Josh Sharkey (01:18.534)
ooh, just, I just forgot that I had coffee on my ember. Shout out to Ember, by the way. Yeah, hot coffee. It's been sitting here for like three hours. You haven't had coffee yet? You want to go get a coffee?
Geoffrey Kornberg (01:23.438)
god, that's one thing I didn't do this morning. I didn't have my coffee.
No, no, I woke up, I woke up at like 11. No, I'm fine, can, I can live. I supplement with Snapple. Yeah, I couldn't fall asleep. Like I lit, at the last two nights in a row, I read a complete book, 500 pages, two nights ago. And then I read like 400 of a 500 page book last night.
Josh Sharkey (01:37.954)
You woke up at 11?
Josh Sharkey (01:54.274)
What are you reading?
Geoffrey Kornberg (01:56.124)
I read one, I'm reading right now, like, you know, it was like a poster about like a dystopian, you know, future with a father and son like traveling through the United States and there's like these like, you have to watch how like people have turned into cannibals, things like that. hold on, I have to go into my books because it's all on my phone here. It's really good, it's really good though.
Josh Sharkey (02:11.757)
What's it called?
Josh Sharkey (02:20.192)
Use Kindle.
Geoffrey Kornberg (02:25.528)
It's called The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
Josh Sharkey (02:29.741)
All right, I'm writing it down. Do you use Kindle?
Geoffrey Kornberg (02:31.708)
And before that I read, I use the, you know, just books, the Apple books. Yeah, and then before that amazing book, Indian Horse. It's about, it's like, so it's like, you know, about this tribe in Northern Canada.
Josh Sharkey (02:40.582)
that's... whatever you said for...
Josh Sharkey (02:48.321)
server.
Geoffrey Kornberg (02:56.476)
And you know, this is about the time when like, you know, they were still kind of living in their old ways. And, you know, people from the government would come and try and search them out, take the kids and bring them into like these foster homes. And, you know, they were very abusive in these homes.
And but one of the like a nice priest came and got them into hockey and this kid became like it was just ticking out of there and you know ended up getting adopted and but then it takes like a bad turn and like turns out like you know he was abused in the home it affected him turned into an alcoholic and you know if finally man gets some redemption coaches hockey but it's really really good that was the one i read in like one day
Josh Sharkey (03:40.941)
Cool. I imagine because it's better hockey.
Geoffrey Kornberg (03:47.236)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it's like, it's like, you know, now it's just like, I read like two books a month typically. And you know, so I'm like, I'm always looking for like the next thing I want to read. And it's typically historical fiction, but you know, sometimes I'm just like looking for a change. But although those, yeah.
Josh Sharkey (04:08.427)
Yeah, yeah, I love his work. That's most of what I read.
Mishner is like my favorite author and Rutherford is really good too. Oh yeah, I was just telling you Mishner, that's right.
Geoffrey Kornberg (04:15.332)
Yeah, every once in a while I read like a real history book, but you know, like I just read Circe recently, which is like kind of talks about like the lower level Greek gods and, and you know, that was really good.
Josh Sharkey (04:21.759)
Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (04:29.802)
Yeah, yeah.
That's cool. Well, welcome to the show. know we have, we're the, the, the, well, you know, we're just catching up, but, this is like, I think I told you this, but I'm doing a quicker format because everybody's busy. and the goal is also to just collect a bunch of, the same, questions, the answers to the same questions from as many culinary leaders as possible. then over
Geoffrey Kornberg (04:36.88)
Thank you. Yeah, yeah. What are we talking about?
Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (05:01.101)
time, we're going to aggregate the answers and things like that. So you're kicking us off. You already know the answers or the questions. But I've never done this before, by the way, so this is first time, but here's the deal for everybody listening. And we'll tell more about you and your, obviously you've run tons of multi-unit restaurant groups and we cooked with great crews together many, many, many years ago. And you're a great cook, great chef, you're good at hockey, you're okay at poker.
Geoffrey Kornberg (05:06.158)
Awesome.
Josh Sharkey (05:30.689)
What am I missing? I think that's about it. And so we got nine questions and we're just gonna, we'll cruise through them. You get like one reset. So at the end, if there's one answer, you're like, I want to change it. Then we can do that. Cool.
Geoffrey Kornberg (05:46.502)
Alright, perfect. Got it.
Josh Sharkey (05:48.886)
Alright, first question. And again, I send these ahead of time so you know. But the greatest dish you've ever ate at a restaurant and well, the audience doesn't know. So what's the greatest dish that you ever ate at a restaurant? So what's the greatest dish you ever ate at a restaurant? And then tell me what restaurant it was.
Geoffrey Kornberg (05:54.149)
Yeah, yeah.
Geoffrey Kornberg (05:59.396)
Yeah. Now they did.
Geoffrey Kornberg (06:08.812)
So I would say there's a spicy rice cakes with like sausage and Chinese broccoli from Mamufuku Sambar. It was like, you know, obviously it doesn't exist anymore, but like for me, like that dish had everything like the crispiness of the rice cakes. It just had the perfect balance of like salt, spice. It was just so craveable. I would like go back there all the time just for that dish.
Josh Sharkey (06:38.775)
Yeah, I remember it. It's like braised pork and is it like broccolini or like Chinese broccoli or something?
Geoffrey Kornberg (06:45.308)
It was Chinese broccoli. Yeah. Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (06:47.157)
Yeah, that's right. And then the rice cakes, like they crisp them up, right?
Geoffrey Kornberg (06:52.452)
Yeah, they crisp up, were like the tubes, you know, not tubes, but they were like, you know, solid, but they were like shaped like a tube.
Josh Sharkey (07:00.653)
Yeah, yeah, it's crazy that Sun Bar's closed. That was such a good restaurant. And that was a great dish too. That was a really good dish. I actually was making that at home for a while. I was just like, it's a bunch of caramelized onions.
Geoffrey Kornberg (07:04.572)
I know. It really was.
Geoffrey Kornberg (07:12.302)
I never could figure out how, how do you get the rice cakes crispy? Like they always turn to mush on me.
Josh Sharkey (07:19.417)
really my problems that they're like they would get like a little bit too Yeah, it might be that like I would have to do them pretty slow in a decent amount of oil I don't know. They probably deep-fry them. I bet they deep-fry them There's like a bunch of caramelized onions and yeah, that was it that was a good one. Okay. All right, so the spicy pork with Chinese broccoli and sambar got it. All right next question
Geoffrey Kornberg (07:23.342)
Yeah. Maybe I wasn't buying the right ones.
Geoffrey Kornberg (07:34.458)
Yeah, that makes sense.
Josh Sharkey (07:48.896)
Let me ask the question to you because the audience doesn't know it first. So a recipe or technique that you've borrowed from another chef that you're still consistently using today in some form or fashion or even exactly as is.
Geoffrey Kornberg (07:52.988)
You
Geoffrey Kornberg (08:06.222)
So it was a garlic confit butter that actually made with Matt Greco who we both worked with at Char number four. You know, we've all made garlic confit, but it was a nice mixture of that blended in with butter and seasoned well. And it was just came this perfect thing for like adding flavor to things like picking up your vegetables, finishing your meats, adding to a sauce or even just spreading on some bread.
So I guess you could call that more of a somewhere between a technique and a recipe.
Josh Sharkey (08:41.215)
Yeah, I think I remember that. That's right. But was like the cloves cooked in oil, right? It wasn't like roasted garlic heads,
Geoffrey Kornberg (08:47.972)
Yeah, yeah, so you slow simmered the cloves and oil, then you drained out, you know, and then took the actual solids of the garlic and then put them in a, in a Roboku or a food processor with like softened butter.
Josh Sharkey (09:03.816)
What do we do with the oil? I forget.
Geoffrey Kornberg (09:06.97)
I'm sure it was saved and used to like confit something else or just even just for cooking.
Josh Sharkey (09:12.001)
Yeah, surprised that wasn't to go to the butter. Yeah. Okay, got it. So garlic, confit, butter, Mac Reco. We'll shout him out too. I haven't talked to him in a while. Wow.
Geoffrey Kornberg (09:20.752)
Yeah, that's years and years.
Josh Sharkey (09:24.965)
Okay, a chef anywhere that you think should get way more shoutouts than they do today. I think I know who you're gonna say by the way, but a chef that you think should get way more shoutouts than they do today.
Geoffrey Kornberg (09:37.02)
I mean for me that's a tough question because like I don't really get out much anymore, but the chefs that I've worked with I find it like I admire them for their work ethic their leadership their high standards and That's like the qualities that I searched to you know grow myself as a chef, you know, the food obviously is very important but
Those qualities I feel lead to great food coming out of the kitchen on a consistent basis. And guys that I admire for that, obviously, Grey Coons, Larry Finn. Give a shout out to my buddy, Chris Chipolone. Not what you were expecting? okay, okay. gotcha.
Josh Sharkey (10:18.797)
That's what I thought you were gonna say. By the way, you can only pick one. No, I thought you were gonna say Chris, because he's, I'm bummed because I never had his food, but every person that I know that knows Chris has eaten his food says it's incredible. But you don't hear a lot about Francie, but I mean, again, maybe you do actually, because we don't get out very much, but I know you know him well, and every time someone, I mentioned that restaurant or him, people freak out. All right, cool.
Geoffrey Kornberg (10:44.668)
Yeah, yeah, he's got an accolades, you know, he's got Michelin stars at his last two restaurants. So. Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (10:50.133)
Yeah, yeah. So he's good shout outs, you know who I actually, you know, who I caught up with yesterday, who I actually love for more than just like him being a chef, just holistically is Franklin Becker. He's doing great and he's got so many things that he's doing outside of just being chef and running restaurants. He's got, know, the...
Geoffrey Kornberg (11:06.438)
yeah.
Josh Sharkey (11:14.957)
the autism boards and those events and a bunch of other businesses that he has his hands in. And he's always impressed me as somebody that has just a wide breath and also grows a lot, is always improving. That was more Regency by us because I...
Geoffrey Kornberg (11:29.072)
Yeah, I should give him a shout out because he has helped me out a lot in my career.
Josh Sharkey (11:34.955)
He's great. Okay, the next one is a hard one. How do you make, and I'm gonna make, I'm asking everybody this question. How do you make your grilled cheese? I like get specific. You're like, I wanna know like what's the bread? What kind of cheese? What's the pros, everything.
Geoffrey Kornberg (11:53.678)
Yeah, yeah, so.
Alright, so you know my grilled cheese, to give it, it's low brow, but the technique can be carried over to any high brow grilled cheese. I use Martin's potato bread, Land O'Lakes American slices.
Josh Sharkey (11:59.278)
How do you make grilled cheese?
Geoffrey Kornberg (12:13.692)
butter and salt. That's everything. So first I melt a bunch of butter in a pan. I use non-salted butter because I add salt to the grilled cheese. I'm talking like...
Josh Sharkey (12:26.987)
Land O'Lakes American,
Geoffrey Kornberg (12:29.18)
Yeah, Land O'Lakes. For me, that's the best sliced American cheese. I've actually done tests with this and with friends, were testing different American cheeses because something that I was helping him put on the menu. And I had always thought Kraft or something, and they told me Land O'Lakes, and I tried it. I was like, all right, I'm sold.
Anyway, so once I've melted the butter in a pan on a low heat, I dip both slices into that butter so they're completely saturated on one side.
Then I take them out with the buttered sides on the outside and add two slices of the cheese, close it, keep the pan on a low heat, add the sandwich back in, cover it, continue cooking on a low heat. It takes about like three or four minutes until basically it creates the perfect like golden brown across the entire bread. Like not a splotch of white, perfectly golden brown.
Josh Sharkey (13:25.845)
Alright, so you're not putting it together. You're like literally two separate pieces of bread, cheese on top, in the butter, and then you're covering it so they're cooking separately. gotcha.
Geoffrey Kornberg (13:34.405)
No, I close it, then put it back in because now both sides are already perfectly buttered. So that way when I go and I flip, the other side's already buttered. It's not like one side has captured all the butter from the pan and the other side's gonna be like different texture, different consistency. I'm looking for like both sides to be equally perfect, golden brown and buttered.
Josh Sharkey (13:44.705)
Got ya.
Josh Sharkey (13:51.405)
Okay.
Geoffrey Kornberg (13:55.965)
I seasoned it a little bit with, yeah, and I cover it. So that's the thing is since I'm cooking on a low heat, what would happen is if I cooked it open, the cheese would never melt. So I'm still looking for that ooey gooey cheese in the middle. And then, so it's about three, four minutes on each side, comes out perfect. It's like crisp on the outside. That butter is saturated about like halfway through the bread.
Josh Sharkey (13:56.343)
got it and you cover it
Geoffrey Kornberg (14:25.756)
And then it's just like, once it's done, it's like that cheese is perfectly melted. And it's just like the perfect amount of salt, perfect amount of butter. Yeah, I put a little salt on the bread, on the outsides of the bread, you know, before I put it in there.
Josh Sharkey (14:35.169)
And you little salt on the cheese or on the bread? Yeah, yeah. I don't know why people don't do that. It's funny, my daughter, Pearl, she freaks out. Actually, I stone too, like to freak out. She always wants salt on her anything but any sandwich, grilled cheese. I think people don't typically do that, but I think you have to.
Geoffrey Kornberg (15:03.364)
I mean, you season everything else you cook, right? I mean, my daughter and my wife will attest to this. I make their favorite grilled cheese.
Josh Sharkey (15:05.643)
Yeah, yeah. All right, so.
Josh Sharkey (15:15.073)
You make a good french toast too, actually I made you a french toast. Alright got it, so Martin's potato bread, Land O'Lakes American cheese, surprises me. But cool, and unsalted butter, salt, cool, covered. Alright, next question. Wildest or most embarrassing kitchen story?
Geoffrey Kornberg (15:17.786)
Yeah, yeah, similar, similar technique.
Geoffrey Kornberg (15:37.309)
This is both wild and very embarrassing. So I'm not gonna name the restaurant I was working at, but I was working at a restaurant, someone called the Department of Health on us, saying they got a foodborne illness at the restaurant where I was the chef at the time. Let's just say it's something you can obtain through a fecal matter. I then was ordered to, actually I had to collect poop.
from every employee that was working at the restaurant that day. And in these little tubes, yeah, I'm not even kidding. I had to collect, I had to ask them like, take this tube, give me a sample of your poop. And then I had to like put it into this like, you know, styrofoam cooler. And like, obviously it has to be kept cold. So like, I had to store like poop in my walk-in for a few days. And you know,
Josh Sharkey (16:12.076)
What?
Geoffrey Kornberg (16:36.826)
turned out to be nothing, they didn't see anything, anyone could just call, accuse you of this and this is what you have to do. And it turned into nothing, because they didn't find any, because that's how they'd see if someone had whatever that is, because you have to pass on, it would be in your system. So, extremely embarrassing and extremely scary situation.
Josh Sharkey (16:58.839)
That's wild.
Josh Sharkey (17:06.349)
I didn't even know you had a du- like where do you store it in the walk-in?
Geoffrey Kornberg (17:06.46)
And also strange that like, you know, the Department of Health, like where do they expect you to store this poop? Well, you're, you know, there's, it's being stored.
Josh Sharkey (17:12.511)
Yeah, where do you store it? Like, you know, that's like, can't store that in the... Where? Where do you store it?
Geoffrey Kornberg (17:16.74)
I mean, it's in its own container and it's like thing, but like it just, you know, the idea of it is horrifying.
Josh Sharkey (17:24.833)
Wow, okay. All right, I'm gonna move on from that one. I know completely different.
Geoffrey Kornberg (17:29.018)
Yeah, I should probably, yeah, that's what I should probably come back to and cross out, right?
Josh Sharkey (17:34.677)
You could reset. Next question, completely different direction, I hope. I really hope. A dish that never made it on the menu because it was too hard to execute. Only because it was too hard to execute.
Geoffrey Kornberg (17:47.727)
Yeah, so I was recreating a menu at an Indian restaurant I was with and it was a very like, it seemed very simple in concept. It was like a steamed cod in a banana leaf with like a green curry inside the banana leaf with it. just simple steamed. What it...
was executed, it was excellent. It had a beautiful thing, you just cut it open and it's steaming out, goes to table, beautiful presentation. The issue was we didn't have the right tool. We weren't working with proper steamer, it was basically like a pot of water on top of a flat top, or a third pan with a perforated third pan on top of the thing.
you know, we're getting inconsistent heat. The station was also the same station picked up the naan bread. So it's like, you have two things you have to pay such close attention to. And you know, obviously there's consistency in the thickness of the fish and like cod was continually coming out overcooked, undercooked. And it was just like, you know what? This is way too difficult for.
you know, this restaurant tax queue, we just had to pull it right off after a few days.
Josh Sharkey (19:13.409)
Was the banana leaf like table side?
Geoffrey Kornberg (19:17.568)
No, it wasn't table side, but like right on the pass we would cut open the banana leaf So like it would go out you'd still see the steam coming out
Josh Sharkey (19:23.533)
Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (19:27.853)
Yeah, but it leaves tough.
Geoffrey Kornberg (19:27.932)
And it's just like, it's just one of those things where it's just like, sometimes you need the right equipment in the kitchen or it's not on the right station or like maybe it could still work, but you know, in that given situation, it just wasn't happening.
Josh Sharkey (19:45.165)
So you feel like in another kitchen that could work pretty well.
Geoffrey Kornberg (19:49.059)
Absolutely, absolutely. Like if we had like cafe gray where we had those steamer cabinets, you know, and you know, and you have one person who's solely responsible for cooking fish, but like, I don't know if you've ever worked on like a tandoori station before, like, you know, when you're picking up non-bread non-stop, it's like, it's not like you can just like stop, walk away and not pay attention to it.
Josh Sharkey (19:56.098)
yeah.
Josh Sharkey (20:11.488)
Yeah, yeah.
Josh Sharkey (20:16.013)
Yeah, Okay, next question. And you've probably been through this a bunch. So you're scaling a concept to more locations or whatever, just growing revenue. But let's just say you're scaling to more locations in your case. What's the first thing to start to break down when you scale a restaurant concept quickly?
Geoffrey Kornberg (20:39.196)
Consistency. You can do many things at a single location when you start. And a lot of times, you have all the attention to pay to every single detail in that restaurant. And you're not necessarily thinking about expansion at that time when you're executing that restaurant. And so you try and do everything in house. You try and be like everything, you could be doing juices, food, bottles.
whatever it is and you know you're not necessarily focused on the pipeline and the growth at that time and you haven't developed all your systems yet behind everything because you're just doing so much and you're just trying to execute and it becomes hard to repeat those things without the same bandwidth you have when you're at a single location.
Geoffrey Kornberg (21:34.222)
and you obviously don't have the same level of oversight.
Josh Sharkey (21:34.261)
Yep, yep, okay. That's a good one.
Yeah. Okay, so basically, consistency in general and when things are complex, it's harder. All right. A leadership tactic you employ today based on doing the opposite of what was done to you by manager in the past.
Geoffrey Kornberg (21:49.114)
Yeah.
Geoffrey Kornberg (22:00.317)
I would say leading without fear or humiliation.
specifically, you know, I obviously had experienced that in fine dining restaurants throughout my career. You know, I worked under managers who believe like pressure, public criticism and intimidation were like effective motivators. Mistakes were called out loudly in front of everyone. If you ask questions, it was kind of looked at as like a weakness. Silence was mistaken for competence. But I think what it actually created
was where cooks were afraid to think for themselves. Would I, know, for me, like when you're correcting someone, it's always in private. If you're praising them, that can be done in public. You always want to encourage people to ask questions because that's how you learn, right? If someone makes a mistake, we fix the process. We don't attack the person. You know, we...
You make it clear accountability and respect are not mutually exclusive.
Josh Sharkey (23:08.407)
So what's the like, is there like a, if you could summarize it and also just sort of allude to what happened, or maybe something major that happened with the manager or boss, that, you know, don't have to call them out exactly, like what happened, I'm sure that it happened a bunch of times, but what's the major thing that they did and what do you now do because of it? In summary.
Geoffrey Kornberg (23:19.739)
You
Geoffrey Kornberg (23:25.817)
Yeah, yeah.
Geoffrey Kornberg (23:34.909)
So, you know, there was this one sauce that we would always make for short ribs. It was a reduction, you know, like a very famous dish at Cafe Grey, you know, you're well aware of it. An amazing dish and...
you know, was at like mango, pickle, ginger, garlic, tons of spices, tomato. And it was, you know, quite the process of making this sauce. And then it was melted with tons of butter at the end, obviously. But, you know.
It would come out wrong, you'd take someone else and say, you make this, you can't make No one ever would go and teach you if you made a mistake. And then there was a situation where I actually made it, but came the next day and like, you know.
He asked it, I told him that someone else had made it, even though I had made it, and he said, this is perfect. You know, like, so it's just like, it was more about the person than it was about the sauce itself, but like that person was more about like breaking you down as opposed to training you and lifting you up.
Josh Sharkey (24:48.695)
Okay, I think in the interest of I know exactly what you're talking about, but I won't share anything that you don't want to but basically the what happened was somebody Somebody attacking the person not the problem and you don't do that today Okay, gotcha. Okay, cool. All right last question If you could ban one ingredient tool or phase in the kitchen, what would it be?
Geoffrey Kornberg (24:55.516)
Yeah, no, no, I don't, I'm never gonna call anybody out.
Geoffrey Kornberg (25:05.016)
Exactly. Exactly.
Geoffrey Kornberg (25:17.456)
have to say, I know you're gonna notice truffle oil. Not truffles themselves, just the truffle oil. It's usually synthetic, one dimensional, completely overwhelms anything it touches instead of adding some sort of depth. It flattens dishes into this single loud note. And it's like the shortcut to luxury, I guess, without actually improving the flavor.
Josh Sharkey (25:46.413)
Yeah, truffle oil is fucking horrendous. I hate truffle oil. If you take black truffles and you blend them into oil, fine, but that's not what truffle oil is, or least not 99.9 % of time. And whenever I'm out at a restaurant and I see truffle potatoes, truffle fries, I'm just like, can you please just take the truffle out? Because it's all you taste, and it tastes like this synthetic, you know, like...
Geoffrey Kornberg (26:10.628)
I'm
Josh Sharkey (26:15.661)
And you know, have you ever been in restaurant and like ask them, oh, is it truffle oil or is it actual truffle? And then they tell you it's truffle because they're just trying to, you know, support. And it's like, no, no, no, please, I need to know because usually what happens is it's at a restaurant where like, whatever, it's the ribeye steak that's on the menu and it comes with truffle mashed potatoes, you know, and you're like, can you just take the truffle out? And they're like, no, no, I'm like, okay, but I just can't have that anymore, but I want the steak.
Geoffrey Kornberg (26:21.916)
Pero no.
Geoffrey Kornberg (26:44.848)
Hehehehe
Josh Sharkey (26:44.907)
Yeah, I agree man. I agree. Okay, that's it. You get one reset if you want one, but you don't have to.
Geoffrey Kornberg (26:53.028)
You know what? I'm not gonna take my reset. You know, it's the truth. I'll stick it with it. Whoop it is. All right, awesome. Thank you.
Josh Sharkey (26:56.809)
Okay, alright, so poop it is. That's it, man. We did it. This was the first of a long line of these, so we'll both be getting better at this. Thanks, man. I appreciate you coming on,
Geoffrey Kornberg (27:13.647)
Absolutely, a pleasure man. And yeah.
