Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Robert St. John: The Next Generation

 Check out this week's recipe.

This year marks my 40th year in the restaurant business. I got into this business after flunking out of college in 1981. Though I have always worked. I mowed lawns until I got my first, real, full-time job at 15 as a radio station disc jockey. When it came time to declare a major for my freshman year in college, I chose communications since all my experience was in radio to that point. However, I had no clue as to what I wanted to do with my life.

Flunking out of college after two years seemed like one of the worst things that had happened to me to that point. Actually, it turned out to be a blessing. I moved back home to Hattiesburg and got a job as a manager of a soon-to-be-opened delicatessen. I fell in love with restaurant work from day one. I am obviously wired for this business. I managed the deli during the day and started waiting tables at another restaurant at night. I couldn't get enough of the restaurant business.

Eventually went back to school and majored in hospitality management. I worked 40 hours a week while taking 18 and 21 hours in college. In between classes I spent my time in the library thumbing through all of the restaurant trade magazines dreaming of the future restaurant I hoped to open. At night after my server shift, I would stay up until two or three in the morning designing menus and floorplans for restaurant concepts I hoped to open one day. I still have a box filled with various restaurant concepts that I have created over the years. I was totally consumed by the restaurant business. I am still totally consumed by the restaurant business.

I opened my first restaurant in 1987 and never looked back. I have never regretted my chosen profession, and actually I've never even I had a day where I lamented opening a restaurant. That's not to say it's been easy. Actually, there have probably been more challenging and trying days then there have been rewarding days over the last 40 years. But I love what I do and couldn't imagine doing anything else. 

The restaurant business is a harsh mistress. It's nothing I would ever push on my children, and even though they have lived in and around restaurants all of their lives, I have never tried to force my love and hobby onto them. I have friends whose fathers were doctors or lawyers and pressed their sons to go out and be doctors and lawyers. Some of them are miserable as doctors and lawyers. It made no sense to press either one of my kids into going into a business as rough and brutal as the restaurant business.

Though, five years ago, my son let me know that he would like to go into the restaurant business. We sat down and talked about it for a while, and I didn't get too excited because plans can change, especially for 15-year-olds. Though, over his high school years he never wavered and still made plans to eventually go into the restaurant business. Three years ago, he started working in a few of our restaurants. Mostly front of the house stuff. No cooking. Though this past Christmas he started working in the kitchen of our New Orleans creole concept. First, he was working the fry station and then moved into the sauté station.

The sauté station takes some skill and he seemed to take to it immediately. I've told both of my children when they have worked in the restaurant that they are going to have to work harder than everyone else because everyone is looking at them and expecting them to get an easy ride. I've also told my managers to not cut my kids any slack when they are on the clock.

A couple of years after my son told me he wanted to go into the restaurant business I laid out a plan. It's actually what I wish I would have done before opening my first restaurant as I learned a lot of lessons the hard way and made a lot of mistakes on my own dime.

He will go to college for four years and get a degree in business, with a minor in accounting (he’s currently headed into his junior year). Then he will attend culinary school for two years at The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park New York. Once he has earned his chef’s degree, he will spend two years working for other people in six months stints (called a stage in the restaurant business). He may end up working for a friend of mine in Italy for six months and then will probably head to New Orleans to work for three different restaurants owned by some of my friends down there. Then, and only then, I have told him he can come back and work in one of our restaurants. But he's going to start at the bottom. No matter what his degree says, and no matter his culinary education or experience in other restaurants, he will start at the bottom because there's no other way to gain respect from co-workers.

This summer he has been working in the prep area of the newly opened Tex Mex concept. We make everything from scratch in all of our restaurants and so prep positions are a cruicial key to our success. On his second shift I pulled our head chef aside and asked him how the boy was doing in the prep area. He said, “He just finished his first batch of black beans. Do you want to taste them?” I went back and stuck a spoon in the still-warm black beans, and they tasted perfect.

It's hard to describe my sense of pride in that moment. I'm not sure what to compare it to. I guess when a doctor has a son who has a son who performs his first successful surgery, or a lawyer who has a son who wins his first case, the feelings are the same. I’ll never forget it.

It was a five-gallon batch of black beans, but to me, it was perfection. I look forward to watching him grow in his chosen profession. My dad died when I was very young, so he never got to see how my life turned out. But my mom tells me often that my father would be proud of me. Now I know exactly how he would have felt.

 

Onward.

 

Grouper with Black Bean, Corn, and Tomato Salsa

6 grouper filets, 6–8 ounces each (or any other mild, white, flaky Gulf fish)

1 Tbl kosher salt

1/4 tsp black pepper.

Season the fish with the kosher salt and black pepper.

Prepare the grill. Place the fish on direct high heat and cook until opaque in the center, about 8-10 minutes. Turn the fish once while cooking. Do not overcook.

Serve with the Salsa.

 

Black Bean, Corn, & Tomato Salsa

1 Tbl olive oil

1/4 cup yellow onion, minced

2 tsp garlic, minced

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cumin

1/4 tsp coriander

1/8 tsp dry oregano

1 can Rotel tomatoes (10 ounces)

1 cup canned black beans, drained and rinsed

1 cup fresh sweet corn, cut from the cob

1/4 cup green onions, thinly sliced

2 tsp fresh lime juice

Place the olive oil in a small stainless steel sauce pot over medium heat. Add the onions, garlic, salt, cumin, coriander, and oregano to the warm oil and cook 5 minutes, stirring often. Do not brown. Add the Rotel tomatoes and simmer for 2-3 minutes. Add the black beans and corn and cook five minutes more. Stir in the thinly sliced green onions and lime juice and remove from the heat.

Best if made at least one day in advance. Allow salsa to reach room temperature before serving.

Yield: 3 cups

 



21 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can Robert St. John please tell us more about how great he is? I need a daily dose of look at me from him. He needs to run restaurants and shut up.

Anonymous said...

@10:06 AM Holy Shit! Glad I am not the only one sick of hearing this guy humble brag his life story each week. At least he is providing a service in some decent recipes each week though.

Anonymous said...

Gee, a guy pours his heart out on paper and y'all complain? Really cynical and petty. I enjoy them.

Anonymous said...

Robert is a good writer,I enjoy his stories.Like many of us ( myself included ,)he attaches greater importance to the events in his life than the events merit.

Anonymous said...

I enjoy the stories. He is even a better speaker if you ever get a chance to hear him at an event.

BTW nobody forces you to click on the article! Is your life that meaningless?

Anonymous said...

Seriously, 10:06 and 10:24, are you so stupid as to not recognize the headline for St. John's articles? If you don't like it, skip it. But no, you prefer to bitch and moan. Maybe you too should hook up and double your misery.

Anonymous said...

St. John and now a wine columnist. I like what you are doing Kingfish!

I feel sorry for those who lead their miserable lives complaining about seemingly everything published here on JJ.

Anonymous said...

I first met RSJ when he returned to Hattiesburg after his self-acknowledged flunk out from MSU and before he realized he needed to quit drinking. I have enjoyed dining in his restaurants in the years since. My husband feels the same way as 10:06 and 10:24. Maybe Robert doesn't need to always remind readers of his path to get to where he is today, but his column appears in numerous publications and likely there is always a new reader who didn't know his backstory.

Anonymous said...


Thank you Sir for an uplifting message!!
So few of today's kids want to work or have a clue about where they are going in their lives.

10:06 and 10:24> Go to Hell. Why are you jerks trashing this hard working family?? He has every right to be proud of his son's work ethic and determination. Are you simply jealous because your kids are in their 6th year of college majoring in Gender Studies or Basket Weaving with NO future??? Maybe you two should try to get a life.............

Anonymous said...

Great article. I wish I would have had someone to "coach" me to have a life plan.

Anonymous said...

If a trained chef shows up at the restaurant and agrees to run the dishwasher in the back of the kitchen, there will be absolutley no respect garnered.

Anonymous said...

10:06 and 10:24 - You are sad people.
12:35 - not if you are training to run your Dad's restaurant,silly.

Kingfish said...

When you achieve, get ready for bricks to be thrown at you.

GM said...

Great essay!

Onward RSJ !!

Anonymous said...

In the not so distant past, he was pissing and moaning in his column about how he would lose his house and businesses if the government didn’t give him money provided by tax payers. My first thought was he should have put more in reserve. And selling the $30,000 Rolex he wears could save his house (if it were actually in Jeopardy) at least through the end of the Covid restrictions. Of course when times are tight, the annual 2 week trip to Europe annually would be on the chopping block as well.

Now that he’s received MONSTER checks based on his GROSS receipts, not net income, and untaxed, and he doesn’t have to pay them back, and the checks total more than he ever actually earned in a given year, he’s back to writing columns about how great he is. A guy with as much success as he proclaims should be able to float their lifestyle and business for 2-3 or more years, much less one, without a taxpayer bailout. Complete with a humblebrag about sending his kid to an extremely expensive culinary school as well as sending him to live in Europe and New Orleans.

His restaurants are good, and he’s mostly a nice guy in person, but he comes across as a self-aggrandizing narcissist when talking about his businesses and achievements.

Anonymous said...

Bricks, KF? Really?
I applaud his success, just don't see the need for his "look at me, look at me".
The first 5 or 6 articles like that were enough.
You want to show you are a writer? Find something else to write about.

Anonymous said...

"He will go to college for four years and get a degree in business, with a minor in accounting (he’s currently headed into his junior year). Then he will attend culinary school for two years at The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park New York. Once he has earned his chef’s degree, he will spend two years working for other people in six months stints (called a stage in the restaurant business). He may end up working for a friend of mine in Italy for six months and then will probably head to New Orleans to work for three different restaurants owned by some of my friends down there. Then, and only then, I have told him he can come back and work in one of our restaurants."

A lot of presumption on RSJ's part and a lot of pressure and planning for his son. I am curious how a stint in Italy is going to help him via-a-vie his father's decent enough but rather pedestrian joints, but that is I will readily admit between father and son. I will also readily admit that education is a good thing so even if he never makes a single cover of what he (hopefully) learned to make in Italy ever again, knowing how is not a detriment to his future. It's going to get interesting if young master St. John decides his future is investment banking, ditch-digging, or some other decidedly non-culinary vocation. I am slightly curious as to how young St. John's planned-and-brilliant future is going to be financed. Whatever happens, he isn't his father and I wish him happiness. With that, success on his own terms should follow.

Anonymous said...

The best way to learn your business is to do all the jobs at that business. Robert is showing his son how to own a business. Commendable!

Anonymous said...

Happy for the black bean salsa recipe!

Anonymous said...

Tired of hearing about him as well. His painter side-kick is a much more genuine person, in person, and in the media

Got a feeling you just want to be comp'd at his new places........

Anonymous said...

I think it's refreshing to read something useful, and not "woke".


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