Chef George from Mr. B’s Bistro in New Orleans taught me the power of taking responsibility for what you observe. I was responsible for seeing things, even if they weren’t my fault. To be a good team member is to observe. When I was a student at the Culinary Institute of America, a chef took me under his wing and taught me everything about stocks and roasting meat. Chef Jeff Tunks of DC Coast Restaurant taught me to get simpler with my food, focus on why something is on a plate. My goal is to perfectly execute something that is simple and delicious. “Hopkins, you’re gonna leave that there?”, “Don’t burn the bottoms!”, and “Don’t spin the wheel” are pieces of advice I can still hear the chefs tell me in my head.

I look for people who will be loyal to themselves and the team, not me. People of values who will follow through with what they say and do it, who have high expectations: no one will ever say that they want to be number 2 or number 3, you want to be number 1. As my kids would say, I want someone to be “woke”.

I find inspiration by beginning with my family, as a husband and a father. I want to have a good and healthy family, to take breaks to have breakfast or dinner at home with my kids. I’m a home cook first. Chefs didn’t invent food, home cooks did – as chefs, we are stewards of that. I love reading the cheap cookbooks you can find at yard sales, they teach you how real people cook. I’m part of a generation of cooks who started in the home kitchen, we care about our community and our farmers. We’re also here to be active citizens, like Tom Colicchio who I admire for his political actions and commitment to preserving SNAP.

I wouldn’t be able to do my job without Dropbox, we use it to communicate with all of the teams and store every source, from farmers to recipes. It allows us to do our job and is as effective as knives in the kitchen. From an eating standpoint, a spoon is the most important utensil, as we’re always tasting. I tell my cooks that they need to constantly taste – if it doesn’t taste good to you, it’s not going to taste good to anyone else.

Escoffier's Le Guide Culinaire truly is one of the great tomes of professional cooking: Escoffier was the organizer of chefs, he codified recipes, set up a professional system, the brigade, that could be transferred to others. It’s over a century old and is just as relevant today and tomorrow. I also own three editions of Le Larousse Gastronomique. They speak to the professional aspect of what it is that we do, they’re the Jedi Knights of food.