From Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen to Owning His Own Restaurants-Chef Blake Rushing Interview

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On today's episode of The Restuarant Realty in 10 host, Michael Carro, is joined by Chef Blake Rushing.  Chef Blake shares his experience from time in Chef Gordon Ramsey's kitchens and how he transitioned to owning his own restaurants in his home town of Pensacola, Florida. 

Rather Read? Full Interview Below

Michael Carro 0:01 Welcome to The Restaurant Realty in 10. 10 minutes of uncensored straight talk for restaurant entrepreneurs twice weekly The Restaurant Realty in 10 dives into restaurant operations facilities, real estate and investments. Welcome to The Restaurant Realty in 10. This is your host, Michael Carro, and today I'm welcoming Chef Blake Rushing to the program. Chef Blake has been a great friend of mine for many, many years. He studied at Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Academy in Orlando, Florida, and then went across the pond to London's world famous Savoy Grill, as you know, owned by Gordon Ramsay. And while Chef Blake was there, they earned a Michelin Star and then he went back to New York and help Gordon Ramsay open his first US restaurant in New York City. After that Chef Blake came back to Pensacola and opened a phenomenal restaurant called Elise Coastal Dining where it was nominated as one of the best new restaurants in the country and was a James Beard award winner and was featured in seven living magazine for his house cured bacon Chef Blake, welcome to the program.

Chef Blake 1:03 Thanks Mike. Really glad to be here.

Michael Carro 1:05 All right,so listen in this episode I really just want to focus on you and your career to maybe inspire young chefs as they are deciding what they want to do in their lives. So I want to take a journey through all the intro that I had said so going back to however old you are what inspired you to get into the restaurant business and how did you start your career?

Chef Blake 1:24 I really just enjoyed cooking my grandpa, grandma, Dad, Mom dinners for their birthdays and stuff like that.

Michael Carro 1:30 And how old were you when you were doing this?

Chef Blake 1:32 Oh 13 or 14.

Michael Carro 1:34 Okay.

Chef Blake 1:35 Then moved to Gainesville for college and had two years I just didn't I don't know what really focused I was having too much fun. And my dad always said do something you love you'll find a way to make money at it. So I went to culinary school excelled graduated summa cum laude a did great got a number two Gordon Ramsay Holdings in London and gave it gave it a chance and whenever they're for three months externship work for free, 17 hours a day five, six days a week after that...

Michael Carro 2:00 Hold on, hold on I want to hear about so this externship you go across the pond you arrive in London, tell me about you know, did they meet you there? I mean, I mean tell ya that was I hear about that little detail

Chef Blake 2:12 That was crazy. I just turned 21 never left the country before in my life, told my dad I want to move to London because it was a really good opportunity. And no, there was no meeting me there. I actually didn't had never heard of an externship. So I told my dad that and he said, Well, I mean, it seemed like a great opportunity to start off your career. I'll pay for it because they weren't gonna pay me they had I had to ship my knives and Chef coats so customers wouldn't stop me at the border for trying to work illegally. Anyways, got their got an apartment, wasn't in a very nice spot. Luckily, some guys I worked with, let me live with them. After about a week of being there. They ended up being my flatmates for the entire two and a half years I was there. I remember the first day got there. They said be there at half seven. So I was there at 6:30/7:30 and right around two or three o'clock I was like when do we go home or when like how long did work and it goes now we cleaned down and get ready for dinner service will be home around midnight or one. And I was like, Okay, this is different. So it's about

Michael Carro 3:04 a bit more than what you bargained for. They didn't tell you that in the application?

Chef Blake 3:08 Nope. I think I lost 45 pounds in three months, which I needed to. And then, at the end of my externship, they invited me back and said they'd pay me get a visa. So I came back. I actually worked at Jacksons for a couple months while I

Michael Carro 3:21 Jacksons is the Steakhouse in Pensacola.

Chef Blake 3:23 I mean Alex MacPhail worked there together when he was the head chef there. That was why I was waiting on my visa about three months. And then I got the the last flight of the Pensacola before Ivan was gone for a year. Over the next two years ever again, Michael Carro 3:34 Hurrican Ivan in 2004 is what you're referring to

Chef Blake 3:37 Got the last flight out, rerouted my visa Atlanta and then flew out and was gone for a year.

Michael Carro 3:41 And then from there, you were invited to open chef Gordon Ramsay's first US based restaurant in New York. What was that?

Chef Blake 3:49 So yeah, Gordon always wanted open restaurant New York if you can't make any or chemic anywhere type thing. So we came up with quite a big splash. He basically wanted half the chefs from London and half the chefs from America but I was consider some of the London chefs. So is 40 and 40- 80 chefs to start

Michael Carro 4:03 80 chefs in a new restaurant.

Chef Blake 4:06 Yep. And about 40 made it through the first year.

Michael Carro 4:09 Well, that's odd, because if I were these all chefs that worked in his restaurants,

Chef Blake 4:14 I would say the top two thirds were okay. The other ones were to kind of other hires and stuff that they hadn't worked there before.

Michael Carro 4:19 I see. So they didn't know his rough work schedule.

Chef Blake 4:22 Oh, they knew New York New Yorkers work hard time. So they knew the rough work schedule, but I mean, it was it was crazy opening and it was a lot of fun. They didn't wanna hire too many people. So that first couple months when they're dishwashers when you're doing dishes till two and three in the morning, after doing a busy service. That was interesting. But um, we all worked. I mean, I think I did 38 days straight, but 2,3,4 hours of sleep a night maybe.

Michael Carro 4:42 So was Chef Ramsay on site for all of this or did he ebb and flow?

Chef Blake 4:47 He's in and out a lot of cameras and not with him. And, of course, he did some training he had Neil Ferguson and Josh Emmett were the the guys that were running the show. And Josh ended up taking over after Neal left, Gordon has like, I don't know 30 restaurants now. So he's All over the place. He just puts his top people in his top restaurants he moves them to the next top spot.

Michael Carro 5:04 And this first restaurant in New York also is called Le Savoy?

Chef Blake 5:07 It was called Gordon Ramsay at the London Hotel. So the London hotels right there on 52nd, I think and it was London Bar, and then the fine dining. So they got two Michelin Stars in the fine dining. And then we got I think three stars in the in the London Bar from New York Times.

Michael Carro 5:22 That's unbelievable. So when he got his first Michelin star, while you were in London, did that change the atmosphere in the restaurant? I mean, obviously everybody's proud of that accomplishment. But But does that change the atmosphere? Or is it just business as usual, just

Chef Blake 5:37 fires every body up more, but more little sigh of relief for sure. But it's all about keeping it for the next year. That's all that matters is that next the next Michelin Guide that comes out. And over near Michelin's like all it is they don't really pay attention to the there's a lot of other things but Michelin is the way to go in Europe. The most respected.

Michael Carro 5:53 So you have your New York experience. And at some point you decided I've been to London been to New York had great accomplishments. Now I want to go back to Pensacola?

Chef Blake 6:04 quick little side trip of about a year to Vancouver.

Michael Carro 6:07 Okay, BC

Chef Blake 6:08 Yeah, BC and the executive sous chef Dale McKay went and took over Lumiere, which was our leChateau restaurant in Vancouver. Really amazing spot three different 17 course menus, Chef menu, secondary menu , vegetarian menu. I'm only about 10 people, eight people in the kitchen, really tiny, maybe 60 seats. That was really neat. So I was the sous chef there for a year and then there's about time, come home after that.

Michael Carro 6:30 Great. So you come back to Pensacola. You regroup. You go to the beach, do a little bit of surfing. Then you said you know what, I'm ready to open up another restaurant.

Chef Blake 6:38 Yes.

Michael Carro 6:39 Is that what happened?

Chef Blake 6:40 pretty much Michael Carro 6:40 and is that when Elise Coastal Cuisine was born?

Chef Blake 6:43 It was right around the housing crisis. So it was about a two year delay on that.

Michael Carro 6:46 Okay.

Chef Blake 6:47 But then after that, we got to lease opened and basically put everything I learned over those couple years together and put whatever my food become all the techniques I've learned. And it was it was pretty awesome in about, I think six to seven month. James Beard we get nominated for best new restaurant, the country. Michael Carro 7:02 That's unbelievable. Now that restaurant was more of a French styled restaurant is that correct?

Chef Blake 7:07 We called it kind of like Coastal Cuisine, but it was I'm very classically French trained. So I had a lot of classical French, which is Gordon Ramsay With modern techniques and then had some cool West Coast stuff thrown in there. Like it's kind of got where my like Asian flavors came in

Michael Carro 7:20 And the reason why I said French is that one large cooktop. Oh, yeah, I had never seen one of those before. And then you explained it to me, what exactly is that and what type of food is prepared on it.

Chef Blake 7:31 So it's a French flattop, we that's all we use over in London and in New York, and in Vancouver, actually, in so it's a big thick piece of metal, and there's about three rings of fire under it, you can about an inch thick piece of metal and there's the three rings of fire, you control how much heat is on there. So this huge, like say four by four foot metal top that's flat gets hot in certain spots are much hotter than others. So you can be cooking something at high heat on the middle or just off the middle. And you can be conveying something off to the very back end where it's it's less hot. So you can basically You have all these different temperatures you can cook with. And you can get 10 or 12 pans on their cooking at different temperatures. So it's all about learning that flat top learning your stovetop for the night, you can do anything you need so much better.

Michael Carro 8:10 You have to be very skilled on that cooktop to know the hotspots in the in the not so hotspots,

Chef Blake 8:16 everyone of them is different.

Michael Carro 8:17 And every one of them is different. So you have to learn that specific piece of equipment. So Joe Blow, you know, home gourmet cook will not be able to have success on that equipment right away. It'll take them a little while.

Chef Blake 8:29 Yeah, to learn those spots. Yeah,

Michael Carro 8:30 gotcha. So then from Elise, you went into you started a catering business. You also started one of my favorite tiny restaurants called Type. Yep. Which my wife hosted a birthday celebration for me there that you did a great job at. So tell us about those two experiences before we get to your current restaurant.

Chef Blake 8:48 So catering was just something that I'd always liked doing on the side and it's just, we started with just small, small little bits actually from the house with Norma we started little bits of like doing little five course menus there and then we started off catering and doing catering mainly on site and then some off site and then it just kind of grew from there we'd like we got one big catering and it paid for all the chafing dishes we got the next big catering and paid for the rest of the so it kind of slowly built it piece by piece and then type when that opened in inside DUH that was kind of almost like a weekly pop up. Like we've changed the menu almost every week. It was a small menu, but we could do fine dining in a tiny kitchen with really unique flavors that Pensacola wouldn't see that often or change that often is more of a kind of a bigger city idea. Because you're looking at a completely different menu every single week and whatever we saw was in season whatever we felt like being so small, we could really do whatever we wanted, then came in Union Public House.

Michael Carro 9:38 So let's let's finish this episode with union public house. Tell us about the restaurant, how it came to be and where you're at today.

Chef Blake 9:45 Patrick Bolster and I got together and when went over the idea of the pub. Found we wanted to be a little bit off Palafox support over by the ballpark and expansion west of Pensacola and I found a really unique little building that, I mean, it's old but I like it's old Salvation Army. I like that we put the kitchen right in the center, it made sense at the time because of construction that that's where it was in the first part. And that's kind of the the restaurant The heart is in the kitchen, the kitchens in the heart.

Michael Carro 10:08 Yep.

Chef Blake 10:08 And we just started building little. We basically want to do Southern cuisine and southern kind of pub with a twist. And so everything was kind of from the menus to the cocktails to the server's personalities to everything, all the hiring was basically Southern Cuisine with a twist and kind of laid back pub, even though we're kind of a little more upscale than just a laid back pub.

Michael Carro 10:27 And that's really the key. You've got a really casual awesome atmosphere next to the baseball of park, you get a lot of pre-game post-game activities, but everything is very approachable while your cuisine tends to be much more gourmet it's gourmet that's very approachable. So you have a phenomenal burger as an example in your burger. Tell us a little bit about your burger, just as an example for the menu.

Chef Blake 10:49 Yeah, so we have a basically red wine braised short rib cooked down, reduce all the liquids cooked in and then roll it up into this little nice puck that goes in the inside of the burger. So the burger stuff with a red one braised short rib grilled and then we have a little cheddar, some fried kale scallion, a little slice of tomato, brioche bun from a Emerald Coast Bakery kind of just to bring it all together.

Michael Carro 11:07 And that's just the burger. I mean, you've got all these other dishes. But if you think about it, instead of just taking a hamburger patty, you know, which is still very good.

Chef Blake 11:15 Of course,

Michael Carro 11:15 You amplify this product to a way that's unbelievable. And so if anybody makes it to Pensacola, go visit Union Public House. You won't be disappointed. Chef Blake Rushing. Thanks for joining us today at the podcast.

Chef Blake 11:27 Awesome, thanks for everything Mike.

Michael Carro 11:29 Well, that wraps up another Restaurant Realty Show. Thank you for listening to The Restaurant Realty in 10. If you're interested in restaurants, whether operations facilities buying lease and more investment, The Restaurant Realty in 10 is for you. Please subscribe to this podcast and you can also visit therestaurantrealty.com for show notes, topics and additional information.