Dan: 0:00

At 19, Cindy Wolf made a decision that would change the direction of her life. She dropped out of college and moved back in with her parents who were in Charleston, South Carolina. She dreamed of owning a restaurant someday and her dad suggested she get a job at one to try it out. So she got an apprenticeship at a fine dining restaurant called Silks.

Cindy: 0:23

I walked into that kitchen and realized within a day that this is what I wanna do. I just love the moment I got my hands on food. I love the moment that the chef came by and told me my piping skills weren't what they should be, and, you know, I needed to redo that, and he was, like, mean to me, and

Dan: 0:40

And that was good.

Cindy: 0:42

It was good. I'm like, get it. Yes, chef. I get it, man. And the pastry chef was like, here, clean these two flats of strawberries and it took me forever and she was like, now I'm gonna show you how to do it the right way and quicker. I'm like, oh, okay.

Dan: 0:53

She was hooked. She quickly moved up to being a sous chef and on a rare vacation to Fort Myers, Florida, she happened to drive by a diner that had an unusual specialty. Alligator.

Cindy: 1:06

And I'm like, oh my god, I've never had alligator. I have to stop. And I stopped and had it and it had to have been fresh and it was fried and it was just so unbelievably sweet and good and I really didn't know what to expect from it. I'd never heard anybody talk about eating alligator at that point in my life.

Dan: 1:22

Okay. So decades later, that alligator memory came back. Cindy is an executive chef now of a James Beard award winning restaurant in Baltimore called Charleston. She opened the place in her early thirties with her now ex-husband Tony Foreman and twenty eight years later, she still runs the kitchen. She's always looking for ways to bring new ideas to the menu and recently that Fort Myers trip came back to mind.

Cindy: 1:50

I'm like, I should get an alligator. So I called my yeah. Yeah. I'm like, how do we get an alligator? Here we go, chef.

Dan: 1:58

It's a good question. How do you get an alligator? That's coming up. I'm Dan Heath, and this is What It's Like To Be. In every episode, we walk in the shoes of someone from a different profession. A barman, an Olympic bobsledder, a deli owner. What do they do all day at work? Today, we'll ask Cindy Wolf what it's like to be an executive chef. We'll talk about what item she wishes she could take off the menu, what it's like to work in an open kitchen where all the diners can see you, and what it was like to cook for Julia Child. Stay with us. So back to that alligator. It turns out it's not as hard to get one as you might think. Cindy has a seafood purveyor who sources stuff like this for her.

Cindy: 3:04

So I called up Jeff, my salesperson, and said, "Hey, man, wanna do an alligator. I want it to be fresh, obviously. I want it to be whole. I wanna break it down, and, you know, tell me what the average weight is, you know, what's it cost per pound, you know, how long would it take to get one? Can you get one?" It was like, "Hh, yeah, chef, let me look into it." So he does, and he gives me all my answers. I'm solid, happy with the answers, so he brings it in, and and I'm all excited, you know, I'm like, "Oh, okay, here comes the alligator." I come in and there's like a one pound package of frozen alligator in my walk-in. I was so disappointed. I'm like, no.

Dan: 3:35

Alligator nuggets. Yeah.

Cindy: 3:36

Yeah. I did my homework. I did my work. What is this? So I texted him. He was like, "Oh my god, chef. I'm so sorry. That's just an absolute error." And then it took like another week or two. We did get the whole alligator.

Dan: 3:47

And so somebody just like unloads like a whole alligator.

Cindy: 3:51

Yeah. We we... so thank God I have a six foot prep table. And we put, you know, lined up the whole thing, filled it up with cutting boards, here it comes. Everardo and I, my chef de cuisine, who is from Mexico and is the best man I know and has worked for me for it'll be twenty years in February, and he's 36 years old right now. So that tells you how young he was when he started working for me.

Dan: 4:11

Oh, wow.

Cindy: 4:12

We both had a gleam in our eye, a big smile on our face that and he picks it up and puts it on the prep board, and I'm like, I'm going first. So I did one half and he filleted the other half, and it was just so fun. We were both just ecstatic. And it didn't smell like a thing. You know, you wonder about everything.

Dan: 4:29

Yeah.

Cindy: 4:30

You know, what does it what does it feel like? How hard is it gonna be to break it down? It was easy to break down. The meat is super tender. And it's funny that you brought it up because Everardo and I were just talking about I'm like, I think it's alligator time. I think we're gonna get another one in.

Dan: 4:43

It's alligator time.

Cindy: 4:44

Yeah. It's alligator time.

Dan: 4:45

So how did you know how to cook it? I mean, you don't have that much experience with it, and people expect so much of you.

Cindy: 4:52

Right. Trial and error. I mean, that's the fun of it for me doing something new at this point in my life, is I have a good idea because I've been cooking for forty one years. I mean, it can't be that different. It's not like a dinosaur or something that no one knows how to cook. So I knew that having had that fried alligator that it was extremely good that way, and then I knew I had things like the legs that we wouldn't be able to fry. You know? I knew I was gonna end up frying the primal cuts, the loin, because technically, the alligator has a loin just like a hog or cattle or, you know, any animal. I knew those would be great, or felt that that would be great for frying, but that the legs, because of all the use that they get, those muscles would be tough, that we'd probably have to braise it, you know, or make soup from it. But we ended up grilling some of it, frying some of it, and braising some of it.

Dan: 5:35

So with something like that where you're trying something kinda radically new, how do you think about the business side of that? Like, were you were you doing some calculations to make sure, like, "Hey, we can sell alligator profitably?"

Cindy: 5:49

Oh, well, I costed it out. You know, that's one of the reasons why the first thing I do is how much is it a pound and what's the average weight of this product, so I knew what I was getting into. Yeah. I mean, that's what you do from the very beginning with any new product, you know. Or anytime prices rise, which is what's happening right now in our world, because of the political decisions being made. You know, even our American beef prices are going up like crazy right now. So, you know, anytime products rise or fall, I recalculate cost of a plate of food.

Dan: 6:18

Can you walk me through? Can you get in the weeds a little bit? Like, how do you do that?

Cindy: 6:22

Of course. Let's say the alligator weighed 50 pounds, and let's pretend it was $2 a pound.

Dan: 6:27

Mhmm.

Cindy: 6:28

So 50 times two is a 100, and I figure I can get 30 portions from it, divide a 100 by 30, and that's the cost of product.

Dan: 6:34

Okay.

Cindy: 6:34

But I also have to cost out the remoulade, any garnish on the plate, anything else I put on the plate with it. And if we're frying it, we're now putting it in a batter. The flour. We cost out each... You know, how much did the flour cost? If I put a tablespoon of flour on there, I put a teaspoon of salt... We literally cost out every single ingredient.

Dan: 6:50

Wow.

Cindy: 6:51

It's... You cost out the recipe, in other words.

Dan: 6:53

And is this like pen and paper, or is there some software that, like, automates a lot of this for you?

Cindy: 6:57

Oh, there is software, but you're talking to a 60 year old chef. I don't do that on a software. I've I've been doing it well, first of all, can do it in my head now. But if I want to document it, I'll write it down.

Dan: 7:06

Mhmm.

Cindy: 7:07

But there is software. And, you know, like my pastry chef, her prices seem to rise and fall pretty frequently. So she does have, I bought her a tablet of some kind. I think it's an Apple tablet or whatever. And because pastry recipes are consistent, I mean, she's never changing her recipe. I don't write down recipes. We just cook. You know, I don't I don't I don't write down a recipe. My cooks have to learn how to cook a dish from me. I teach them. They can write it down if they want to, but we don't measure anything.

Dan: 7:33

So in your costing work, how do you get to the final decision? Like, how how do you know if the numbers aren't working out?

Cindy: 7:42

I mean, okay. So let's say one of the most expensive products we work with, which I work with only like twice a year, is Wagyu beef. Right?

Dan: 7:49

Okay.

Cindy: 7:50

We all know how expensive Wagyu beef is. It can be $80, $90, $100, a $120 a pound. It's insane. So if I want to do that, I have to make a conscious decision. Well, first of all, I cost it out. I find out how much it is right now. You know, if wanna I buy it tomorrow, I ask my purveyor how much is it going to be tomorrow. And also, I'm gonna have to preorder it because something like that, the purveyor's not gonna sit on product. It's that expensive. That's gonna be a special order item, so you really have to preplan something like that.

Dan: 8:15

Mhmm.

Cindy: 8:15

So let's say I wanna do Wagyu beef next week. I call my guy. Well, "Javier, how much is it gonna be?" Okay. It's gonna be $80 a pound. And so I make a conscious business decision. Is it worth it for me to buy this product a couple of times a year, put it out on Instagram, or put out an email saying, hey, you know what? You know, I wanna work with this product. We're gonna be bringing it in. I can't charge this. You know, in my mind, I know I can't charge what I would normally for product. It's more like I'm doing a a gift to the guest because that's in the end what I'm doing.

Dan: 8:44

She says gift because her guests aren't really paying the market price for Wagyu. So the the way the menu works at Charleston is that you pay a fixed price for a certain number of courses. So you might pay a $100 for three courses, and then you can choose whatever you want for each of those courses.

Cindy: 9:03

You could have the beef, you could have the lamb, you could have the duck. That's not how you should eat, but if that's what you wanna do, that's what you have. But getting back to making a cost decision like on the Wagyu, I know that I'm just doing something good for my guests, and also I'm bringing guests in that might not have come in otherwise. So I'm hopefully growing my business. I'm also doing something great for my guests, and the folks that like something exotic like that or unusual like that or special like that, well, they might come in when they wouldn't have.

Dan: 9:30

Most executive chefs aren't cooking and expediting in the kitchen every day, but that's where Cindy wants to be.

Cindy: 9:37

Yeah. I cook all day long. I make the risottos, I used to make every single soup, I will make, you know, whatever needs to be made. I come up with the new menu items. Everardo and Lucas can certainly help me with that if they have an idea they wanna do. But that's sort of my my game, you know, is making new menu items. And those guys, you know, get the work done alongside of me, and I teach them a new menu item, and then they teach the cooks. But, yeah, I mean, if I didn't have the ability, I can be expediting, talking to my cooks. I'll point at something for a waiter because I know what they're about to ask me off to my left, and I'm looking at the tickets at the same time, and memorizing something that I'm about to say. My brain works at about 80 miles an hour, which is one of the reasons why I'm as good as I am at what I do, because I can do, like, 16 things at a time.

Dan: 10:22

That is unbelievable. That just makes me tired hearing, because I am whatever the opposite of that is. That's what I am. I am a single track operation.

Cindy: 10:30

Oh my god. Well, you're probably far better at what you do because of it, and that's the fact. You know, we all have our gifts, and and it's really great when you can understand what your gifts are.

Dan: 10:40

Charleston has a show kitchen where diners can see into the kitchen as their meals are being prepared.

Cindy: 10:47

You see two people on saute, two people on grill, and two people on garmigier, and me running around at the back on my prep table, and maybe the pastry chef. The dish room is off to the right, you can't see it, the walk in is off to the right. It's not a big kitchen, it's a nice sized kitchen, it's not overly large. There's no crazy equipment in there. I don't have sous vide. I don't have a alto sham. I don't have a proofer. It's just a straight, regular, gas-fired, beautiful kitchen.

Dan: 11:13

And how does it change the work in the kitchen, the fact that diners can see you?

Cindy: 11:19

Well, you can't eat in front of the guests, which we have to taste everything, so it makes, you know, they're obviously allowed to use a plastic spoon, a clean one every single time to taste a risotto, because you always want the risotto to be the absolute perfect texture, so you really have to taste it every time. So that's okay, but, you know, cooks need to drink water all night long. So you have to duck down or go around the corner to drink water. If you have to sneeze, you have to quickly jump down, so the guests can't see you sneeze or run around the corner.

Dan: 11:46

I never thought about that.

Cindy: 11:47

I mean, you know, guests don't wanna see people sneezing. Oh, yeah. You're on stage. I mean, it's theater. In the end, it's all theater.

Dan: 11:54

To run with that theater metaphor, you can think of Cindy as the director and stage manager of the play. She sees every plate before it goes out into the dining room. And how often do you have some feedback to give about what you see?

Cindy: 12:09

Almost never.

Dan: 12:11

Really?

Cindy: 12:11

Oh, my cooks have well, okay. Like I said, my chef de cuisine has worked for me for almost twenty years. My sous chef has been with me for fourteen years. They know what I want. We barely have to talk to each other. I think the only thing I've said probably in the last several months is I'd like to go from four shrimp on the étouffée to six.

Dan: 12:29

Cindy paints such a different portrait of her kitchen from the one we're used to seeing on TV and in shows like The Bear.

Carmy: 12:36

Fire everything right ****ing now.

Sydney: 12:39

Okay. I'll fire everything now. I just was finishing talking to Marcus and I...

Carmy: 12:44

Step out.

Sydney: 12:44

I'm gonna talk to Marcus.

Carmy: 12:45

Stop the order. Get the **** off my expo chef now.

Cindy: 12:48

Okay. I will tell you. I get more comments about The Bear than anything I have ever been asked about. Yeah. Or Gordon Ramsay. It's The Bear and Gordon Ramsay. Oh, well, because they'll see me expediting. They'll see me, and they know how I behave, and I behave with respect to my kitchen and to my waiters. And there's no screaming, there's no hollering, there's no craziness. And they're all like and also my kitchen, we work quietly because I do verbal calling. So my cooks don't have tickets. They go entirely by me telling them what to do.

Dan: 13:18

Oh, wow.

Cindy: 13:19

Oh, yeah. Well, they don't have tickets. So, they can't talk during service because they have to listen to me expedite all night long. And I call out the food then to the waiters who take it out into the dining room. So there's no talking during service other than me. So they see the kitchen, it's very quiet. And they're all like, oh my god, this is nothing like Gordon Ramsey or and I'm like, well, that's TV, and The Bear is also TV.

Dan: 13:46

Hey, folks. Dan here. I haven't plugged my book in a while. Let me correct that oversight immediately. In January, I published a new book called Reset, How to Change What's Not Working. It's about those moments when you realize the way we've been doing things has to change. And those moments are hard because you start feeling the weight of resistance and inertia and the frustration that comes from trying to move beyond the way things have always worked. Reset is a playbook for dealing with those situations. Amazon called it one of the best books of the year so far. Spotify called it one of the best audiobooks of the year so far. It's surely the only book that links together stories about public libraries, archery, Chick-fil-A drive throughs, dialysis clinics, high schools, couples therapy, and The Million Cat Challenge. Anyway, check it out. You're about two clicks away from ordering it right now. Just look at the show notes for the links. And now, back to the episode. Cindy is so obviously in love with her work, I wondered what the hard part of the job was.

Cindy: 15:04

It's managing people. And I love managing people and I love my people, particularly my cooks. I mean, they're my family.

Dan: 15:12

What makes the management side of things hard?

Cindy: 15:16

The hard part is people have problems, and, you know, you have to help them through their problems. You know, health problems, personal problems, you know, multitude of personal problems.

Dan: 15:25

And Cindy said that many employees these days seem stressed out or overwhelmed by issues that people of her generation would have just been expected to deal with.

Cindy: 15:35

Like, I would have just barreled through. And honestly, I have barreled through a number of issues in my life, whether they were health or personal issues. Loss of a parent, a divorce, three very, very serious health issues. I mean, I just barrel through. That's way I was raised. That's the way I think. And folks have just so much anxiety now, and it's it's little things that I never would have never affected an employee before affect them greatly now.

Dan: 16:00

And are you personally involved in the hiring? I assume you are.

Cindy: 16:03

Of course. Of course. Oh, yeah.

Dan: 16:05

How many people do you have to hire in a given year, given turnover?

Cindy: 16:09

Thank God, not too many. I mean, most of our employees stay, but we seem to have these one or two or three positions in the front of the house that just keep kind of revolving.

Dan: 16:18

What are those positions?

Cindy: 16:20

All of them, you know, busser, back, what we have okay. So we run a three person team. So we have a captain, a back waiter, and a busser. We also have a polisher, because we have very fine glassware, wine glasses, table glassware. We also have silver. Our silverware is silver. It has to be polished and wiped. So they can be any one of those positions. For some bizarre reason, right before we got the James Beard award this year, we had like three people get sick. I mean, like, really sick. I'm like, oh my god. And, like, one person had a problem and another person had we we lost, like, five people right before we got the James Beard award in the front of the house. I'm like, this can't be, this never happens, and it was the worst. One of my cooks got shot in the leg during that time.

Dan: 17:03

Oh my gosh.

Cindy: 17:05

Okay. Yeah. He's been out for two months. I've been working six days a week, for two months, almost two and a half months, and I worked seven days last week.

Dan: 17:13

When you're working that hard, it's heartbreaking to have a customer make a reservation but not show up because that's money you're probably not going to make up. I asked Cindy how she dealt with no shows.

Cindy: 17:27

I don't know what's going on, but lately, I would say probably this year in particular, we have had a lot of no shows.

Dan: 17:34

Really?

Cindy: 17:34

Yeah. I've I've had as many as, you know, cancellation no shows for say a Saturday night. The other day, it was 70.

Dan: 17:42

70 different reservations?

Cindy: 17:44

Yeah. But I also I know there's something going on, you know, there's an illness going around. We also have had a lot of conventions in town recently. I think oftentimes with conventions, the folks will come in town, and, like, there'll be eight people on a table and, like, four of them will make a reservation somewhere, and they'll be like, oh, okay. Oh, you wanna go there? Okay. Well, let's go there. And then they cancel your reservation. But we actually literally talked about the other day, we may have to hold reservations with credit card just to protect ourselves from that. Because as you say, I mean, that's the worst thing for a restaurant, especially us, because we almost always do what our reservations are. We don't get, you know, 40 walk ins. I mean, that's not gonna happen at Charleston. Our price point's too high for that to happen. 40 people don't suddenly decide on the fly to come to Charleston and spend the money that they're spending there. Right? Or any nice restaurant like that. So we we staff accordingly to reservations. We buy food. My goal is to run out of all my food by the end of the night. I want my product to be as fresh as possible. So we go by our reservations. It is our blueprint for the night and for the week.

Dan: 18:45

Is there a particular dish on the menu that has special meaning for you?

Cindy: 18:51

Shrimp and grits, because it is a traditional Low Country dish. And then some of the things I've done that remind me of my mother and my father, and some of the things that I've kept on the menu, like the cornmeal fried oysters, because people just won't... That's one of their favorite things, and I am a business person ultimately. Would I like to take the cornmeal fried oysters off the menu that I've been doing for thirty three years? Yes. Am I stupid? No. I'm a business person. I know it brings people in, and I know my guests would be extremely disappointed in me because they love them. But some of the other dishes like even the corn chowder reminds me of my mother. I make collard greens, which is typically obviously very southern and African American, but I grew up on green beans and ham, cooked basically the same way, which is very Pennsylvania Dutch. I make my mother's sour cream cheesecake that she used to make all the time when I was a kid. I bring that back every now and then.

Dan: 19:41

Which one reminds you of your father?

Cindy: 19:43

Anytime I work with meat, because my dad was a butcher in the meat business his entire life.

Dan: 19:47

Mhmm.

Cindy: 19:47

Like, when I was doing that alligator. I mean, that makes me think of my dad. And honestly, if my dad had been alive at that time and he had been here, he would be in the kitchen with me doing it. He would be like, oh, yeah. Here you go. Come on, Cindy.

Dan: 19:58

Volunteer labor.

Cindy: 19:58

Oh, yes. Come on, chef. Let's do it this way. Oh my god. I will never forget the day when my dad was still alive, my mom and dad came to visit, and for some reason, they were downtown in the daytime. They always ate in the restaurant when they were there, but they must have been in Harbor East for some reason, and they walked in, and I was butchering a tenderloin, and daddy came over and watched me, and I mean, it was the most amazing moment of my entire life as a chef. I mean, other than cooking for Julia Child, just to have my dad watching me work with a piece of meat, and you know, I could just feel how proud he was of me, I could cry right now, swear to God. It was... I just... I adored my father. Yeah. He was the best man in the world. So, yeah, that meant a lot to me.

Dan: 20:41

You mentioned something a minute ago I wanted to come back to in that, you know, keeping the cornmeal fried oysters on the menu because they're so popular. This is such a profession characterized by both threads of business and artistry. And so I know sometimes you've got to give the people what they want, but I imagine a lot of the menu is driven by your preferences...

Cindy: 21:03

Totally.

Dan: 21:04

And what you think is great.

Cindy: 21:05

You have no idea. Mhmm.

Dan: 21:07

So what's the opposite of the oyster story? Like, something that is not that popular, but you're like, "Damn it. This is going on the menu because it's good."

Cindy: 21:16

Sweetbreads. So, again, that's the butcher's daughter in me. I mean, I grew up eating sweetbreads, and it was one of my dad's favorite things. And when we opened Charleston, very few people were... I don't even know if anybody in town was serving sweetbreads at that time, but I won't say no one was because maybe somebody was. But veal sweetbreads are one of my favorite things.

Dan: 21:38

Okay. Just to jump in, what are sweetbreads? They're neither sweet nor breads. Veal sweet breads are glands from the neck of a calf.

Cindy: 21:48

And, you know, there are people like me that just love them. And, you know, maybe we sell four or five orders a night, but they're always gonna be on the menu because there are those people that are like, "Oh, I love those so much, and they're so hard to find." And also, I used to always make them in the French way, which you would lightly bread them and caramelize them in the pan and, you know, maybe do like button mushrooms, deglaze with cognac, add chicken and veal stock reduction, finish with a little cream, put it in a puff pastry vol au vent, and, you know, have this beautiful, rich, And then I went to Argentina, and I had them grilled. And I don't know why Marcelo never grilled sweetbreads for us because they're very... when you can go to a beautiful mall, like a fancy mall in Argentina and get grilled veal sweetbreads at the mall. I'm like, I can wanna shop in Argentina. They have sweetbreads at the mall. In America, we have Chick-fil-A. I'm like, what is this place? And the moment I had been in a really good restaurant in Argentina and had grilled veal sweetbreads, I'm like, that's way I'm doing them from now on.

Dan: 22:46

Cindy mentioned cooking for the late TV chef Julia Child. Child was in Baltimore for a meeting one day and someone called up Cindy with a question.

Cindy: 22:56

I'm in charge of entertaining Julia Child. Would you make lunch for her? I know you're not open. I'm like, "I'm sorry. What? I would make breakfast for Julia Child. I would make a midnight snack for Julia Child." I'm like, oh my god. Are you kidding me? Yes. And I'm like, so excited. I'm like, oh my gosh. And so we opened for her, and I mean, I literally told my chef de cuisine, who was a different person at the time, I said, just don't even come into work. Just come in later when this is done. I don't want anybody in the kitchen but me. I literally was so nervous and so excited, and I'm just like, I just didn't wanna have to deal with anything. I just wanted to do it all myself and, you know, just let me do it.

Dan: 23:32

And what did you make for her?

Cindy: 23:34

Oh, so I made a trio of things, avocado and cucumber soup, a little crab cake, and a little cornmeal fried oyster, and then she had sweetbreads, the one I talked about, the French style with the mushrooms and the cognac cream and the vol au vent. I made scallops with truffles, and she came up to the line and said hi to me when she came in. So I came out around to her, and she was just so nice to me, and she started asking me about, you know, what's your background? You know, like, when did you start cooking? I'm like, oh my god. I can't believe she's asking me questions about me. Who cares about me? I wanted to ask her so many questions about her, but mostly, she was just so nice to me. I just couldn't believe how kind she was and gracious. Just lovely lady. And then when I went out to the table after she'd had her first course, she said, why haven't I heard of you? I'm like, I don't, I didn't know how to answer that.

Dan: 24:25

Right.

Cindy: 24:25

Like, I don't know.

Dan: 24:26

What is the right answer?

Cindy: 24:26

What do you mean? And she was like, you should have your own cookbook. That's what you need to do. You need to write a cookbook. And that I mean, I swear that was the day that I started writing my cookbook. I'm like, oh my gosh. She was like, that's how you'll become well known. Like, she was totally on my side. She wanted to support me. She was like, how do we make this young woman that I'm looking at in front of me, How do we make her more successful? How do we get her well known? You know, basically, she was telling me, you're a good cook. Why haven't I heard of you? You know, why aren't you in all the magazines? And I'm like, oh my god. I can't believe Julia Child is singing this to me.

Dan: 24:54

Oh, man. That has to be an all time high.

Cindy: 24:57

Oh my gosh. I've never been so happy. I wasn't that happy on my wedding day, and I thought that was my the happiest day of my life. Right? I mean, literally, it was I was, like, grinning the entire... I was scared to death when I was cooking, but I was grinning otherwise the whole time. It was just so amazing. She was one of the most supportive women I've ever met. It was very, very, very moving, very, very wonderful, and very special, and I will never ever forget meeting her.

Dan: 25:19

How do you think your career has shaped your life outside of the kitchen?

Cindy: 25:24

My life is my work. So I've been working since I was 19 years old. I'm 61. So the only time I wasn't working was when I was in culinary school for twenty one months. I mean, I've I've worked in my career sixteen hours a day, seven days a week at different periods. When you're a chef, there's not a lot of downtime, and then when you own restaurants, there's really not a lot of downtime. Now, I have worked my way into trying to have two days off a week as well. So my entire life, I'm not married anymore, and I never had children. My entire life is about my work. That's what it comes down to.

Dan: 26:00

What do you think is the number one thing that civilians, just people who've dined in fine dining but have never been part of a kitchen, what do you think is the number one thing that they underappreciate?

Cindy: 26:11

How difficult it is to be a server, quite frankly. I mean, the servers are the ones that get the brunt of everything. I mean, if there is an issue, I mean, I think everybody should have to be a waiter. I think it's very good for people to have to wait on other people. It is a humbling experience, and especially if you were in a really good restaurant, it's a great learning experience. I mean, you learn so much about life. You learn so much about the table. I mean, my waiters learn so much about cooking because every day at meeting, we have menu meeting every day, and I tell them every ingredient and every new dish on the menu. I explain to them how I cooked it. So they're getting a cooking class basically every single day because they're responsible for knowing every ingredient and every item on the menu every single day. They learn so much about food. They learn so much about wine. They learn about China and tabletop and manners, and how to behave at the table. These are good learning skills, and they inform the rest of your life. Let's say you're 25 years old. Well, when you're 40 and you're the owner of your business and you're entertaining clients, you know how to handle yourself at a table, whereas you might not have if maybe you didn't grow up in an environment where you got to go out and eat.

Dan: 27:14

So, Cindy, we always end our episodes with a quick lightning round of questions. Here we go. What is a word or phrase that only someone from your profession would be likely to know? And what does it mean?

Cindy: 27:27

Behind you. And I remember the first time I said it to somebody in a grocery store. So when we're carrying a knife, something hot in our hands, or just moving behind another, person in the kitchen, we say behind you so that they don't move into us where we might injure them.

Dan: 27:42

Mhmm. What is a tool specific to your profession that you really like using?

Cindy: 27:49

Gray Kunz spoons. They're the perfect... Chef was a three star Michelin chef in New York and French chef and just absolutely unbelievably talented, and he designed the perfect spoon, for us in the kitchen, through JB Prince, and and, I can't work without that spoon, they're great.

Dan: 28:05

Wait, tell me more, I'm not familiar with those.

Cindy: 28:07

It's just a it's a stainless steel spoon. They have the right length handle. They have the right size bowl to the spoon, so when we're making something in a bowl, stirring something in a pot, they're durable, they don't bend, they're high quality, they're the right shape, they're the right size. They're just like perfect for everything. Also, regular high quality stainless steel tongs that are the old fashioned kind, but not with the locking device on it, are the other perfect tool.

Dan: 28:32

What phrase or sentence strikes fear in the heart of an executive chef?

Cindy: 28:38

"We're about to lose our electricity." I mean, I have all that money in that walk in, and we have all that wine in the, temperature controlled rooms. I lose power, you know, or, you know, we have a bad storm and it's like it's imminent. I'm like, oh my god. That or a lot of rain, bad weather. I guess that's it. When somebody says we're gonna have bad weather, that will strike fear in any chef's heart, because if we're gonna lose power, we're in trouble, or where I am, I'm about five feet above the water table because we're right next to the harbor. If we have flooding, that better not come up through my restaurant. I'm gonna knock on wood. It's never happened, but I live in fear of it.

Dan: 29:11

I mean, how much money do you think you have tied up in inventory at any given time?

Cindy: 29:17

Oh, I can tell you exactly how much because I do inventory every month. In food product, depending on the day of the week and the time of the year between 16 and $20,000 a month.

Dan: 29:26

Wow.

Cindy: 29:27

And I'm not gonna tell you my wide inventory, but it's a lot. It's a lot. And I mean, the fact is is that that's not our only inventory. Our tabletop I mean, the amount of money, let alone we have in our china. I use Bernardaud China from France, and some of my pieces of china cost over a $125 each. My caviar setup is $375 each. We have wine glasses that are over a $100 apiece that are very, very fine crystal that will practically break if you look at them. So, between tabletop, our linens are all a 100% cotton. They used to come from Italy. I don't think they are now, but. Yeah, all those things is such a tremendous amount of product in house.

Dan: 30:07

What's a sound specific to your profession that you're likely to hear?

Cindy: 30:12

That sauteing of the onions, that sauteing sound, that initial cook, or the sound of the food hitting the hot oil to sear something. A writer once asked me, you know, what's your favorite thing to do in the kitchen, and she was actually standing next to me while I was making a soup, and I said, you know, one of my favorite things in the kitchen is putting a beautiful pan on the stove, putting butter in it, and putting the onions that I just chopped in there and the And it's just the simplicity and the beauty of working with food is just so incredible to me. Doing the first slice on a truffle. I am so artistic. I am so into things that are naturally beautiful, that are naturally visually beautiful. I notice everything. And so when that first slice of the truffle, because each truffle is variegated in a different pattern, I'm just like, oh my God, look at that. It looks like it's so beautiful, and then I'll show it to one of my cooks. So the idea that I can share this love for what I do also with other people, not only the guests, but with my employees, you know, people that I cook with every day is such a gift to me. My favorite people are my chef de cuisine and my sous chef. I mean, and the other cooks. I just I love the people that I work with in my kitchen.

Dan: 31:37

Cindy Wolf is the executive chef at Charleston, her fine dining restaurant in Baltimore. I was so struck by Cindy's comment that "my life is my work." It's so fascinating that sense that your identity is defined by your profession. And we've seen that idea before on this show, you know, check out past episodes with an ocean lifeguard and a Christmas tree farmer where their work really did speak to how they saw themselves and their purpose on this planet. Now many, many other people do love their job but probably wouldn't go that far. You know, it's a great job but it's not an identity. Why do you think people differ in that regard? Here's a thought. What's striking about the three jobs I mentioned, the executive chef, the lifeguard, the Christmas tree farmer, is how physical they are. Maybe for a job to really seep into your identity, it has to be lived in your body, not just your mind. But hang on because I'll tell you as soon as I had that thought, I remembered another recent interview that breaks that mold. Somebody who has a very strong work identity even though she's doing work of the mind. I'm gonna leave you in suspense but stay tuned for the next episode. This is gonna be a fun pairing because it's someone with a similar twining of self and work, but whose work involves not fine dining but disasters. As for an executive chef, the work can never be a nine to five job. Juggling a dozen activities with no room for error, costing every plate down to the garnish, taste testing the risotto, freshening up the menu, all with an eye toward giving guests a dining experience to remember. Folks, that's what it's like to be an executive chef. This episode was produced by Matt Purdy. I'm Dan Heath. Thanks for listening.