EP 60: Jamie Bissonnette

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.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

I'm so excited to have Chef Jamie Bissonnette with us here today. Jamie is the Chef and Founding Partner of BCB3 Hospitality, which we're going to hear a little bit about here, which includes Somaek, Temple Records Bar, Sushi at Temple Records, Zurito, Shinchu Coffee, and a whole lot of heart and excitement. He's also the Culinary Board Member of Spoonfuls, which is a Boston-based food recovery operation, largest of its kind in New England, and the author of The New Charcuterie Cookbook, which we just chatted–it might have been the last time I saw you in person, when you signed my copy of my book. I think it was in Aspen. Well, anyway, we're not going to date ourselves here. But Jamie, thank you so much for joining us.

GUEST: JAMIE BISSONNETTE

So happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, so I'm going to have you take us all the way back to the beginning because you've done a lot of things here since. How did it all begin? How did you get into the hospitality industry?

GUEST: JAMIE BISSONNETTE

Hospitality, let's see. When I was a kid, I went to a pizza party at my friend Chris Batera's dad's restaurant, La Trattoria. And they were making pizza and hanging out in the dining room. It was the classic son of a restaurant owner having his 10th birthday or 8th birthday or whatever it was in the restaurant before it opened. And I asked if I could see the kitchen. And I went in, and I saw some dude carving a huge steamship round of beef and the stainless steel tables everywhere and ladles hanging, and I was like, “Wow, lots of really cool, shiny shit. I want to be here.” And it just stuck with me. And I fell in love with food. 

Growing up, we didn't have a lot of food at home, like a lot of good food. We ate plenty, but it wasn't quality. A lot of canned things, different cans mixed together. Classic late 70s, early 80s suburban America. And after seeing a kitchen, I just thought about it all the time. I was enamored with them so much that I started working at a grocery store, and I kept finding myself wanting to be over by the meat cutters or in the deli area, making sandwiches. And eventually I started cooking at home, watching Jacques Pépin, the Great Chefs series on the Discovery Channel, Julia Child. And just, that was it. I was hooked. I got kicked out of high school and got into culinary school, and the rest is, you know, a more checkered past of history.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Did I see somewhere that you were a vegetarian at some point in your younger years?

GUEST: JAMIE BISSONNETTE

Yeah, when I was in my early teens, like 14, I became a vegetarian, mostly because of the music and the crowd that I was rolling with. It was the early 90s. I was really into straight edge, hardcore punk rock. Being straight edge, we didn't drink, smoke, do drugs. A lot of us led a healthy lifestyle, or so we thought, of being vegetarian. For me, it was less about the animals and more about the healthy lifestyle. But it waned. I went vegan, and then in culinary school I went back to being vegetarian, and then after culinary school I came back to the world of omnivore.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, and I mentioned that because when I was doing the pre-stuff here, I found that to be interesting, especially because your book was The New Charcuterie Cookbook. I was like, oh, this is a new fact I have to ask you about. 

So going back to kind of early experiences, were you already like, “I'm going to own a restaurant one day. I can envision myself doing this”?

GUEST: JAMIE BISSONNETTE 

No, I had to say I had a lot of short-term goals until I was in my late 30s, or maybe early 30s. As a kid, it was mostly, like, avoid prosecution. Most of my life was, like, try to stay out of trouble, avoid the trouble that I've been in and skirt the errors that I had made. And as I got into cooking and–to be honest, went to culinary school, I was 17. I graduated, I was 19, and I started working in restaurants, and it was just like everything made sense. I found a home. Hospitality spoke to me for a lot of reasons, and I started to think of myself as a real person, as somebody who could be productive in society. 

You know, as I became a cook, and in my early to mid-20s, I finally found purpose. But in my younger part of the career, it was more like make enough money so I have a place to live, pay your bills, and just don't get in too much trouble.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, I mean some things never die, right? I feel like that's still the mantra for a lot of folks these days. 

So what brought you to to Boston? Because you went to culinary school down south, right? Down in Florida.

GUEST: JAMIE BISSONNETTE

So I grew up in Hartford, Connecticut, and I always, not always, but a lot of time spent in Boston going to see bands, coming to see family. My uncle had moved up here when I was in high school. We were very, very, very close. So after culinary school, it kind of made sense to go somewhere where I had a little bit of support. I was living in Florida. I didn't have any family down there. And I didn't have any family to really go back to in Connecticut at the time.

So I came to Boston and lived with my uncle. And he was working as a bartender at a restaurant that was pretty popular, and he introduced me to some people, and that was it. I thought I'd be here for a couple of years, and here it is, almost 30 years later, I'm still here.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Still here. Can you remember an early cook experience that was life-changing, either on the positive side or the negative side?

GUEST: JAMIE BISSONNETTE

Oh yeah, I remember moving up here right after school in February of 1997. I started my first real romance out of culinary school. And her uncle was a chef of a bar and grill kind of neighborhood spot in Boston. And he was going to give me a job. And I went there right out of culinary school. And he had me picking herbs and straining stocks and doing some things. 

For some reason, I hadn't been humbled as much as I should have been in the culinary world yet. And I thought, “Why am I doing this? I just graduated culinary school. I shouldn't be skimming, cooling stocks,” and all of the things that, now, I love doing. I'm like, man, I love making stock. I want to sit around and perfectly pick some herbs, but for some reason I thought I was better than that. 

And it was my first day, and I was like–his name was Danny O'Hanrahan–”Danny, I don't understand why I'm…” and he was very, very patient with me. He was very kind, and he told me to get the F out of his restaurant in the ever so nicest but stern way. And that, to me, humbled me. It took me a couple of days to realize how much of an idiot I was. I was so dumb. I mean, I was a teenager. And I got a job not long after working with a well-known chef in Boston. And I tried to use that humility to not be an asshole again, like that. 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

I love that story. I think that can be applied again. I mean, I think sometimes in any kind of education degree, etc., when you get your first real world or your first kind of eye-opening experience, it always sticks with you, right?

GUEST: JAMIE BISSONNETTE

Totally, man. It happens all the time now, where like, a young culinarian kid will come in and look for a job and have that same kind of attitude. And I'm so happy that I can look back and be like, “Yo, man, I know what you're doing right now. You shouldn't be doing that, because I did that, and it's not good. Like, be humble.” Yeah.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, lesson number one. 

GUEST: JAMIE BISSONNETTE

Yeah, lesson number one, don't be a dick.

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

So obviously that worked out for you. So you're working in kitchens and in a couple of different restaurants and working your way up. At what point were you like, you know, again, I go back to this because I feel like some people are like, “I want to open a restaurant by the time I'm 30.” You know, “I want to do this by the time I'm whatever,” which is great to have those goals. 

But then some other folks are like, “Okay, it just kind of came to me” or “I found the right partner” or “I did something, and I realized the time was right to go open my own spot,” if you will. So at what point were you like, “I've worked all these different kitchens, I got some experience, I got humbled a couple of times and now I'm ready to do my own thing”?

GUEST: JAMIE BISSONNETTE 

I thought I was ready real young. I left Boston for a period of time. I went back to Hartford, Connecticut, near where I grew up and worked for about a year and a half before I came back to Boston. And in that year and a half, if you had asked me, I was ready to be the next best chef. And I was not. At all.

I worked down there for some great people, Billy Grant being one of them who taught me a little bit more in the humility and the importance of understanding the business. And when I came back to Boston, all I wanted was experience. So I wanted to be a sous chef. That was my goal. And I did that for a bunch of years and eventually was given the opportunity to be the opening chef of a newer restaurant, which to me, I thought that was the closest I would ever come to owning a restaurant. 

Owning a home, owning a car, and owning a restaurant just seemed like things that would never happen to me. I didn't have the financial means, I didn't have the family history to be able to support me in that way, so it never occurred that that would ever be something that would happen or that anybody would ever give me the money to do it, so it wasn't really even on my radar. I was just looking for a really good job where I could be creative, and it wasn't until putting in some hard work and opening up some restaurants and some pretty good accolades that that opportunity presented itself with a partner. A chef brought me in as his business partner and then we opened up a bunch of restaurants together.

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

Yeah. And you gloss over that you opened up a bunch of really awesome restaurants together, and you expanded beyond Boston. I'll rattle a couple of these Toro, which also had a location in New York. Very different, although I had the pleasure of dining in many of these places. And I would remark like Toro Boston is like a different vibe, different. I mean, there's like the commonality, but it's different experience than Toro New York.

GUEST: JAMIE BISSONNETTE

Dude, it was like walking into Wayne's World scene when he goes into the studio and he goes, “Oh, it looks like Wayne's basement.” So that's what Toro New York was to Toro Boston. And then Toro Dubai was even more so. And then Toro Bangkok actually was more like Toro Boston. It was small, it was intimate, it was funky. It was in a weird part of town. Obviously none of those restaurants survived the pandemic, but man, it was really wonderful. Those were awesome opportunities to be able to travel and open up those restaurants.

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

Yeah, and I could just see it, I love it–for those of you who are listening and not watching, I could see it in your face. And we had met originally, I would say, over a decade ago at Toro New York, where you were kind and you continue to be kind with spending time with myself and people in the industry. So thank you for that. Side note. 

And so you opened all these great things. I also mean Little donkey Coppa. I mean, it's really, really fun spots that combine this local vibe and feel, like you want to go there and hang out, but you also want to go there if you're feeling fancy. I don't know if that makes sense, but, you know, it kind of ran the gamut, which is really hard to do. right? 

And so that was a great experience and fun. And then obviously the pandemic happened, but at what point were you like,” I'm going to go do a different thing”? Because your new concepts are different.

GUEST: JAMIE BISSONNETTE

There was never a point where it was like, “Hey, I want to break up from my business partner and do something different.” It just naturally happened. We just started to go different directions in how we wanted to operate and what we wanted to do. And we just thought, “You know what? Let's just figure out a way to pull it apart and do it in the most respectful way possible.” And the way that that made the most sense, because everything was so intertwined, was I would step away. 

And as soon as I did, immediately I was like, “Wow, I've got a freedom to do anything.” Whereas before, having so many restaurants, but the bandwidth wasn't there to put into anything like a passion project. It was all like, “Oh, if we're going to do a new restaurant, how are we going to make money? What is our impact going to be on the community? How are we still going to be a part of the other restaurants?” 

So for me, with that newfound freedom, Somaek just seemed like the natural next step. As my now partners, Andy and Babak, we were all talking and fantasizing about doing something together and looking at properties, and nothing was coming to fruition. And we weren't forcing it, you know? I was like, “What about this? Property is up.” “It doesn't look right for us.” “What about this?” “The lease deal sucks.” 

And then this guy, Henry, came to Babak and said, “Hey, I've got this space. It's right near one of your restaurants. I want out. It's been 25 years. I want to sell the business. And I don't want to do it anymore. Do you have any interest?” And Andy came to me, and they said, “Well, if you were going to do something here, what would it be?” And I was like, “Well, it's really small. It's really intimate. To be honest, I would love to do a Korean restaurant of hansik style,” like home-cooked meals like I do with my mother-in-law and some of the food that we have at home as a family. 

Because I was falling in love with it, and I'd been cooking it, you know, at that point we had been married for a couple of years. Song and I had just spent about a month in Korea visiting family, and I was just like, that's really what I was want– I was cooking it at home all the time. I was like, “I want to see if mom will help me open up with her recipes to do something that pay homage to that kind of Korean food.” 

And then of course the landlord was like, “Well, if you guys are going to take it, you can have this space and you can have this space,” which turned into Temple Records and Sushi at Temple Records organically. And we opened up all three at once. But yeah, I mean, it was always kind of like going where the wind was taking us. It was less planned than one would think. Yeah.

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

Thank you for sharing, because oftentimes people talk about don't rush, and sometimes the space speaks to you, or sometimes things just don't feel right, Don't force something, whether it's a lease, a partnership with an individual or with a landlord or whatever. 

GUEST: JAMIE BISSONNETTE

It happens everywhere. Yeah, struggling man.

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

Yeah, I mean, you got your next level creativity unlocked, and largely due to the fact like, look, when you when you've done all the things you've done and you've built a name and a reputation for yourself, you have a little bit of flexibility. Pat yourself on the back a little bit. I'm going to pat your back for you. You have a little flexibility to take a step back and breathe and say, “What is going to be the next thing that's going to really excite me?” and think about where you want that to be and how you can do it. 

Congratulations. That's so exciting. I haven't had the opportunity yet to make it up to Boston to visit these places, but I definitely will. 

GUEST: JAMIE BISSONNETTE 

Please come. Yeah, we'd love to have you.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

I will. I will. So I have to ask. You make it sound so easy, one space, you open three restaurants at the same time. I mean, that's kind of wild. What was the biggest challenge with that? Because they're also three different concepts or, you know, they're not the same.

GUEST: JAMIE BISSONNETTE 

Yeah, it's basically one property that has sliding doors to connect them all. So like, it's a shared kitchen for prep and a shared walk-in for everything. So it's kind of like having three restaurants in one restaurant. Luckily, I partnered up with Kenta Katagai, our sushi chef. He came in, and he runs the sushi bar, and he's just such an amazing human being. So talented, so humble, so patient and kind that that made the sushi bar very easy culinary-wise. 

For us, our biggest struggle was training and monitoring the hospitality in the front. That was really difficult for us in the beginning. And it was hard because as we were doing it, we were three partners that were developing a partnership not having ever really worked together. Andy and I have known each other since the 90s from working for Billy Grant at the same time. So the history and the friendship and the trust was there, but we hadn't divided and conquered during service before. So that was not without its hiccups, but man, what a bonding experience. And I wouldn't have wanted to do it with any other guys in the world. It was so awesome. But I would say that that was one of our biggest hiccups, was just understanding how to work together, what the expectations were of that, you know? And then of course the operational things that always come up.

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

Yeah, business as usual. I mean, nowadays it's like, yeah, whatever, just add it to the pile.

GUEST: JAMIE BISSONNETTE

Yeah, yeah. Finding a purveyor that specialized in the Korean ingredients that we wanted was hard at first. And finding staff that wanted to work in a narrow record bar where the bartenders would have to flip records every 20 minutes or so, to flip each side of the LP, that was difficult. Yeah. A lot of difficult parts, but there's so many really great small victories that just felt really good.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, I hear you. How do you keep yourself, I mean, it sounds like… I love doing these because when somebody gets to talk about obviously something that they love and they're passionate about, you can just feel it and see it all over their face and their body language. So I'm just sitting here, smiling. Where do you find your ongoing inspiration now? Now that you've got a couple of locations, you probably have plans to expand at some point if I had to guess.

GUEST: JAMIE BISSONNETTE

Probably. I get inspiration from everything. Sometimes you watch a K-drama and you're like, “Oh man, that kimbap she's eating looks good. I want to make kimbap.” And then you go on the internet, and you go down a wormhole, and next thing you know, you're watching a video of some ahjumma making something that you haven't had in years. It could be that. It could be opening up a cookbook at home, just hanging out on a day off. 

Like last night, Song and I hung out, and she had made this really awesome baked pasta. So I wasn't cooking dinner, which was great. And we're hanging out playing backgammon. And behind her, where we were playing backgammon, is the bookshelf. And I'm looking at some of the books on the bookshelf. And after we're done, I grabbed a couple of books and pulled them out, and then this morning, I was reading through some old Spanish cookbooks, getting inspiration for Zurito. 

It just kind of, wherever you can find it, however you can. Conversations with friends, going out to eat places, both old and new, and just like, “Hey, I really love this. If I was going to make this, how would I do it? If I was going to make this, how would I do it to make it applicable for one of my restaurants?” Yeah, everything. I mean, inspiration comes from everywhere if you just keep your eyes open, I think.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, I was going to ask you what advice you have for folks starting out a little bit earlier on their career on how to stay inspired, stay creative. 

GUEST: JAMIE BISSONNETTE

For that, I think my best advice is stay quiet unless you're asking a question. And then just listen and observe. You don't have to agree with every old dog and every old chef and every old bartender's opinion, but you can learn from it. And by opining and telling them why you disagree with them, you're shutting off the conversation. So I feel like every young culinary person, front of the house, back of the house, be more, like, improv in life. I was not like this. I wish I was better at this. But be more improv and keep the conversation going. Even if you're learning something that you're not going to do, you're learning. And learning is the most important thing that you can do besides travel in our industry.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm going to tag on to that and ask you a question about yourself. Did you notice anything about how you've approached things differently over the years other than a couple of examples that you gave already?

Like your approach to, I would say, how you identify leadership or people you want to bring into the fold with you. Because obviously when you're opening your own business, it's very important on all levels. When you bring in leadership, when you're bringing team members, those are also really important as well.

GUEST: JAMIE BISSONNETTE

That's a really good question. I would say like, I look back and I want to write a letter, like Daniel Boulud’s Letters to a Young Chef. I want to write myself a letter and put it in a DeLorean and send it back to who I was 20 years ago and tell me not to be all of these different ways, right? And I guess my advice, I really don't know how to answer that without going on a really long spiel about mental health and expectations and boundaries. 

I guess now I want to bring people into the fold that I can have honest, good conversations with. I used to look for the most creative, the most driven, the most that were gonna wanna jump through hoops and push, push, push. And as much as I wanna want that again, I don't. I want people who wanna slow down, be contemplative, that understand the importance of hard work, but also understand the importance of taking care of each other.

I used to preach, you got to put the mask on yourself before you can put on the masks for other people when the cabin pressure changes, but I never practiced it. I thought I did, but I didn't. And I think for me, slowing down is a huge thing. The badge of honor of working the line and being seven days a week in the kitchen, that was my identity for 20+ years. And I've realized that it helped me and it suited me there, but I'm at an age and a point now where it doesn't, clouds my mind. 

So I want to work with people that can be like that, that can sometimes take a step back and realize that just because we've done it that way for a year doesn't mean we can't change it tomorrow. Just because we came up in an industry where this was expected doesn't mean we need to expect that now. I guess growth. I want people who are growth-minded, not just in business, but developmentally. That's what I'm looking for. Does that answer the question at all?

HOST: ALICE CHENG

I love it. There's so many things I'm going to latch onto there because A, I think everything you just said there was really revealing of the type of leader you are and how you've become.

GUEST: JAMIE BISSONNETTE 

And now, I gotta tell you, and now, and what I'm trying to be now, because I wasn't like that. I was an ass. And like, I had moments of good, and a lot of moments of bad. And I look back at what got me where I was, and some parts of it were beautiful, and some parts of it I was patient, but some parts of it I wasn't, and reflecting back and knowing that I needed to change but not realizing it until after I started changing, it's really weird. It's a really weird thing to digest.

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

Yeah, and great leaders do that. There's self-reflection. There’s “How do I get better? How do I change?” There's also the macro-level of this industry. Like what's healthy? We talk about this being a career. Times have changed. People have changed. New generations are coming in, working with multi-generation–I call it multi-generational folks working together to execute service. And it's really hard. And you talk to folks who are coming into the industry or starting out regardless of age. And there's this combination of what they have seen and heard about and read about of how things were and then what they're experiencing. And they're working with certain chefs who grew up during that time. And they're working with other chefs who were of the receiving end, if you will, of some of some of the past acceptable behavior. 

The great thing and the common thread that I see are there's more of this dialogue around what's good for us as an industry and then us as leaders and individuals, because you can't talk about professionalism and an industry and longevity without addressing a couple points that you said about just mental and physical health, just self-reflection and development listening skills, just different skills and the overall why are you doing this, right? 

You want the people that are aligned with what the reasons why you're doing and what you're hoping to accomplish versus others who have their own agenda, which is fine, right? But that's not necessarily a match of both who you want to work with and who they might want to work with as well. So that was also a little bit of a subliminal recruiting, I would say, conversation, right? Those of you who are looking for this type of work environment, here you go, right?

GUEST: JAMIE BISSONNETTE 

Yeah. Yeah.

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

Wow, I can kind of just stop right there, but we got a couple of minutes. I think that we should just move to quickfire. 

But before we do that, I will say, as I mentioned briefly before, I've known you for over a decade. You have always, obviously you're sharing that you've changed, over the years, the leadership and growth and all that. I've always been very appreciative of your kind and calm nature. So take that for what you will as you continue growing and building your teams. On that note, we're to go to quickfire.

GUEST: JAMIE BISSONNETTE 

Do it.

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

What advice would you tell your younger self?

GUEST: JAMIE BISSONNETTE 

Slow down.

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

What's your advice for someone struggling in the industry?

GUEST: JAMIE BISSONNETTE 

It depends on how somebody is struggling in this industry, but I would say, generally ask for help. It's out there. There's people that can relate to you, and there's people that want to help you get better at whatever you're struggling with.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

What's your advice for fellow hospitality leaders?

GUEST: JAMIE BISSONNETTE 

Remember that hospitality is top-down. If you don't take care of the people that you're with every day, you can't take care of the strangers that are walking into your establishment.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

All right. On that note, Jamie, thank you so much for taking the time to share your career path and your advice.

GUEST: JAMIE BISSONNETTE 

My pleasure.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

So nice to see you again.

GUEST: JAMIE BISSONNETTE 

Good to see you.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

And look forward to more great things from you and your teams.

GUEST: JAMIE BISSONNETTE

Thank you, thank you.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Remember, success looks different for everyone in hospitality. No two paths are the same. If you have a leader or a topic you want to hear about, email [email protected].

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