Uh, meaning you you put yourself in places, in environments with uh individuals who had more experience, and it's almost like you seeked it out over in California. Uh, could you share a bit more some of the learning experiences with the famous chefs?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. In fact, this is this is one I share a lot, especially with young culinarians is, you know, in certain towns I grew up in Portland, maine, right, um, you know, not a huge city, uh, but with a very, very good food scene and I I hit the, I hit the kind of ceiling on that city really, really quickly. And I say that because in environments like that, you can grow very quickly, and growth doesn't necessarily mean you're ready to grow, it just means that you've got a good work ethic and all of those things. So this was back in probably 2004, um, a very good friend of mine, um, won, you know, top food and wines, top 10, and he was, he was part of that crew, um, and at the time I hadn't become friends with him. But you know, in that kind of smaller environment, that smaller city environment, to to have somebody like that get that sort of accolade, like every all the younger chefs are like, oh my god, like what is this guy doing? Like how, how did he just get this in this environment, and we're like we've, we've got to go figure it out.
Speaker 2:So, anyway, I showed up on uh on on a Saturday morning. I was able to take the day off and shut up, you know, in the back of his kitchen and say, hey, is there any way I can hang out? And you like, absolutely just come back next Thursday if you can take the day off and hang out and watch service. And one thing led to the other. And you know I started doing that once a week I would just go and I would work with them on my days off. I was the chef de cuisine of this inn, like right outside the city, and it was good. But I quickly realized it's just like wow, I don't know nearly what I need to. So he started kind of mentoring me in that capacity and he had just finished up a stint at the French Laundry Pretty big-time restaurant right yeah.
Speaker 2:Not a small, so he had some really really good insight. Not a small, so he had some really really good insight. And back then I mean that was previous to Michelin coming to the United States and hitting I mean this was a minute ago. But anyway, long story short, we kind of got to this pivotal moment and my wife and I both started kind of getting itchy and we're like you know what? I think it's time we got to go. So we were going to go to New York or San Francisco and was kind of the up in the air. And you know, I started talking to this gentleman, rob, at the time, and he was just like look, man, let me, let me make a couple of calls, and you know, we'll see what happens. And so we ended up just going out to San Francisco for a wedding. And during that time I did the exact same thing that I did to him I just showed up at the back door of a couple of places and said hey, what have you got going on?
Speaker 2:Can I hang out for a day? I did that a couple of times. Long story short, I had found some chefs that I wanted to work for. I started sending letters and you know, and ended up at the Ritz-Carlton San Francisco and taking a step back as a chef de cuisine to a cook role just to get my foot in the door into this environment. And, quite frankly, that was kind of when I fell in love with, like luxury hotels, because previous to that it just been restaurants and you know small inns and that types of things. But I was, I was amazed at how you could take that many people that would run a hotel. I mean, it's a 330 room hotel. So there was a lot going on with like one of the best restaurants in the city and just all these things and get everybody kind of marching in the same direction. Yeah Right, because restaurants have a very singular focus.
Speaker 2:You know, it's the front team, it's the back team. They align, they do service in that, that's you know, and it's just like so that the cultural aspect of it just like blew me away Um so it was very different than what you had been exposed to previously.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100% and back then I mean it was still pretty hardcore. Like you know, it was definitely a French-led kitchen and the executive chef who became a good friend of mine, jean-pierre, for about five to six months, and then the opening came to the dining room where I was able to work with Ron for the next two years and completely reset my career and at that point I was able to make, confidently, that jump back into the leadership side, knowing that I just kind of revamped my toolkit, so to speak. Yeah Right, just working in that environment. It was one know, it was one of the best you know hotel restaurants in the country. We had just, uh, just gotten the first Michelin star of the of, uh, the place. It was the only Michelin Michelin star rated restaurants uh, in all of Ritz Carlton and continental United States during that time period. During that time period, which was, which was nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Um.
Speaker 2:I mean they had just come to San Francisco and everybody had and this was in 2000,. I want to say six, Okay, yeah 2006.
Speaker 1:I think what's inspiring about your story is you took a step back to leave the executive chef title behind you in order to learn and to grow, and we talk a lot about life and lifestyle on here and making sure we're getting the most out of our time. It's humbling to hear you explain that story from the perspective of learning so that later on you could develop those tools and that skill set to essentially be where you are today. So I can imagine these early experiences have not only shaped you as a leader, but also, uh have shaped the experience that montage uh has with every time someone sits down at a restaurant. Um, so, as I understand it, f and B and culinary are two separate departments at montage Uh. We had one of your fellow compadres on here, damien, and he is such a great guy.
Speaker 1:I enjoyed that conversation a lot. Fmb handles more of the front of the house and culinary, with the setup, with y'all, is your leadership is over all the chefs and exclusively the hands on the menu, the food, the development. So what I would say is you know what people actually put in their mouths. Your team is developing that. Could you tell us a bit more about your main responsibilities as the executive chef at Montage.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question and I would. I'll probably answer it differently than what you're anticipating, and my my number one job and priority is to take exceptionally good care of our associates and exceptionally good care of my chefs so that they can deliver the product. And when I mean exceptionally, I mean that that's kind of in all aspects of the business. It's making sure that one it's an incredible place to work to they have the tools and the resources to put out the product that is expected at a luxury level. Um, and then three, making sure that you know the kitchens are dynamically staffed. We spend an exorbitant amount of time on like recruitment efforts because you can have the best chefs in the, you know, in the country, but if you don't have a staff to actually produce what it is that you're, you know, it's a very difficult situation, um, so I think that's my, my biggest, biggest priority.
Speaker 2:obviously, you know the, the more tactile um or tactile sense of it is just the yeah, the food piece. We, we work very, very diligently at staying relevant and making sure that we're delivering um a product that's one kind of experiential and definitely set apart so that all concepts aren't the same. It's very important to us to make sure that every place has, like, an identifiable concept and each restaurant has an identity 100%. It is so critically important.
Speaker 1:I'm excited to dive into that because at Palmetto Boa for listeners who have never been here I feel like each component of this property has a little identity and it's the same that goes for the restaurants, whether it's a club restaurant versus a montage restaurant. It's pretty cool the thought process that I can tell both teams are creating so that each place does have its identity. So just to echo, like your number one responsibility the previous question just staff is your biggest focus and creating that culture. I'll selfishly dive into that with you a bit later. So I'm glad. I'm glad you answered in that way. So yes, we do have a lot of different restaurants here on property. Before we dive into each identity of the restaurants, could you just give listeners an overview of all the restaurants you and your team oversee?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. So I will start kind of in the hotel core right, which would be, you know, from the hotel inside out. So our team oversees Octagon, which for all intents and purposes is what we refer to as a three-meal. So it's breakfast, lunch and dinner 21 meal periods, 365 days a year. It never stops. We oversee in-room dining and in-home dining for the signature residents, all of the rooms, et cetera, et cetera. So in-room dining in a luxury hotel setting is a 24 is a 24 hour a day commitment so 365 days a year that's a beast in its own.
Speaker 1:I would imagine I didn't even think about that before we sat down today.
Speaker 2:So it's. It's like a restaurant within a restaurant um Octagon. The team in there, overseas, oversees it, as is most hotel setups. Um, outside of that we would go into the backyard of the inn. We have Four and Aft, which is our pool restaurant. It does operate on kind of a seasonal calendar, so it's about eight months out of the year, nine months out of the year.
Speaker 1:Now, four and Aft it has like a evening hangout too. Is that true?
Speaker 2:We do some happy hours out there.
Speaker 1:You do some specialty stuff out there.
Speaker 2:Yep, but really the kind of the pinnacle of that service is lunch. That is the spot to get great tacos, sit by the pool, have a frozen, have a margarita, you know, and just have, you know, a very casual poolside experience. Low country vibes, that's it. Um, then we can slide over. We've got a flame which we're we're super excited to be able to operate. Pizza is so near and dear to my heart because it's so simple. So if we look at Flame again, it's a super casual offering and I'll talk a little bit about this in a second too. So we've got pizza, a couple of salads and we'll actually get that up and running here in the next month.
Speaker 2:So if we go outside of that little resort bubble, we've got Riverhouse, we've got Hush, we've got Buzz, which is right in the front door there of Riverhouse, which is our coffee shop, and then across the street. We're so fortunate to partner with the club and club operations on, you know, just kind of repositioning Buffalo's into the community, and we're so thankful for that opportunity and for that partnership to be able to kind of to operate that restaurant, because it's very important to one, the resort, it's very important to the members and it's very important to be that restaurant that serves as the bridge to the community which is Bluffton, hilton Head, savannah. That's like the space that everybody knows and that's very important for the livelihood of food and beverage on this particular property. And then right next door is Melt, which is everybody's favorite cavity shack right Cavity shack I've never heard that description of a ice cream shop.
Speaker 2:That's pretty cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah and uh to. To ping onto Buffalo's, I think that's an interesting way of looking at that restaurant. We know our listeners are specifically interested in the vision for it and from my experience living in Bluffton gosh 10 years ago before I moved back here, we would always come into the village and Buffalo's was that place where we could get brunch and you and I both know it's talked about in that capacity and it's interesting to just hear that it's almost that bridge restaurant to this community, which I would have to agree just hearing it in the context you've shared. So, wow, you oversee. You and your team oversee a lot oversee.
Speaker 2:You and your team oversee a lot, and I didn't actually mention the one thing that is probably at the core of what we do, which is meetings and special events, which would be all of the weddings, all of the banquets, all of the groups, because, as we're operating all of these restaurants on the periphery, we're still operating, you know, very high-end weddings, you know incentive groups and all of the things that typically in your traditional hotel, resort setting or hotel setting, you know are it's kind of the core I don't want to sound like an accountant but the financial flow of a hotel's food and beverage offering.
Speaker 1:Well, and we all know, Palmetto Bluff has a lot of events. This is a property that people want to share special memories and times on, so I'm glad we didn't leave that out, and I'm just wondering when do you sleep? Because this is a big job. How many staff do you all have in culinary specifically?
Speaker 2:I would say peak season, we're probably pushing triple digits. So we're in the hundreds with the cooks, and my core staff of chefs is right around 12.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I mean it's a lot. It definitely takes a certain level of commitment, especially operating in this. It's such a dynamic operating space right Like I've never seen another hotel or resort community operate like ours and it takes a special kind of mind and special kind of person, but like I'm so fortunate to have like the most incredible, incredible culinary staff and on top of that, like the partners that we have in the front of the house because we run it as this, like big family, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So you and Damien have to work pretty closely together at the same time right Very closely yeah. Cause, front of house handling that whole dining experience, while you're handling that backend experience too, which both have to work in unison together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it has to be seamless, and we often joke like we just operate a big restaurant, because it's just like one. One team can't succeed without the other team. And if you, if you scale it all back and remove all the you know departmental guy, just all of the noise right. Like it's the front of the house, it's the heart of the house, and we, we come together and we, we, we create an experience for somebody.
Speaker 1:That's all it is. It's very basic, Very cool. Well, uh, thanks for sharing the overview of the different restaurants, outlets, uh, here here on property that um are central to montage operations. From a culinary perspective, let's, let's start with river house. How would you describe the vision in the cuisine?
Speaker 2:That's a. That's a great question, um, you know. So I think River House for us is how we. It's funny because usually when I'm talking about the restaurants, I usually leave River House to the last, because it's kind of a I wouldn't say it's most special, because that's like saying one kid is more special than the other.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we don't want to do that. I mean, you're a dad, that's not necessarily the case because they're all special right.
Speaker 2:But River House, for us, is that destination restaurant right, it is the space that kind of defines us as a food and beverage operation. Right it is. There's a ton of energy that goes into kind of curating and crafting the experience that the guests get. We specifically designed it to not feel, act and look like a hotel restaurant at all. Right, and when we were designing it and and you know, kind of curating what that experience looked like, we wanted to be able to have success, whether or not it was operating in Palmetto bluff, charlotte, dc, atlanta, like we wanted that true independent feel in that space. So for us and I had mentioned this a little bit earlier, you know we have we spend a significant amount of time creating and crafting these experiences in the restaurants that are totally different from one another, because our guests come to us seeking experience and if you look at just, you know, three days with a month, with staying, with a montage, you Montage, you never have to repeat a meal.
Speaker 1:That's really cool.
Speaker 2:Right, Everything is different about each space. Fornaft is inherently different than Octagon. Octagon is inherently different than Buffalo's. Buffalo's is inherently different than Riverhouse. Everything feels different and it kind of activates kind of a different emotion with what you want to do for the day.
Speaker 1:That's a really interesting outlook on it. It's almost like there's a different personality too to each restaurant. 100%, there is.
Speaker 2:And it has to be because if not, then everything just feels like a repetitive experience, which I know. Our members and I know many of them, you know, don't you know seek something greater than that. Our hotel guests are looking and expect something greater than that, so we do our best to deliver on it.
Speaker 1:When I find that's what's so interesting about living here is you can have different experiences from a culinary perspective across the board here, between montageage and club restaurants. Let's keep going with identity vision. You seem very passionate about flame. So, I'd be interested in what makes pizza so exciting for you. Being from the Northeast, I hear a lot of people talk about how you can't get good pizza down south. Could you prove us wrong here today?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you know, pizza to me is like it's the quintessential, simple food, right? You know our pizzas, they're three to four ingredients at the absolute most. And I'm talking like dough, I'm talking sauce. There's two. Right Now you've got cheese, that's three, and then very little, like maybe it's a margarita and it's just basil.
Speaker 2:But the simplicity is is kind of in the secret to its success, right? Because I think there's there's nowhere to hide in bad pizza or there's nowhere to hide with simple food Truth, you know, and and I think pizza probably pizza and tacos probably put that most on display it's just like it's either good or it's not. And we adopted definitely a more like Neapolitan style. It's a wood-fired oven. It gets to 800 degrees. The dough has to be able to match that and cook in that environment. So we spent a lot of time on developing the dough, because that's, if the dough is not good, then the pizza is not good, right? So, and I just I think when you scale all of the things back, sometimes the most simple things are like the most beautiful, right, like a perfectly executed margarita pizza. There's nothing better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I couldn't agree more and I actually think the members who live here love simplicity. I know, I know I do in the uh nutrition realm of what I put in my meals each day and it's cool to understand that flame is about simplicity, simplicity and execution. I'm sure you source quality cheese, quality ingredients to to make those pizzas really shine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Every everything is thought through. It's not just a no, let's just do this tomato sauce. And no, no, no, no, it's because everything has to stand on on its own and and and kind of be the supporting cast for the next, next ingredient, right?
Speaker 1:Like the supporting cast for the next ingredient. I like that Now, uh, I recently had the opportunity to be invited over to Octagon and I found the menu to be awesome, quite honestly. It felt like there was something for everyone, there was healthy and there was even those typical meals that I think you'd see on a restaurant, but elevated. So could you explain a little bit more about this three-meal enterprise, 365 days, the vision of it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. Octagon for us is, without a doubt, in any hotel environment, is the most complicated to run. Just because any anytime you're dealing with that many variables, with that many meal periods, there are certain things that can undo it very quickly, consistency being one of them, the fact that multiple staff are working in the in the same space. So there's there's all these variables that are just constantly, constantly apparent. But like so I I think that's one thing that we have to take, that we take into consideration. A lot is like how, how can this particular dish be produced, no matter who's who's doing it? Yeah, right, so there's a, there's a lot of painstaking effort that goes into into that, and you know, standardizing recipes and making sure that you know things just make sense.
Speaker 1:Very system oriented because of the level of execution needed.
Speaker 2:It is like and if you look at the opposite of that, like a river house, right it's. It's the same same culinary team every single day. It's the same front team every single day. They operate on a five, you know, a five day operating cycle, one service period, that's it. It's very singularly focused where Octagon, you know, you definitely need to put the wider lens on and be able to operate like in multi kind of dimensions, but in terms of just your, something for everybody.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is kind of the role of a three meal, right. Like we want somebody to be able to come and you know, and have a night out and have a date and all of the things that goes along with that. We want somebody that's just checked in after a seven hour flight from the West Coast and be able to grab a hamburger and a glass of wine at the bar and just go, you know, chill out for the evening, right. So it's, it has to fit in that dynamic, right. So it's it.
Speaker 2:It has to fit in that dynamic, um, and it's also one particular place that we try our best um to weave in a sense of place with the south. So it's the one restaurant on property where I will weave in the most southern ingredients and southern cooking styles into that space. Very cool, because it's I, I believe it's kind of our responsibility, uh, to always remember, like, where we are and what we're operating in, right, and like maybe some of that food wouldn't necessarily replicate well in a setting like Riverhouse. However, we can have a killer fried chicken on the menu for lunch in Octagon and it feels very natural, right, it's just kind of the way we execute. It might be a little bit different, and that's just one, one example of it.
Speaker 1:That's a good example. Some the menu definitely has some sense of low country. We're here in South Carolina. There's tastes of that throughout. Uh, the the options that people have there, yeah, Very cool. Well, I'm sure we could keep going on the identities of all these uh outlets.
Speaker 1:Um, I want to shift gears to the reopening of Buffalo's. This is the hot topic right now. I uh was in the village a couple of weeks ago and I saw the soft opening where I believe many of our members were invited to attend, and it just looked like it was a good time. People were excited about it. I'm wondering what's the new vision for the restaurant? And, yeah, just go through the process of this, this reopening, uh it, it happened pretty quick.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it, it definitely happened pretty quick. Um, just on the on the more operational side of things, I mean we've we've been in in, you know, kind of works with um, you know, the club operations team for for probably the better part of a year just trying to to get it to a place. Uh, you know that that makes sense for both, both teams. But again, we're super, super honored to be able to to do this and to partner with the club team on operating it. But really what we wanted to do is just kind of reposition it into the community as that space where you could come for lunch, you could come for dinner super casual, a couple of times a week If you wanted.
Speaker 2:The menu super straightforward, american cuisine, you know, no, again, kind of going back to the, the flame road, nothing complicated, two to three steps, that's it right. Like fantastic, uh, ribs with some, some great fries and a coleslaw. You know, at the same time you could get a great artichoke dip, but nothing, nothing complicated. And so we wanted to take that like uncomplicated approach right, because you've got a level of complexity with an octagon. Just because of what it does, riverhouse definitely has an air of formality to it. We've positioned it to be that space and we wanted you know kind of the opposite of that, for for Buffalo's, where it just it, where it's a restaurant that just feels right, you can go to the bar, you can get a great cocktail. In fact, pj, who I know has been on here, did a great job with crafting a great cocktail and buy the glass menu.
Speaker 2:We even took into consideration pricing. We were very sensitive to making sure that the pricing matched a neighborhood restaurant feel and didn't kind of fall into like the resort pricing structure, which is a little bit different 100. Right. So we wanted it to feel like again similar to Riverhouse and independent, but at the same time just a really casual, just really good restaurant.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and it sounds like straight American cuisine, that's it. You can come in multiple times a week. Yeah, great salads. Good restaurant yeah, yeah, and it sounds like straight American cuisine. That's it. You can come in multiple times a week. Yeah, great salads, good burgers I was going to ask about that Some really good salads.
Speaker 2:I would presume like there's gotta be a.
Speaker 1:Cobb salad on there potentially yeah.
Speaker 2:There's a kind of our version of it yeah, we just funny enough, we just call it an American Lettuce, tomato, eggs, bacon. You can put whatever protein you want on it, perfectly executed Caesar salad. We've got one on, and this one was actually done in inspiration of kind of our MI heritage or Montage heritage, which is obviously born in California, and we wanted to do a salad for Mr Firstman, who's our who, who's the founder of montage, and so he's got a salad on there that we call the Coachella and it's in, it's you know dates and avocados and mixed greens and you know roasted chicken and it's, it's just a great salad, um, so yeah, a little bit something for everybody, but definitely a lot more streamlined than what you would find in Octagon.
Speaker 1:Now. It's currently open just to resort and members. Is it public?
Speaker 2:right away. It is yeah, we just pulled the band-aids off. Let's go.
Speaker 1:Now will you guys continue to do brunches like occasionally, or what's that looking like?
Speaker 2:No, so we will, and I'm not going to commit to a deadline on it right on this.
Speaker 1:I had to ask the question because someone would have brought it up if I didn't.
Speaker 2:No, in fact, actually, I think brunch is probably I would say it's arguably one of the most important meal periods that we will cycle back into that restaurant on a consistent basis. It will be on a weekly basis when it comes back.
Speaker 1:Very cool.
Speaker 2:And, quite frankly, we just the Bluff needs a great brunch spot.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh Like let's just call it what it is Bluffton doesn't have that many brunch spots.
Speaker 2:It doesn't, and I and I really believe that we can do a pretty fabulous uh offering in that space. That's, you know people will want to come back to.
Speaker 1:Very cool. Well, a little bit of a curveball question here. Uh, you're, you're a weightlifter, you know you do hard things. How does that relate to the challenges you face as a culinary leader?
Speaker 2:That's a great question, you know. I think I have to think about that for a second. But that to me, is my my Zen time. That is, to me that that's like my selfish hour, because everything we do in this business, you have to be pretty selfless, right. So that is my opportunity to give back to myself and get my head right, so to speak, before before I come in to help other people do the same. Before I come in to help other people do the same. Because if, if what's upstairs in between you know my ears, so to speak is is, is not aligned and is chaotic and is stressed and is, I am not going to be um useful to the people who need it most. Um, that may be in a dire situation, one of the restaurants. They need help immediately. They may need help navigating a personal problem in their life. Um, I am not the best version of myself without that sort of selfishness that I take to exercise and to keep my body and kind of brain at optimum performance.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic. We stumbled onto culture a little bit earlier, and what I hear you saying is by being selfish with your weightlifting. That is your habit. That allows you to show up as a strong leader, show up as a friend, show up as someone who can perform at their best too, I would imagine.
Speaker 2:Yes, very cool.
Speaker 1:And we we talk so much about habits on here that it's it's so interesting to hear from high performers like yourself. All the leaders here at Pomona Bluff absolutely amaze me. So thanks for the sidebar. Let's dive into culture. I think a lot of the time kitchens culinary, they get a bad rap for the atmosphere in the back of the house. So I'm interested what's the key to creating a strong kitchen culture across multiple locations and if you have any tangible things that that you do to ensure that there is a healthy culture uh, in in the kitchens that you oversee.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right, kitchens forever had had a terrible reputation of just, you know, burnout and stress and drug abuse and you know, substance abuse in general. I mean they're like the perfect environment for like self destruction, quite frankly. And you know, I've seen in so many of my friends and colleagues struggle with addiction, struggle with, you know, just all of the outcomes and the parameter or just like the fallout from those situations and I mean I've been doing this for a long time. So you see a lot and I've seen the business shift, you know, quite frankly, for the better shift, you know, quite frankly, for the better. And I would probably say this started to happen dynamically on the broad, broad spectrum during COVID, where people, you know, were forced to find other things to do because the restaurant and restaurant environments probably got hit the hardest, just just in terms of what was happening at that moment in time, and a lot of people left the industry and a lot of us that were still in it that said, okay, we'll weather this storm. We're left wondering why, and it truly came down to culture. So we started to see a very big shift in like, how do you adapt to that? And also what kind of came up with it.
Speaker 2:That was the questions that were being asked. Well, why are you leaving the industry? And a lot of it came back to wellness. It's just like why am I working 80 hours a week, making $13 an hour and just all of those things?
Speaker 2:So we we particularly you know this brand and this is why I love working for montage it kind of hit that head on and said, okay, we need to do a better job creating that culture of wellness within the operations, right, whether or not that's open doors of you know, reimagining and reinvigorating the open doors of communication, not with just like your direct reports, but like all the way down to the, to the line cooks, to the dish teams, to the front teams, and giving people an opportunity to like talk and not just have just surface level dialogue, but actually have like dialogue, like what is going on in your life.
Speaker 2:What can I help you with in being genuine and sincere about it, right? So I and it's funny because I think the biggest thing is all it did was take us to listen and really get it, because when you actually listen to what's being said now, it's going to hit differently as opposed to just like a surface level conversation, but I think the biggest thing was just like listening and then being able to be responsive, and responsive in a manner that actually drove result, which is wellness and then just creating environments where people want to be here. You know they wanted to come to work, they felt good about coming to work, so that's that's something that I work very hard at and I will never I will never dismiss the fact that we come to work and we work in a pressure cooker, right, that is. That is hospitality, and it's reality.
Speaker 2:It's a reality, but it's the environment and it's the people that you're in the pressure cooker with that gets you through it and help you out. So we have a very big team family mentality in any kitchen and any resort or hotel that I've run, that's. That is has always been kind of my, my mantra and kind of my success point in dealing with staff is you run it like a family and you take care of each other like a family yeah, yeah, I understand listening to your people, understanding truly where they're coming from and and generating plans around it so that everyone can thrive in what is a challenging work environment.
Speaker 1:Whenever you know, we work with people, people have emotions and things happen on a dime. They happen very quickly. So the more we can encourage wellness, it just helps everyone thrive. It helps the person who sits down at the restaurant have that incredible experience too. So it's it's. It's pretty interesting to hear you talk about it in the uh focus that you and the team put on. That is quite inspiring to me. I I do understand that you're part of a committee at a montage, the well living committee and I just wanted to touch on that. What, what are you involved in as far as planning activities? It sounds like you do every five K, that's offered, I do.
Speaker 2:I didn't know weightlifters ran.
Speaker 2:I don't, but it's. It's just one of those like sometimes I just do weird uh not not weird, but just off the cuff things. Uh, you know, like I'll I'll run a 5k just because my daughter asked me to, and so, in just being made, then I'll, I'll put on a 20 pound vest and then we'll do it and we'll just do it the hard way, but we're going to do it because that's what that's. What we committed to do is one as a team and two as a dad, because she wanted me to do it with her. But yeah, so we have a whole well-living team and really that was an initiative that was started a few years ago where we said, okay, how do we take the programming at a hotel to make it feel on hotel? Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:Just to to make it to have it to have more depth, go deeper, get involved in the community, get involved um with with different organizations that can help drive the message that, yeah, this is, this is more than just a business for us, right?
Speaker 2:So I mean we look at events, you know, for 5Ks as one basic one, right, but the messaging behind why we're doing that 5K, what the message is behind it, how we position it in the community, what we're showing up to do, what we're defending, what we're standing behind. That is where the impact comes in, right, where you know sometimes it needs more than just oh yeah, let's just do an oyster roast as an event and call it a day. Those are great and they have their place. But, like, how do we do something bigger? And I think you know, if you're truly in love with what you do, your calling to do something greater is always there, and this is something that I'm very, very passionate about. It's just like how do we always position our business and ourselves as professionals to do something greater than what we're the day to day?
Speaker 1:Yeah, then what we're currently doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how do you? How do you make it more?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it sounds like getting to the detailed level of what is the purpose behind the activities we're involved in and how we do things. And the more we define that and assess it on the regular, the more impact I've, I believe we we probably make as professionals.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. It's just that you have and I think the thing is is and it goes back to this business right, because it's so demanding in so many different aspects that in order to have longevity in this business, you have to find things that are good for your soul, either be it wellness, um, or be it, you know, giving back to the community, or just finding, finding some other outlet where you're helping people, because it helps kind of weather and tamper down some of the, the, the day-to-day um, the things that we all have to deal with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. We forget that when we serve people.
Speaker 2:That's what makes us feel good the most and serving people isn't serving people in a restaurant, right, we can all serve people in different ways. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, very cool to get your take on everything culture, impact with wellness, the committees that that y'all have at montage. Let's get a little more tactical here. We're getting towards the end of our time. This is definitely not an area that we've pursued too much here, but what's a food trend that you love, and is there one that you think is currently very overrated?
Speaker 2:yeah, this is this is fun um, a food trend that I love. You know what I? I I tend not to lie. As a chef and someone who's been doing this, I chased those trends for years, right, and if you're working in certain environments, I mean, that's, that's, that's what you need to do so that your product is is relevant, but it's only relevant in that one. Like fine dining is a perfect example. Like, the trends in fine dining are only relevant to fine dining. They don't necessarily replicate outside of that one lane, right, but I, I think so. I typically will always default back to like how do you make it more simple? Right? How do you? How do you remove, you know, five of the 25 ingredients that you have going on and just make a super simple dish that just blows people's mind?
Speaker 1:Let's delete all the showy aspects of things Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And that's typically when I see chefs beginning to mature in their career is when they've kind of gone through all of the trends and they've stopped chasing this and look, there are some that are fantastic. And I think the wellness aspect in cooking differently is super important and I'm so glad that there's a much bigger spotlight on healthy eating, especially in America, and being much more in tune with what's in your food. I don't know if I necessarily call it a trend, but I think consumer education with that, like apps like Yuka, things like that.
Speaker 1:I just heard about Yuka the other day. It is amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can basically snap a shot of any food and get the most detailed information that we've ever had, right?
Speaker 2:And then you make a choice. You make an informed choice as opposed to hearsay or whatever it may be, as opposed to hearsay or whatever it may be. But I think, if I were to lean to a trend, that I love is just the simplicity, but also the wellness aspect of it, because it forces chefs to kind of cook differently, execute differently, think things through differently, and anytime you're challenged to do something different, I think it does nothing but make you stronger and make you a better operator.
Speaker 1:I totally get that. So the trend that you're in love with is our, our. It's really more of a movement, right? Yeah, wellness, focused meals, simplicity, and maybe a trend you're not in love and love with is, like what I heard is getting too complex with what you do, I think, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, just trying trying to uh. I mean, what's important, you know? I think people have to ask themselves, like how many? Yeah, I don't know if there's any trend. I'm trying to think of some of the last ones that uh, that I've seen that.
Speaker 1:I'm just like, oh, my God, what are we doing here? Um?
Speaker 2:but it's. It's been a minute.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, I get it. So, um, well, thanks. Thanks for sharing on. On more of the food front there, uh, we are at that time of the episode, uh, where we ask every interview guest the final question. And so, uh, chef Nate, uh, I'm, what does wellness mean to you?
Speaker 2:Great question and I would answer it in one word Balance, balance. You know we've got many different plates that we juggle in our professional lives, in our personal lives. You know everything is kind of revolves around. You know, if I look at hotels and the business of hotels, it's my entire life is in three dimensions people, product and profit. That's it Right. Everything I do is is fueled by one of those decisions. Right, I think your, you know your family life, your life outside of work is kind of the foundation of how well you operate and how well you write and how well you take care of yourself is completely correlated to how well you perform and how long you can perform at that high level. So balance right, be selfish with your time.
Speaker 1:Make time to exercise, you know. Make time to go to yoga. Make time to, you know, take a walk. Make time to to read a book. Do something for you and people.
Speaker 2:Product profit are the dimensions that, just in your terms, how you evaluate it, if you are in balance.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, thank you for that insight. I know that'll land home with our listeners, who always look forward to that question. Yeah, no for sure. Uh, this has been an absolute pleasure, chef Nate. I uh always love having montage team come on here. I learned so much uh each interview and so, yeah, just thanks for taking the time.
Speaker 1:It's my absolute pleasure Thank you Listeners, feel free to hang out with me for a few more minutes and get some healthy momentum for the rest of your week. I was driving into Palmetto Bluff today and I popped on a podcast that I haven't listened to in a while. It's one led by Craig Groeschel. He was discussing the six habits that great leaders avoid. Yes, avoid, not do. It's really funny.
Speaker 1:We often think about what we need to be doing versus what we need to be avoiding, and even though this conversation was about leadership habits, I thought that this habit applied so much to how we live as people. We often think about what we need to be doing versus what we need to be avoiding. Let that sink in for a minute and let me ask you what in your life do you need to avoid? And then there's a nice follow-up here If you avoid doing so much of it, how will your life be different? What will you have time for? I believe that in life, we have to constantly be creating space for the things that matter, the people that matter, delegating and growing Gosh, just a quick example. Let's review the conversation we just had with Chef Nate. Clearly he's an incredibly busy human, given his sheer responsibility at Montage, All the different outlets, keeping up with each outlet's unique identity vision. That takes time a lot of it. But if you listen closely and picked up on it, Chef Nate cares about his associates and his number one responsibility is taking care of his team. He clearly stated that to him, that's what matters most. And that's another question here for you today what matters most to you? And when an opportunity pops up, are you jumping to accommodate?
Speaker 1:Craig Groeschel says that instead of asking can I do this, Start asking should I do this, should I do this? Then you can respond. You see, high achievers like you and me are driven. They're after more, and what driven people do best to a fault, is they add to their plate. They end up doing too much, and I point this out because I do this, and I point this out because I do this Also. This happens in fitness. All the time I have a goal. I want to feel better, I want to look better. My first step is to do more exercise, to restrict my food more, to walk more.
Speaker 1:Fill in the blank Nope, that's short-sighted thinking. Living a healthy life is not just about getting busy. Being busy, it's about being effective, Having a purpose for what you do day in and day out, and especially what you do most needs to be the priority. So for this week, let's lean into Craig Groeschel's teachings, his perspective, and remember we don't grow by doing more. We grow by doing more of what matters most. That's a wrap on this week's episode. We hope you enjoyed the conversation with Chef Nate and we look forward to spending more time with you again next week. Until that time, remember to actively participate in life on your terms. Thanks everyone.
