EP 5: Dan Kluger

Transcript

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Welcome to Hospitality On The Rise, the podcast about the people shaping the hospitality industry and their journeys. I'm your host, Alice Cheng, founder and CEO of Culinary Agents, hospitality's go-to hiring platform. And I'm here to give you your dose of virtual mentorship.

 

Here, we'll be sharing the stories, lessons learned, and advice from hospitality leaders who've carved out their own path to success. After all, this industry is where many get their start and go on to do incredible things.

 

Whether you're a pro, starting out, or just love the hustle, this podcast highlights what makes hospitality extraordinary, the people.

 

I'm so excited. Today we've got Dan Kluger, who I've known for over a decade, at least, at least. He's a chef and owner at Hardscrabble Hospitality, which includes award-winning places such as Loring Place and Greywind. We're very excited. Dan, thank you for joining us today to hear about how you got here and the advice that you have for your peers and folks who are trying to follow in your footsteps. So, take it away! Tell me how it all started.

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER

How did it all start? Yeah, so I went to Syracuse not knowing what I wanted to do at all. I went on scholarship, and so I was really going more for the school and for the experience than for a specific major. I thought maybe I would do something along the lines of architecture or engineering, clearly not up my alley on so many levels. And in a roundabout way, I got really interested in physical therapy and thought that's what I was going to end up doing. And in order to do that, there was no undergraduate program, but an incredible graduate program. So I figured, all right, I'm here. This is what I'm going to commit to. I'm going to do the graduate program. So in order to do the undergraduate requirements, there was a lot of anatomy and physiology and biology and all these things that I sucked at.

 

Then there was nutrition, which was really interesting to me. And then there was food science, which was VERY interesting to me. All of a sudden, I started to really get into the whole food side of things and food science. Then even there was a restaurant management class. And so all those things, I kind of started to get this bug of I like the idea of food and restaurants.

 

I was really fortunate enough to meet a number of people, but the main one that I think changed things for me was Danny Meyer. I then hit him up for an internship my junior year, I think, at Union Square Cafe. And I did the normal internship stuff. I learned about inventory. I learned about the front door. I learned about reservations. I spent some time in the kitchen. 

 

After I graduated, I went back and spent time in the front of the house and was thinking I would move towards becoming a manager. At that point in time, the mindset and sort of where I think we were at in terms of an industry was you would go through about two years of being a host and a server, etc., etc., then maybe you would be offered a management position. And I wasn't sure that I wanted to commit that much time–at that point in time–because I wasn't sure where I wanted to be. But either way, on my days off, I was hanging out in the kitchen. I did like that. I wanted to understand that. I want to understand it; if I was going to be an owner, what happens in the kitchen? 

 

I was really fortunate that Michael Romano offered me a position in the kitchen as a prep cook. I started peeling potatoes and cutting calamari and doing the really bottom-of-the-rung job. And I think that not only helped me get started, but that really created a total understanding of what Union Square offered, what a restaurant kitchen–you know, how it operated, how you work from the bottom up, all the different tasks. I think starting as a prep cook–as much as today it seems like a lot of people would look down on that–for me it was probably the best part of my experience, because I really started at the bottom and worked my way up. 

 

I did that, I moved up through the ranks of Union Square Cafe, I spent about three years there. Towards the later part, I guess, of that two years, three years mark, Floyd Cardoz was spending time there. He was recipe testing. He was getting ready to open Tabla. We hit it off, and he offered me a job to go work with him at Tabla. And that was really it. At that point, I had the bug, and this is what I wanted to do. I wanted to cook.

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

And you know, I remember the days and had the good fortune to tour and have some meetings in the kitchen at the OG in Union Square Cafe. Those are some gnarly stairs back there. 

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER

Yeah.

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

So if you make it in that space, everything else is in. So take me to Tabla. That was a big, big space, big opening, different cuisine.

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER 

Yeah, I mean, I think obviously as a young cook, it was an incredible experience. It was daunting. There was, you know, tons of pressure, but it was also, as you said, like the kitchen at Union Square, it was sort of this– my father used to always talk about it as like submarine barracks, right? Like it was literally, like, low ceiling and really, really tight quarters, and you made it work. We did a lot of food out of a small kitchen.

 

Again, I think as a cook that that really helped me to kind of understand how to put out really good food the same way consistently, but in so many different ways. Meaning, you cook a piece of salmon on the flat top, you cook a piece of salmon on a burner, you cook a piece of salmon in the oven, you cook a piece of salmon on the broiler. Like whatever you had to do to get that salmon out, but it still had to come out exactly the same. So I think that really taught me how to push through busy nights, how to organize my mise en place, all those kind of things. So then I went over to Tabla where it was just so different. Everything's brand-spanking-new, shiny. We had a lot more space. It was not submarine barracks by any means. It was completely different food and eye-opening. 

 

Union Square was really kind of Italian with American, and Tabla was very heavily Indian-inspired. It was all about spices that none of us knew anything about. It still had that same American sort of farm-to-table notions that the Union Square Cafe had. But you threw the spice in and you threw Floyd's techniques in, it was completely different. 

 

Really amazing opening. You know, I think back to like those first couple days and whether it “Friends and Family” or the launch and 40 covers, and it was harder than the 320 [covers] that I'd done every night at Union Square. It taught me a lot about food, taught me a lot about cooking. Then I think Floyd and his incredible demeanor and mannerism taught me a lot about kindness and empathy and how to manage people.

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yes, so I think it's safe to say now you're hooked. You’re hooked. You're not going back to the front of the house.

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER 

Yeah, I mean, interestingly, somewhere probably I'd become a sous chef. Maybe I'd become an executive sous. I don't remember, but somewhere around probably–I was there for seven years–so somewhere around probably year 4 or so, there was a question like, do I really want to do this? Should I go back to something else? And I remember meeting with somebody else at USHG and thinking about different opportunities that were still within the company. I was really kind of weighing them heavily and I just wasn't sure, "Is this where I wanted to be?" 

 

I think it sounds silly, but I think somewhere on that mark I put a couple dishes on the menu, and I looked back–and I remember talking to Floyd about it, but I looked back and I was like, "I guess I can do this. I guess this is something I should do.” And so I pushed forward and that really just launched everything at that point.

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

That's incredible. And you said, “Well, if I'm going to own my place one day. So did you know early on, like even before all of this was going on, that you wanted to own and operate a restaurant one day or…?

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER 

No, I really had no idea what I wanted to do. 

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

And that's okay.

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER

I think in some respects I was still thinking there was something with nutrition and restaurants. I think early on, within those first few years, I certainly understood that I really liked the restaurant industry, and I liked the idea of building something from the bottom up again. I didn't know if I'd be an owner, but I knew that I wanted to be from the bottom up. I love this experience of starting something at the bottom, doing an opening, being part of that whole thing, whether it's where Metro Shelf goes or where you store things. I loved all of that. So I think just early on, I knew that it was always going be important for me to understand all aspects. And I think that now being in the kitchen, I think my time, having worked on front of house for, I guess probably about a year in total, I truly understand not everything that goes on in front of house. And by no means do you want me to be your server or your bartender. But I do understand it, and I do understand the impact that those touchpoints and those little things have on somebody's experience. 

 

My joke about being a bartender is certainly not really a joke, and I guess I would say that the thing that COVID kind of taught us was that at times we had to do all these things. And there was a point where Scott Reinhardt, who was our GM at Loring Place during COVID, he and I were the only two people essentially working in the front of the house. And I was bartending and serving, and I was far from the level of expectation that I would hope a guest would have of our restaurant today. But I at least knew how to do enough of it. I knew how to interact with the guests, which again, that is the most important part for me, is what is that guest experience?

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

Yeah, no, it's, that's definitely something that's common that we hear amongst leaders as and a lot of folks in the industry is you roll up your sleeves, you do what needs to get done, you serve your guests, you take care of the team, and then you move forward to the next day and next thing. 

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER

Yep.

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

So, you know, it's been over a decade since you technically you've been in a “leadership” position, right? But you still had many more experiences before you went off and did your own thing. So take me to the next–I see here Executive Chef for Core Club.

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER 

Yeah. So yeah, I mean, my first real… I was the CDC at Tabla back in, I guess somewhere around 2002, 2003. So I definitely was, you know, really making that move into upper management and leadership at that point.

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

And after being there for seven years, it wasn't like it happened overnight, you know?

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER

Correct, correct. And so Floyd and I had discussed it was time to move on and kind of looking at a couple of different opportunities, and he had bumped into Tom Colicchio. And Tom said, "Tell him to come see me." And he and I met with Tom, and he had three things at that point in time. One was he was consulting on the Core Club, which was a private membership club here in the city. This was an executive chef opportunity. So to make that jump from CDC to executive chef, and again, be part of an opening and really have to do everything on my own, from setting up a kitchen to design a menu to building a team and training and all those things. But knowing that I had a little bit of support from somebody as incredible as Tom Colicchio was kind of like the no-brainer for me. 

 

So I think that was 2005. I did that for four-and-a-half years, and again, opened that, built that into something that I was incredibly proud of. I think private clubs, they're definitely more popular today than they were then.

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

They're making their mark for sure in major cities.

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER 

They are making their mark. And I think the founder of the Core Club, Jennie Saunders, was really incredible, both as somebody to work with and learn from, but truly inspiring in terms of what she was trying to create and what the Core Club was going to be. And from the food perspective, the fact that Colicchio hired me and we were very much aligned in American food, really supporting those local ingredients, the American ingredients. Then doing the little flourishes of whether it's something French or something Asian, that's how we were cooking. 

 

But the underlying theme was that we were gonna create a really good restaurant, and it was not a country club by any means. So I think in some respects that kind of helped set that groundwork for a lot of the clubs today that are very food-centric and they're–not to knock a country club, you know–what people think of at least back at that point. This is 2005, people thought of a country club, it's going to be club sandwiches and roast beef and things like that. And this was nothing like that. I mean, this was the same kind of food that you would have gotten at Craft or the Gramercy Tavern or Tabla, whatever it was, but now in your private club setting. 

 

So I did that for about four-and-a-half years, and it really opened my eyes to management. It created some incredible friendships and relationships that I still have today. But was really kind of at that point looking to do something different and wanted to get back into the public eye, so to speak, and back into a public restaurant. I think the hardest part was being able to say, or NOT being able to say to a friend, “Come and eat dinner,” right? They couldn't do it. 

 

Basically, I guess as the story goes, I was at the farmer's market in Union Square Cafe–sorry, in Union Square. I was shopping at Berried Treasures, which was Franca. She was a friend and incredible farmer, and [I] always enjoyed spending time with her. And I was at her farmstand talking to her, and Jean-Georges pulls up and they start talking and she said, "Do you know Jean-Georges? Jean-Georges, you know Dan?" And we kind of just said hello. I mean, of course, of course I know him, right? But I'd eaten there, and he wouldn't know me from anybody. 

 

But, as in typical Jean-Georges fashion, like, as welcoming and as amazing as can be, we start chatting and I literally went to meet with them, I think, the next day with his corporate chef at the point in time, Greg Brainin, who's really, you know–

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

Greg!

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER

–sort of the director of everything these days, right? You know him well. So I went to meet with him, I would say like the next day or two days later. Pretty much right away signed on to go work with them.

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

And the rest is history. Well, I mean, it's a very, very… You know, to your point about not getting, not being able to say, “Come, have dinner “or “Come let me cook for you” or whatnot. It's a very different operation when you go from a private club to–not just in the public eye–but then with Jean-Georges, right?

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER

Yeah, and again, certainly like 0 to 60 in that respect, right? When we were talking, I didn't know what all the projects were, but when we were talking, originally, they saw me as being great for this project that was very farm-to-table. I remember talking to Greg, and we were talking about at the Core Club, we did a lot of salads, right? It's that kind of that lunch crowd, they want their big salads, right? So we did a whole bunch of salads. And I remember saying something about we were buying our chickens for the salads from Four Story Hill Farm, which is an incredible farm in Honesdale, Pennsylvania. 

 

And at that point in time, everybody knew Four Story, and everybody wanted to use their stuff. This was, like, we were using something that today would be a $12/pound chicken or something like that for a chicken salad. Like that would be unheard of. And he was like, “That's what you're using?” And I said, “Yeah, that's what we use.” Then we started talking more about the farms and different things. And I think the fact that they knew I was so adamant about these small farms and using these products, they had seen me for this project, which was kind of what I signing on for. Then that, guess, didn't happen, so I went off to be part of their team, opening restaurants around the country while I waited to open The Mark Hotel, which was going to be my project.

 

We got The Mark Hotel open for room service in December of, I think it was 2009, and they came to me right around then and said, ‘This other project that we had been thinking about you for is now happening, and we think it'd be great for you. It's going to be in the abc home building, and it's going to be a farm-to-table restaurant.” Done, great, I'm ready. That's right up my alley. 

 

And so I moved. We made a bunch of swaps, and I moved over to do that. I think in reality, we all just thought we were creating a great restaurant that was going to be this sort of farm-to-table, really fun, seasonal, simple, great food with no idea of what it would become for any of us. I mean, it's become sort of a brand for them. It really helped put me in the limelight. It really helped me be in an incredible position within his organization in that they saw value, they trusted me. I had an incredible relationship with them. I'm beyond enamored by the work that Greg Brainin does. It was just incredible for me as an opportunity. Like all I wanted to do was give to it, and it kept giving back to me. 

 

Really incredible opportunity, and I did that for, again, about four-and-a-half, five years. At which point, we had opened cocina, we were gonna be opening V, they were doing The Inn at Pound Ridge. And obviously in typical JG fashion, he had a ton of projects going on. I thought, do I continue on that road and do something with them, or do I now–now that this bug has really turned into something and I know I wanna do it–do I now push forward and try and do my own thing?

 

That was really the impetus for moving on and and branching out to do my own thing. I really wanted, I think, as I said earlier, I liked from the ground up, I liked doing everything, but I also really liked this idea of being able to design something from the ground up, right? Take a blank slate, and choose everything from the lights to the to the doors, to the paint color, to the fabrics, etc., etc., etc., and so that was it. And so I moved on to do that, and there's really no looking back at this point.

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

I love it. And that's such a big tipping point. And one of the things, because we have this podcast largely to grab the snippets of advice and lessons learned from you and our guests here. Oftentimes when people say they go open their own thing. The question is, well, how do we even do that? Right? I feel like that could be something very daunting. Obviously, you've had so much experience leading kitchens and essentially working in places as if they were your own. So you're exposed to everything, you know how things go. But then is it like you just go look for a space, you connect with the lawyer? I mean, I'm curious too, actually.

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER

Yeah, think, look, I think everybody probably does that journey slightly differently. And I think it depends a little bit on what your goals are and what your financial situation is, etc., etc., etc.. I was very fortunate that I had met people that now owned a couple of restaurants and invested in restaurants and they were developing a little bit of their own hospitality arm within their

 

their finance business and so they were able to support and really help with some of those things, and a lot of it was, you said lawyer, like they made an introduction to a lawyer, they made an introduction to an accountant, things like that. You can easily go find, but it's sort of A) you want to know who you're dealing with and B) it takes a while to know what are all those things that you need.

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

You don't know what you don't know, huh?

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER

Yeah, and who you're gonna trust and there's a lot of crap that goes into it and...

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Behind the scenes before opening day, right?

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER

Yeah, behind the scenes before you even can sign a lease, Again, everybody's gonna do it differently, but my agreement with my partners–I have different levels of partners, I have investors, I have partners, and so each of that is its own agreement. Then there's an agreement to do other things. So there's, you know, hundreds of pages of agreements and lawyers involved and it costs a ton of money.  I'm sure a lot of people are like, “Screw that, I don't need that. I'm just gonna do this with my uncle and my best friend, and they don't need an agreement,” and that maybe is amazing for them. And it works out and we know–we certainly know a bunch of them ourselves–some relationships work out really well and some don't. 

 

So I knew I wanted to do a bigger restaurant. I knew I wanted to develop a company at some point in time. So I wanted to set it up right from the beginning and not really just play it by ear. So went out, got myself a lawyer, got myself the accountant, started developing the LLCs and doing all the basic levels. Then it was time to start looking for space. And I joke about the whole agreements and contracts and all those kinds of things, but I don't think I finished my agreement with my partnership, my partners, until probably three months before opening. And that was a year-and-a-half after starting the process. It's just not easy. 

 

Set out to find a place, basically took a map of New York, and I wish I had been smart enough to keep it because it was kind of cool. But I basically had drawn on it, areas that I would look at, areas I wouldn't look at, color coded them, you know, sort of like A, B, C. [ROLLS EYES] Using that. 

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

I see what you did there.

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER

But actually that was a big part of it. Like I didn't want to be close by, both because I think that would be pretty rude and B) it was time to go out on my own. 

 

The hardest thing is to make that jump and then to start to make a name for yourself and not always be referred to as “the Chef of That” or whatever. I think for me, that's always a funny thing because one of my really good friends is Todd Snyder, who's a men's fashion designer, and he and I talk a lot about this because we both were going out on our own at around the same time. And he'd worked for J.Crew, Mickey Drexler. He worked for GAP. He worked for POL. He'd worked with all the greats, right? And I had worked with so many of the greats. And it was like you constantly being referred to as “Todd Snyder from J.Crew,” “Dan Kluger from abc.” 

 

It was hard because there were a lot of times when people would show me a space that I'm like, that's really nice, but that's like two blocks away. Not going to do it. We had found a space up in the NoMad area. We were, you know, literally on the final terms of it, ready to sign that line. And something fell through at the very last minute. We didn't like something they were pushing on. They didn't like something we were pushing on. And walked away from it. But that had been, that had been probably four or five months of that process, right? I mean, again, it just takes forever. 

 

And I had my friend's own 8th Street Wine Cellar, which is across the street from Loring Place, and they are turning 18 this year. 

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Wow.

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER

So I had been going there for a very long time. And I had seen what is now Loring Place many a time but in different carnations. When I saw it up for rent, we had looked at it and we liked it, but not everybody was fully on board. And 8th Street is like, it was kind of a cursed street at that point in time. I'm sure you know Akhtar; Akhtar, definitely didn't like 8th Street. A number of other people didn't like 8th Street. 

 

So I was hesitant, and then when the other place fell through, the space on 8th Street had also been taken, so we were back to the drawing board and I was on vacation, and my friends who own Wine Cellar called me up and said, “Hey, it's up for rent again, you should reach out.” And I reached out, and literally three days later we started the paperwork and started moving forward with it. Again, you go back to the trials and tribulations of doing your own thing and trying to find the right people to work with. Hindsight's 20/20. I think I certainly am happy with what we chose and where we are in terms of location and what it means. 

 

But in hindsight, had I known everything I know today, probably would not have chosen the space, mainly because it needed so much work that really put us behind the 8 ball from day one, and it becomes so hard to ever make up that expense and that cost. Then it makes it for a much harder day-to-day operation when you're constantly thinking about what you owe and trying to make up for the huge expense of building the space out. 

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

You're probably describing a lot of the day-to-day thought processes of a lot of restaurant owners and operators across the U.S. I think that's probably something that, at a macro-level, is unfortunately a common theme amongst restaurant owners.

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER

Yeah, I mean, look, a gorgeous restaurant head-to-toe is a gorgeous restaurant, and we all love them. I think ultimately for what I want to bring as an experience and as food to a guest, you know–and again, hindsight is 20/20–but I think probably should have approached the space and the overall concept a little more with the mindset of if anybody's looking up, we've done something wrong. So let's keep everything at eye level, and let's spend the money at eye level. We should have had open ceilings and not worry about ductwork showing and you know, all the kinds of things that again, people don't realize, but you spend three, four, five million on building something out ,and you look at it at the end of it, and a million of that is the stuff that you and I will actually notice. Everything else was mechanicals, redoing plumbing, putting in air conditioning, things that are very important, but that they don't make for your experience. 

 

So I think, again, hindsight, think trying to… Had I understood more of that today, I think trying to balance that out a little more than I did would have probably changed things for me.

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, well, I mean, that's that's great advice. And thank you for sharing. But you know, I will say we're almost a decade. It's been open for almost a decade.

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER

Thank you.

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

And personally… Obviously your viewpoint is different from someone who's outside looking in. I've had many, many–a celebration, a random brunch, a walk-in. You know, I enjoyed COVID outside dining there. You know, from the outside looking in, you’re doing great. You're awesome. Don't be so hard on yourself. 

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER

That is the perfect example. And you brought up other restaurants. I think, again, it's sort of the Instagram life, right? Like outside looking in, everything looks great. That's not always the reality.

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Isn't that the duck that, I mean, that the business analogy where you're like a duck and your feet are like, you know…

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER

Underwater, yeah.

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

I can relate, but yeah. So, I mean, first of all, it's no easy feat. Congratulations to have your first owned and operated restaurant last so long and be so successful. You have countless nominations, awards, you've had many projects since then. And then of course you opened more restaurants and other things as if that wasn't keeping you busy enough, right?

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER

Yeah, I mean, again, I like the experience of opening something. I like that experience of designing something, from branding to design to menus, etc. But yeah, it's a good challenge, but I don't know. I'm not sure it's totally worth it.

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Well, and that's real talk, right? You've been doing it for many decades. You've seen the ebbs and flows. You've been in different neighborhoods. You've worked with hundreds and hundreds of different types of folks coming through your kitchens and your dining room as employees, and then thousands and thousands as guests, right? It's fair to say you've seen a lot.

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER

Yep.

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

And you're still going. And you have, dare I say, I shouldn't say “made” a name for yourself, but you definitely are known for doing some pretty magical things with vegetables in general. Arguably the reason for more vegetable movement, if you will, during the time, right?

 

I feel like I've been eating for a long time, and I feel like when you're at abc, and perhaps that is also where the trends were leaning more towards. But everything from your cookbook that wasn't too long ago, years ago, that had really vegetable-forward. And of course, your cuisine, if anyone who's listening has ever had the opportunity to dine at one of your restaurants. So when you were thinking about Greywind in a totally different space and what you were going to do, how does one, when they open multiple concepts, kind of, not restart from scratch, but kind of take things and make them a little different, even though it's in a different neighborhood?

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER

I mean, it depends a little bit on the situation. I think some people have a concept, and they go out to build that concept. For me, it's sort of been the opposite in terms of I have an opportunity, and I want to put something into that opportunity. Then I look at how do I like to cook? What do I want to do? What do I think is going to work right in this space and kind of go from there?

 

In this case, it was very important to relay it to the developer that this restaurant have a little bit of vegetable-forward, I think some people refer to it as sort of that California cuisine. But for me, it's New York-American cuisine. And that it was really at a certain level that would suit that clientele that this building was really being built for. 

 

So I guess at that point in time, we had opened Penny Bridge, which was in Long Island City, which I absolutely love and am so proud of, but bad timing, obviously. And that restaurant was meant to be a fun play on American comfort food and diner food. We took things that people know, like mozzarella sticks, and we tried to make the best mozzarella sticks we could possibly make. We took things like wings and tried to make the best wings we could make. And then we took other things like meatloaf and made something that was not at all meatloaf. I mean, it was a gorgeous steak, but it was very much inspired by my father's meatloaf. 

 

So everything always, for me, has some kind of story to it of why I would want to do it. Loring Place was very much about vegetables and the wood-burning grill and really approachable things: pizzas, pastas, salads, all things that you know I like to cook. Then when we started talking about Greywind, it was like, okay, we've sort of run the gamut now of… There's a broccoli salad at Loring Place that is literally grilled broccoli and its vinaigrette, right?

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

So good.

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER

And then Penny Bridge was more about a vegetable salad, which had broccoli and asparagus and sugar snaps or whatever, right? And it was not one specific thing. So then when we got to Greywind, it was kind of, let's go back to what Loring Place represents in terms of an ingredient and really have even more fun with that single ingredient. I think a great example of that would be something like the sugar snap pea salad that we had done in the spring, which is–sounds corny, but like it's more of a celebration of sugar snaps. It's roasted sugar snaps, it's blanched sugar snaps, it was charred sugar snaps. Some are cut, some are whole, and then it's a really amazing vinaigrette. It’s so that when you get the salad, you're having sugar snaps three different ways in one bite. So that kind of became the theme of Greywind. 

 

Then of course, as usual, some kind of nod to the nostalgia. We opened with a Cheez-It, this large Cheez-It. For me it was kind of like, I love Cheez-Its,I love cheesy bread, I love breadsticks with cheese, and how do we make our version? Again, we always are talking about something that's nostalgic to us as what we liked as children or something of that sort. So we were kind of drawn to the Cheez-It, and so that became our thing.

 

We try and find something that's a mix between really, really noticeable, nostalgic. There's a sundae that's like a play on a huge ice cream sundae with a waffle cone that we would have had as kids for a special treat. And then again, we would take something like the sugar snaps, and it's a true, like,” take one ingredient and really go headstrong with it.” And so still a lot of vegetables, fish, obviously we have some meat, and we have a rotisserie where we do rotisserie chicken. But everything typically is like very much vegetable first, and then what's the protein that's going to work well with that vegetable, and how do we then make it all come together?

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah. Well, it seems to be working for you because we had a really wonderful team dinner there at the end of the year to celebrate. Those vegetables were working very well with the proteins. My daughter loves your Cheez-Its. 

 

So as we kind of start winding down here, before we get to the quick-fire questions, I have a couple that are a little bit more, you know, looking backwards. Is there anything that you would go back and say yes to? Was there an opportunity–Or I should say it's something that you would go back and say no to, but I'm more interested in what you would have said yes to.

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER

I don't know off top of my head. I know there's been opportunities that I've said no to, and now I look and I'm like,”So-and-so is doing that. I wish I had done that.” And I won't really say what they are because that wouldn’t be fair to developers, etc. But there have been a few that I was like, you know, I think it's a really interesting thing and you certainly understand growth and how hard it's been to build a business. Everybody says like going, going from one to two is hard. And… I think they say one to two is hard, but two to three is even harder because it's like, now you're really stretched thin, but do you have the financial capacity to really build out a company? Either way, one-two, two-three, whatever it is, it's hard. And unless you're really raking in the dough, it's really hard to build a company. 

 

So I think in some respects, I wish I had–maybe when I had a little more energy–I had taken a couple of those things that would have really stretched me, but would have allowed me to build a company faster than–, or build to the opportunities faster than I can. So I think like you throw COVID into the mix, which not much we can do about it, but you throw it in, like it definitely changes that path and the the quickness in which you can grow. I look at some of the people that, again, some of these opportunities that I'm thinking about that I said no to, there are other people that were probably more or less in the same boat as I was at that point in time, but they went ahead with it, and now they've built this company and they were willing to take that risk. And so that's probably like the big thing in terms of that for me.

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, and I mean, you said it. I think it's a series of risks and decisions. And depending on where you are personally in your life and where you want to be, you have to weigh all the factors and make the best decision for yourself and your family at that time. 

 

That's a question that I don't love, but I really love the answers when I ask it because when you talk to folks such as yourself that have done so much over a span of time, there's always opportunities, and there are things and there's people, other people looking at you, probably thinking the same thing, right? You know, “I should have done this” or “I had an opportunity to do that.” But that's why these stories are so great because there's going to continue to be risks to be taken, opportunities that come up.

 

But we're gonna move into quickfire questions. I think some of these things were already addressed during the show, but what advice would you tell your younger self?

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER

I mean, maybe sort of what I was just saying, like stop worrying so much about whether or not you fail, and go and do it and exercise those muscles. If it doesn't get a good review, whatever, you tried. I think, again, I probably spent too much time worrying about how would I be perceived or any of those kinds of things. And that's probably not the best thing and certainly isn't moving me forward.

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Well, it's not holding you back either. What's your advice for someone struggling in the industry?

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER

I think my biggest piece of advice would be trying to find a mentor or a friend who you're gonna have real talk with in your industry.

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

And then that's a great segue into what's your advice for fellow hospitality leaders?

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER

Being open with the struggles of business, and maybe those are your personal struggles, but maybe they're your business's struggles. Sales are down since pre-COVID, and every single expense is way up. Insurance is up, Con Ed is up, labor is up, food cost is up, liquor cost is up, and we're not even getting into where we're going to be maybe in a couple of months from now with all the other crap, right? 

 

So like, how could you possibly be saying like, everything's amazing? I think there's probably restaurants out there that are busier than they were pre-COVID or busier than ever. But how are you managing all these costs, all these new things, whether they're the struggle to get insurance or whether it's the cost of Con Ed, whether it's your lawyer costs have gone up, right? They're charging more. It just seems like every day there's something else. So I guess I would say that openness to share in terms of where people at is important.

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, yeah, no, I agree. I mean, you're definitely not alone, coming from what we see and who we talk to. You know, if it's not one thing, it's another, and at least it's not COVID, we'll say. So, we're coming from a different bar these days.

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER

Hopefully we've moved past that, and in our lifetime we will not have to do anything like that ever again.

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Like that again, exactly. On that note, thank you so much, Chef Dan. 

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER

Thank you.

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

It's so nice to see you and catch up. Thank you for this invaluable advice and real talk for our audience here. I know that so many people, business owners and individuals, look up to you. And we're here to not only inspire the next wave of folks, of industry leaders, but also share with them, be transparent. You know, things are not always Instagram-filtered. And if your goal is to be a leader in the industry, you have responsibilities. If your goal is to own your own business, there are things that you should expect and prepare yourself for. So thank you so much for your time and your wisdom.

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER 

Thank you.

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

And til next time.

 

GUEST: DAN KLUGER

Until next time.

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Thanks.

 

HOST: ALICE CHENG
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