Chef's PSA Podcast

Matthew Cutolo is a third-generation chef at Gargiulo's, the Coney Island restaurant his family has run since 1965 and that has fed Brooklyn since 1907. In 1977, The New York Times gave it three stars, unheard of at the time for a restaurant outside Manhattan.
He learned to bake from Mike the Bake, the restaurant's pastry chef of over forty years, who refused to write down a single recipe, including for family. Matthew asked to learn anyway. Mike's answer was, "If you want to learn, you have to watch." For the first two months, Matthew stood at the mixing bowl and watched Mike add ingredients with no measurements at all, a scoop of this, a lap around the kitchen, a conversation with someone else, back to the bowl. Only after two months did Mike start telling him what was actually going in.
Why the same holiday recipe came out different every year, because it was never really written down, it was feel
Why Matthew never uses a thermometer frying cannoli, and the one thing his uncle said that changed his mind about tradition versus evolution
How a summer internship on The Chew turned into a decision to go all in on content, and why cooking videos never worked for him but talking to the camera did
André Natera and Matthew Cutolo cover the difference between Italian food and Italian American food and why that argument goes back to Ellis Island, the family's daily 2:30 lunch that nobody is allowed to skip, guys' night and the right way to make a negroni, the meatball debate settled once and for all, sauce versus gravy, dried pasta versus fresh, Parmigiano versus Pecorino, what actually makes a video do well on YouTube versus Instagram, and why toxic kitchens exist in family restaurants too.
It ends where every episode ends, with the Mount Rushmore, and the correct cannoli filling.
Guest
@matthewcutolo
https://www.matthewcutolo.com/Gargiulo's on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/gargiulosrestaurant/
Links
Lead Like a Chef App → https://studio.com/apps/andre/leadlikeachef
Get the Books → https://chefspsa.com/booksShop Chef's PSA Merch → https://shop.chefspsa.com/Get Episodes Early on Substack → https://chefspsa.substack.com/Follow Chef's PSA on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/chefspsa/

Bobby Hicks read roughly 800 mid-century cookbooks to write one, and what he found was not a list of bad recipes. It was the exact point where American home cooking lost its thread.
The Great Depression ran into World War II with almost no recovery in between. Two generations of mothers cooked without butter, without sugar, without the ingredients their own mothers' recipes assumed. What did not get cooked did not get taught. By the time the post-war boom arrived with canned soup and boxed everything, and women moved from house labor into factories and still had to put dinner on the table, the chain was already broken. The dishes we laugh at now were what filled the gap.
Why a pineapple was a status symbol, and why people rented them by the party
Why aspic was proof you owned a refrigerator, not something anyone wanted to eat
What actually broke the transmission of technique, and who put it back
Bobby Hicks is a food historian, a Next Level Chef season four alum, and the author of Retro Recipes: Vintage Dishes with a Modern Twist from Countryman Press. He shows up with a vintage basting spoon from an estate sale and opens with the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to him in a kitchen. He was telling an extern that onion skin works as a bandage. Mid-sentence, he cut off the tip of his finger.
André Natera and Bobby Hicks cover the three books he studied before going on television, why sleep and food were what actually wrecked him on set, the market exercise he still gives private chefs, why he believes you can teach technique but not adaptability, what happens once a publisher wants 100 recipes in six months, twelve years of content advice from before it was a career, and how to order a drink without embarrassing yourself.
It ends where every episode ends, with the Mount Rushmore.
Guest
Retro Recipes Kitchen on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/retrorecipeskitchen/
This Fellow on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/thisfellow/
retrorecipeskitchen.comRetro Recipes: Vintage Dishes with a Modern Twist → https://www.amazon.com/dp/1324117257
Links
Lead Like a Chef App → https://studio.com/apps/andre/leadlikeachef
Get the Books → https://chefspsa.com/booksShop Chef's PSA Merch → https://shop.chefspsa.com/Get Episodes Early on Substack → https://chefspsa.substack.com/Follow Chef's PSA on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/chefspsa/

Chef Toby Archibald is the New Zealand-born chef and owner of Quarter Acre, a Michelin Guide restaurant on Lower Greenville in Dallas. Texas Monthly named it one of the Best New Restaurants in 2023. D Magazine ranked it a Top 5 restaurant. He spent twenty years working through Michelin-starred kitchens in London, Canada, New York, and Australia before opening Quarter Acre in December 2022. His career includes sous chef at The Greenhouse in London, sous chef at Café Boulud Toronto and New York under Gavin Kaysen and Aaron Bludorn, and Executive Chef at Georgie by Curtis Stone.
This episode starts in 2006. Toby is 23, backpacking across America, staying in a hostel. He gets a reservation at Restaurant Daniel. Shows up 20 minutes early, gets fitted with a dinner jacket from a room full of them, sits in the middle of the dining room as a solo diner, and has a meal he cannot describe but has never forgotten. That one dinner changed the entire direction of his career, his life, and who he is as a chef.
Why you cannot learn to really cook from YouTube because you cannot taste or smell what is happening in the pan, and the critical learning lives entirely in that gap
The difference between French charcuterie and Italian salumi and why calling a plate of Italian cold cuts a charcuterie board is almost always the wrong name
What one extraordinary hospitality experience at age 23 can do to a twenty-year career and why Daniel Boulud built his entire reputation on making every single person feel exactly the way Toby felt that night
André and Toby cover the Bocuse d'Or dinner at Kent Rathbun's house where this friendship started, the language barrier at The Greenhouse that forced real learning, the seventh generation charcutier at Café Boulud Toronto who could debone a pig with a spoon, Gavin Kaysen leaving New York a week after Toby arrived, Daniel Boulud pulling out his phone at Toby's farewell dinner to look up Sydney hotels, and what Quarter Acre is and why it is impossible to put in a box.
Guest
Toby Archibald on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/tobyarchibald/
Quarter Acre on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/quarteracredallas/
Quarter Acre Website → https://www.quarteracrerestaurant.com/
Links
Subscribe on Substack → https://chefspsa.substack.com/
Shop Chef's PSA Merch → https://shop.chefspsa.com/
Visit Chef's PSA Website → https://chefspsa.com/
Lead Like a Chef App → https://studio.com/apps/andre/leadlikeachef

Geno McWilliams is the self-taught chef and owner of Lucia's Italian Kitchen in Effingham, Illinois, a 39-seat open kitchen Italian restaurant three hours south of Chicago that has become a destination in rural America. He spent decades as a construction contractor while teaching himself to cook, traveled with more cooking equipment than construction tools, fired pizzas in hotel rooms with an Ooni Koda, and opened Lucia's in November 2020. He is a member of the US Pizza Team and Women in Pizza certified.
He attended the Rewiring Hospitality conference in Irvine, California the week before this recording. His biggest takeaway became the central argument of this entire episode: after years of obsessing over the food, the food is not the point. The food is the bonus. Hospitality is what brings guests back.
Why Lucia's pre-shift meetings never discuss 86 items, cover counts, or operational details and spend every minute on one question: how are we going to make the guest experience better tonight
The difference between Italian and Italian American cuisine and why Geno built his menu around traditional Italian dishes in a town that walked in expecting fettuccine Alfredo and chicken Parm
The pasta economics that every small Italian restaurant needs to understand: 90 percent extruded, 10 percent stuffed, and why pushing that ratio in the wrong direction will destroy your labor and your consistency
André Natera and Geno McWilliams cover the wedding dance moment that went viral on social media, reading guests through body language and NLP, the Roman tonda meets New York style pizza hybrid that defines Lucia's pizza, the discovery that French toast originated in fourth century Rome, and the construction contractor financial discipline that gave Geno a foundation most self-taught chefs never develop. The episode closes with his Mount Rushmore of chefs by category, his yellow tape kitchen in honor of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and his tagline: cheaper than a ticket to Italy.
Guest
Geno McWilliams on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/chefginomc/
Lucia's Italian Kitchen on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/luciaseffingham/
Lucia's Italian Kitchen Website → https://luciasik.com/
Links
Subscribe on Substack → https://chefspsa.substack.com/
Shop Chef's PSA Merch → https://shop.chefspsa.com/
Visit Chef's PSA Website → https://chefspsa.com/
Lead Like a Chef App → https://studio.com/apps/andre/leadlikeachef

Chef Matt McCallister is the Food and Wine Best New Chef 2014, three-time James Beard Award finalist, and one of a handful of chefs to ever receive a five-star review from the Dallas Morning News. He opened FT33 in Dallas in 2012, followed it with Homewood, and is now opening River Sing, a 24-seat tasting menu restaurant in Fair Park, Dallas, in fall 2026. He has been sober since 2016.
This episode is the less glamorous side of the chef world that people do not talk about.
How the success of FT33 accelerated access to every vice that was already available, and what that looked like by 2016
The morning he called his business partner's wife two days before Valentine's Day, ready to say something stern, and she answered and said Michael's dead
What imposter syndrome actually feels like when you move from being one of the best fine dining chefs in Texas to being a food and beverage director at a casual dining group
André Natera and Matt McCallister trace the full arc from FT33's peak to Homewood's collapse to getting sober to disappearing from public view to building River Sing. The conversation covers the intervention, the shame of public failure, what forgiveness actually costs over time, and why he is doing it again. River Sing is named after a line in a Grateful Dead song and his lifelong love of fly fishing in the Arizona mountains. It enters through a courtyard garden. It opens this fall. It is 24 seats.
Guest
Matt McCallister on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/matthewt.mcallister/
Links
Subscribe on Substack → https://chefspsa.substack.com/
Shop Chef's PSA Merch → https://shop.chefspsa.com/
Visit Chef's PSA Website → https://chefspsa.com/
Lead Like a Chef App → https://studio.com/apps/andre/leadlikeachef