Eric Hasse: Tales from a Life of Cooking, Chaos & Caviar
"Experience the flavor of Chef Eric's kitchen, where the heat is as 'Hot as F*ck' and the passion is real."
"I go into every day just wanting to be better. So much of what I see now is it's, like, too focused on the show. It's a marketing scheme compared to as opposed to the actual caring about the cooking. Sure, it can look good, but does it fucking taste good?" - Chef Eric
Chef Eric has been cooking since he was a child, when his mother taught him to make a meatloaf. When his son was born, Eric decided to switch to cooking as a career and has been doing so for 17 years. On the East Coast he has worked for various restaurants, including DBGB, but has seen many restaurants close due to COVID. He finds that many restaurants focus on the show rather than the taste of the food and is inspired to do better each day.
In this episode, you will learn the following:
1. The unique bond shared by line cooks, and chefs.
2. The challenges of running and surviving a restaurant during the COVID-19 pandemic.
3. The creative and entrepreneurial success story of a chef who created his own hot sauce.
Resources:
Sweet Mama Hot Sauce on Instagram
Sweet Mama Hot Sauce: Order Here
Official Patriot Gear -10% OFF with code CHEFHASSE
Official Patriot Gear on Instagram
Other episodes you'll enjoy:
Ariel Guivi, Part 1: What is a Chef?
Patrick Stark: The Untouchable Egos
Josh Morris: Balancing a chefs drive with family life
Connect with me:
Instagram: @insidethepressurecooker
YouTube: @insidethepressurecooker
Twitter: @chadkelley
Patreon: @Insidethepressurecooker
Feedback: Email me!
Website: https://insidethepressurecooker.com
Loved this episode? Leave us a review and rating on Apple Podcasts or Follow Us on Spotify or your favorite podcasting platform.
Transcipt:
[00:00:03]
Over the last 20 years working in restaurants, I met a lot of really interesting people. Bourdain called us pirates and misfits, and he couldn't be more right. We really were. I say were. We are a hodgepodge of cultures and backgrounds, and we get to play with food all day, and we get to make a living in that, and it's pretty damn awesome.
[00:00:27]
This is what inside the Pressure Cooker is all about. It's about making some new friends and sharing some stories with some old friends. And listen, we all know that life inside a kitchen is not for everyone. We've seen plenty of people come and go that thought they could hack it and they couldn't. It really does take a special someone not only to survive, but to really thrive in an environment of just what feels like complete fucking chaos.
[00:00:56]
But it's pretty damn controlled. And then just the constant pressure and the stupid hours you put in, not to mention it can be a very thankless job. Before you know it, it's all in your blood. And it's the only thing you know and you need more. It's an addiction.
[00:01:13]
This is the bond that all wine, cooks and chefs share. It's becoming the heartbeat of the kitchen, as cliche as that fucking sounds. But it's in our blood, which means it's fucking pulsing through our veins. And it's what we live for. A quick interruption before we jump on.
[00:01:31]
To the rest of this, two things. First, there's a link in the show notes that well, it's not really a link, it's my email. Please. I want to hear some feedback from you all. What do you love?
[00:01:45]
What do you not love? This is how I learn. And the second part I've set up a patreon account for this podcast. The link is also in the show notes below. Please, if you're able to we would love any contribution you're able to support us with.
[00:02:01]
We all have costs that we need. To try to cover with this show, and any sport would be greatly, greatly appreciated.
[00:02:10]
Chef Eric, 32nd elevator pitch. Who are you? I am Chef Ericos father. I'm a chef and I am a patriot. And that's pretty much it.
[00:02:25]
All right. How old are your kids? 1610 and two. You're covering the gamut there? Yeah.
[00:02:35]
Papa was a rolling stone.
[00:02:41]
So tell me then, how long have you been cooking? What got you into it? I've been doing this forever, man. We moved to Massachusetts when I was, like, eight, I think. And we took over my family's taxi company.
[00:02:57]
And mom was working and stepfather was working. And it was a phone call on, like, a phone on the wall that you had to, like, answer and be home for. And this is what you do. And you make a meatloaf, and I'd get the whole thing. She'd read me a recipe.
[00:03:14]
You're writing this down. You're writing this down. And I would do it and I enjoyed it. And the more that that went on, I kind of fell in love with it.
[00:03:28]
That's fine.
[00:03:33]
When did you realize it was going to be a career? Jesus.
[00:03:41]
I kind of switched permanently to it being a career. About 17 years ago, I was going to go to the army. We found out that my ex was pregnant with my oldest son, and things just kind of shifted gears. I always tried to stay out of the cooking business because I thought if I did it every day, it would ruin it for me.
[00:04:08]
I wouldn't get as much enjoyment out of it. There's truth there, you know? And like, I grew up in a house like, my father owned three delis. He worked himself to death. He was a shit bag, whatever.
[00:04:20]
He wasn't around. And it was what it was. And I thought if I worked in the industry, it would just make it all tainted. But it actually became quite the opposite.
[00:04:38]
I can understand that. It's almost one of those, like, he didn't want to follow in his footsteps. Yeah, 100%.
[00:04:47]
Okay, so right now you're cooking your soup and you're in Farmingdale, New York. You've been out in the East Coast the entire time. Yeah, new York. I work in the city for Danielle Bald.
[00:05:10]
A few restaurants here on the island. I was in Boston for a little bit, and then last November, I came back to Long Island. Okay. Dug in back here. Now.
[00:05:25]
Were you at barbalude? No. Is it DBG. Bees. Oh, nice.
[00:05:32]
I like that blue. Our commissary was you opened the front door to the commissary and it was the back of the iconic CBG. Bees. Like punk rock. Yeah.
[00:05:45]
A few trips I made to New York, actually there, I think, twice.
[00:05:52]
I like the feel to it. It's a different animal now, though. The city. It's become just disgusting. Oh, the city.
[00:06:01]
The city has just become disgusting. Yeah. This whole COVID thing just ruined so many restaurants. There like Michelin Star restaurants are shutting down. It just became abysmal.
[00:06:11]
That was like, the tough time in Boston. Like, I left there to come down here because at the end of COVID with all the restrictions and everything, nobody could offer the pay, nobody could offer the hours and everything. Rent moratoriums were up, and it was just got insane. Yeah. I don't know how restaurants I mean, it was impossible for so many places to survive and pay people because restaurants aren't exactly known to have, like, large vaults of cash just hanging around waiting for this stuff to happen.
[00:06:45]
Especially in New York or the East Coast, where just the rents are fucking ridiculous as it is. Even with the moratorium, at a certain point, it's like, hey, everybody's got to be able to pay something here. Yeah, I got a little obscene. What's the one restaurant you were sad to see go? I don't know.
[00:07:08]
There was a few there was a couple nice little, like a couple of quiet joints in Boston that were just it was like a good place to go get, like, a bowl of ramen or some nice sushi or something like that. And they were closing left and right. Little, like, no name, hole in the wall places that would go to after work. You know what I mean? Yeah, those places where I mean, they were kind of the definition of restaurants that were survived paycheck to paycheck kind of thing.
[00:07:34]
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. They were probably floating checks for a while. Yeah, that's unfortunate because all those places are usually pretty legit. And it was the smallest places and the best food we could leave.
[00:07:49]
I was, like, working in Brookline. It's a place called the Public House for, like, a great set of owners. This guy David loved food, loved everything. We did, like, a barbecue Sunday. We'd have people coming in just for that on Sundays.
[00:08:03]
And then you get to end the shift and go out and hang out with the guys and go get a fucking bowl of noodles and just wind down from a crazy week. And then all of a sudden, that shit wasn't there anymore. What did you guys do after that? Then it was just like, hop on the green line to the red line and go back to Dorchester and hang out. That's unfortunate.
[00:08:23]
Yeah, it was pretty shitty. So tell me about a time when you're cooking and you just kind of question everything, where you're just like, man, am I really in the right spot? Is this my career? Should I be looking for something else? I think that's happened a couple of times.
[00:08:38]
The first time was like, when I started in Delhi's, and I just got tired of it. Like, the hours, the bullshit, it became a lot. And then when I went to work for Danielle valud, it was a whole different animal. It was like, I have to inspect this guy's, like, parsley schiff and odd right now. Is this what I want to do?
[00:08:56]
I don't want to be the chef with the pair of tweezers and the fancy little shit on the plate. That's just not me. I'm never going to be a tweezer chef. I'm a fucking bull in a china shop. I come in, and if you're in my way, I'm mowing you down.
[00:09:14]
I have a very strong point of view on walking into a kitchen and like to see these cooks that just, like, have this I don't give a shit attitude. Like, oh, don't worry. It's not my job. Somebody else will do it. If I did that in any of the restaurants that I worked at, like, the places I work, like, none of those chefs picked up a broom or a mop.
[00:09:32]
You're lucky if you're going to get him out of the office, let alone mop up after you. And these guys are like, oh, he doesn't even help with the floors. He doesn't do this. I'm like, God, give it a rest, dude. Like, this is not how the world works.
[00:09:44]
Like, I broke my balls to, like, get where I am, and you're here fucking three days a week, showing up at 03:00 in the afternoon. Like, what do I care how you feel? It literally doesn't matter to me. Just shut the fuck up and mop. Yeah.
[00:09:55]
Oh, man. But, like, working for DB was just, like, insanity because, like, he has all these corporate chefs around him, and you have to go in, and they're like, all right, well, it has to be done like this, and it has to be done like this. And you got to follow around seven guys that you can barely communicate with because they're either Haitian or we had, like, a bunch of Albanians when I first started there, and nobody spoke English. So it would just have to be, like, visual demonstrations, like how to shift a Nod parsley, how to properly cut the chives so, like, Chef Rob didn't come in and throw everything in the garbage and make you redo it. So is there, like, a corporate chef that would just come in before service and do is walk through and then leave?
[00:10:32]
Yeah. So I was, like the opening suit. I would come in and I took care of, like, all the sauces. I managed all that stuff. I had 13 guys in the kitchen, and it was massive.
[00:10:44]
They had, like, six on the weekends. They had, like, six people on Garden alone. The restaurant isn't that big. The line was huge. The hotline had six, and then we had a roundsman that would jump between and fill holes, and then we had six on Garden.
[00:11:00]
Jay. Okay, that whole back room is, like, a chef's table and all that stuff. Like, Jim Gaffegan lived across the street and used to come in on Sundays for, like, brunch with his family and hang out back there. And then you got four cooks just, like, going it was obnoxious. We would do 300 people for brunch and then, like, another 300 for dinner, easy on a slow day.
[00:11:22]
I didn't think it was that big, but obviously I'm wrong. It was a decent sized restaurant. So what inspires you now? Change. I go into every day just wanting to be better.
[00:11:34]
So much of what I see now is it's, like, too focused on the show. It's a marketing scheme compared to as opposed to the actual caring about the cooking. Sure, it can look good, but does it fucking taste good? You know what I mean? Are you ordering shit product?
[00:11:52]
Is every fucking delivery coming from Cisco and their garbage? You know what I mean? We can bleep out Cisco, but they're fucking legit trash. As a broad liner. It's insane.
[00:12:05]
I would never order produce from them. No, absolutely not. Some of their stuff is fine. I mean, when you're talking about just all your dry stuff, whatever, but chemicals and whatnot. Yeah, I don't think in every location of them is kind of a little different, but yeah, I wouldn't be ordering any fresh product.
[00:12:27]
And then to bastardize it. You get it. And even if it's like half trash and you can make it into something, why order in massive quantities from Cisco and then produce this servable food to store it in the freezer for three months and then pull it out and court by court by court? I've seen chefs do that, and that shit is just so unappealing. I get it.
[00:12:53]
I get it's, like production based, but it doesn't have to be like that, right? Yeah. If you're starting with quality to begin with, I mean, you're going to have a hell of a lot less waste. Yeah. Your freezer is going to be smaller, too.
[00:13:08]
Yeah. At Harley's we have one chest freezer, and it's for fries.
[00:13:17]
Fries and like, I think lobster tails right now for New Year's Eve, but everything else. Yeah, I would say last few restaurants I built out, we didn't put freezers in them for anything for a couple of reasons. One, I also didn't want to deal with ice cream and desserts because I'm like, okay, listen, to get into that, it's like, now you need a dipping. Well, you need somewhere on the line for that. I'm like, I don't want to fucking deal with that shit.
[00:13:48]
No. I'm like, hey, listen, there's a great place about a block down. Yeah, they make fantastic ice cream. Go get yourself an avocado or something.
[00:14:03]
Avocado? No, avocado. The Italian ice cream with the espresso.
[00:14:16]
But you know what though? It's probably an avocado ice cream that they're looking for, though. That shit is so played out. I'm so fucking tired of avocados. It's like avocado is like the dried parsley on the rim of a plate for me right now.
[00:14:29]
Like a fucking nauseating to look at. I don't even want to see that shit. Yeah, you've got your late eighty S. Ninety S plating where every plate had the paprika and the parsley around the rim. I worked for this lady in Massachusetts, and it was like a breakfast and brunch pot.
[00:14:53]
I just got there, and then it was like this sushev position, and she was like all excited. And I go in and she's like, explaining the garnishing shit to me, everything.
[00:15:11]
It was just like purple kale. Purple kale on everything. And then she fucking sprinkles the dried shit around the plate. She's like, I like to call it Jazz fetty. And I'm like, Are you fucking kidding me?
[00:15:25]
Like, you don't name confetti after yourself, let alone fucking dress a plate like that just simple is so much easier. That's good. Yes, fetty. Yes fetty. My buddy Joe appreciate that because she's like, trying to sue him over a hot sauce recipe right now.
[00:15:48]
Good luck. She's like grasping for straws desperately yeah. At this point her lawyer is just stringing her along for cash then. Yeah, definitely. He probably should have told her that when it comes to recipes and intellectual property, unless somebody signed something that said, you own everything I create, or if it hits the menu for whatever reason, you own it.
[00:16:14]
But even then, prove it. No, she can't. He was just asking me if I want to be, I guess get deposed if I want to be a character witness or whatever. And this whole little lawsuit. I said, sure, sign me up, dude.
[00:16:33]
You know what? I give the guy credit because he took a step back from a restaurant. They stole a bunch of his shit. He went through with all these lawyers or whatnot. And when he sat home waiting for all this to do, him and his wife made this hot sauce called Sweet Mamas.
[00:16:50]
And they're selling the shit out of it. And they're going to like hot sauce expeditions. And they're winning and winning and winning. And she's jealous. And I know for a fact it's not her recipe.
[00:17:01]
Yeah, I wouldn't doubt it. And even then, if she wants to say it's her recipe, legally you only have to change like one third of the recipe to create to make it unique, which is fucking easy to do. When I walked in that restaurant, her hot sauce recipe, she had this guy Tony there who was just like he was a fucking clown. There was no way. He was like, I've been an executive chef for six years.
[00:17:30]
I'm like, you're fucking 23, dude. Like you don't know shit about shit. Like you're trying to mulchify fucking stems right now. What are you doing? Like fucking strain the sauce.
[00:17:41]
Act like a professional for like 3 seconds. All you taste is hot. You don't taste any flavor whatsoever. It was a mess. Well, I mean, that's just kind of what everybody looks for these days.
[00:17:56]
Everybody just looks for straight heat. I don't know of any hot sauces out there that I actually enjoy because look at all the peppers that are they were going after the Carolina Reapers and this and that. Okay. Outside of putting you in the fucking hospital, what is that really going to do? Yeah, seriously.
[00:18:14]
I mean, we made sauces. We did a barbecue competition. This restaurant was with SmokeShack Blues and I named it Hot as Fucking. I had to wear a gas mask, like a whole respirator just to fucking just to mix it wearing like goggles because the fumes were just like massive. Yeah, it was like unbearable.
[00:18:37]
Oh, yeah, you smoked out the whole kitchen. Everybody saw it. Great. We'd make it like come in at 07:00 in the morning and have it on the stove just going and simmering in the back. And we'd have to open all the front windows, the doors, the back door just to let it all out.
[00:18:54]
Because you couldn't even have a customer walk in the building at 11:00 in the morning because their fucking eyes are burning. I just love to do that. Sometimes you get the little chilly vinegar bombs and then all of a sudden you just hear people on the other line. You're just like, yeah, talk some more shit. Exactly.
[00:19:17]
Oh, this isn't that hot. Okay, wait a second. This one's a fucking creeper. And then all of a sudden they're on the floor.
[00:19:28]
You mentioned this earlier, but cooking for theater instead of flavor. And this is kind of an interesting thing because I don't want us to blame social media, right? But there's that, hey, we got to make that Instagram worthy food, but it's got to taste great. And so everything's got to be like I remember documents. Hey, there's got to be Instagram.
[00:20:06]
Picture the owners. Can we put this picture on Instagram? If this goes to a guest and they take a picture of it? And I'm like, why did Instagram start driving so much fucking traffic for us? It just did, man.
[00:20:21]
It's crazy because you see, I'll go through my Instagram and it's like, what the fuck am I doing? These guys you got these idiots that just go on TikTok and fucking dance and they're making millions of dollars and I break my ass. You know what I mean? I break my ass to fucking bring in a paycheck and pay for my kids and pay for my apartment and enjoy my life. And these guys just fucking do nothing.
[00:20:48]
And then you get, like it, like, broke down someplace. There was like this fucking massive fallout where it didn't have to taste good anymore. It was just about, like how pretty the plate is. Well, it wasn't even how pretty it was. It was like how over the top.
[00:21:08]
Like, how ridiculous could it be? Yeah, I don't want fucking goldflake on my goddamn dessert. Like, get that shit out of here. Why do we need that? What about your 32 ounce tomahawk that's wrapped in goldflake?
[00:21:23]
Yeah, that's fucking so stupid. It gets so ridiculous and over the top. That's cool. Dude, you can wear sunglasses and fucking shaving face like Antonio Banderas and sprinkle salt and shit. I don't fucking care.
[00:21:38]
What does the steak taste like? What does it taste like? If it's cooked well, you don't need all this bullshit sauce, dude. We go out to the table at a tomahawk or a porter house. We throw an herb butter on it, we'll torch it and bring it up to Temp table side.
[00:21:53]
And that's it. That's it. It just needs butter. It needs butter and fucking love. That's it.
[00:21:58]
You just have to pretend to give a shit for 5 seconds and fucking cook it properly. Just care about what you're doing. And that's literally it. These guys are just like, I got to have the fanciest fucking chef coat and my apron needs to be tits, and I got to go out there, and I got to be fucking perfect. You don't, man, just go in the kitchen, put your head down, and fucking cook.
[00:22:18]
Do your goddamn job like you're here to fucking serve the people. It's not about your ego. It's not about a lot of the bullshit. You're here for customers. And like you said, it's not about ego, but it's more about just giving a fuck for those 5 seconds.
[00:22:33]
It's like giving a fuck for everything and being excited about everything. Exactly. These cooks that we've been getting rid of at the restaurant, I came in at the right time, I think. I think I joined the team at Harley's at the perfect time. It was like, Keith's a great guy, and he was running himself ragged, and he had no help.
[00:22:57]
He was fucking not, like, treading water, but he was, like, fighting because he had a good vision of where we should go and how to get there. But there was just, like, missing pieces. Yeah. There's only so much one person can do. I'd like to think that I stepped in at the right time to help get that forward.
[00:23:22]
And now it's like, before, it used to be the kitchen can't keep up with the dining room. Now it's the dining room can't keep up with the kitchen. There you go.
[00:23:33]
And that's now becomes a whole new list of problems to solve because now the kitchen is, like, where it needs to be, but the front of house staff can't, like, get their shit together. You know what I mean? Well, I mean, have they ever yeah, no, we do. We have some really great servers, but there was a time where it was like, okay, this one's here for a week and gone. This one's here for a week and gone.
[00:24:01]
People can only work two days a week, and it's like, how much do you really give a shit if you're only here two days a week? The restaurant is just an ATM for them. Yeah. They come in, put in their time, walk out with their cash. Exactly.
[00:24:16]
But they're kids. It goes back to that. Like, kids in the kitchen shit. Like, they come back and they just, like they think, like, we're there to serve them. I'm like, that's not how this works, dude.
[00:24:28]
That's not how any of this works. We are here to serve the people you're serving. So if we don't all work together, you're fucked. We're fucked. And they go home miserable and with a comp meal.
[00:24:41]
Yeah. So many different places I want to go with this because it's like, all right, how do we want to unpack this? Because you're right. There's this new generation that's coming in that is very entitled. So entitled.
[00:25:00]
It's, like, such a disgusting trait to see that. I'm like I just, like, question, like, why would you choose this business if you're not about serving other people? Why are you here? Why are they here? I mean, have you asked anyone that?
[00:25:15]
I ask them all the time. Like, what are you doing here, dude? What do they say? Oh, I got to pay for school. What school?
[00:25:23]
Dude, you go to fucking school online. Like, get out. Do something. Like, fucking do something with your life. This is not the like, you get people coming in that like the fucking Miami Dolphins do.
[00:25:32]
They keep playing football. They know football is not the path they should be taking, but they keep trying.
[00:25:41]
You a Miami fan then, huh? No, just saying. It's like, do you want to get up and be the fucking best at what you can be, or do you want to go in and half ass everything? I don't half ass anything. You get up and I don't know who the fuck said it.
[00:26:00]
There's some saying about being in the jungle. Whether you're a lion or a gazelle, the first thing you do when you wake up is you fucking run. That's the one thing you know that you have to do, is you're fucking running. You either running to not be fucking food or you're running to get food. And, like, I'm not going to be the fucking gazelle.
[00:26:16]
And thank you for listening to this episode of Inside the Pressure Cooker. If you enjoyed this episode and feel like you're able to take something away from it, please go to Apple podcasts and rate and review us. If you don't use Apple podcasts, please. Follow us, as well as share this episode with a friend. This is a publication by Rare Plus Media, hosted and produced by me from Rare Plus Media and myself, Chad Kelly.
[00:26:44]
Thank you for listening. Keep kicking ass.
