Learning The Traditions of Food from Elder Women – with Chef Jeff Weiss

Dr. Mindy  

On this episode of The resetter podcast, I bring you one of my chefs from eat like a girl, Chef Jeff Weiss. Now many of you, by the way, love the interview that I did with Chef Leslie. It has been one of our top performers. So if you haven’t listened to that one, please go back and listen to that because we went all into the kitchen and talked about all the things you needed to really master cooking within your home. What you’re about to hear in this episode is a professional chef that came up through the ranks of incredible restaurant kitchens. In fact, he has been trained by some of the best and in his training, not only did he get to learn from top chefs like Jose Andres, who is known for his incredible Spanish cuisine, but he got to learn a whole skill set from women, and this is why this conversation is so important, because when I went to go put eat like a girl out into the world, and I started to dive into the culinary experiences that so many of us have, either in our home or in restaurants, I realized, check this out. I realized that so much influence has happened in the culinary world from women, and it’s not just women chefs. It’s like ancient traditions, ancient recipes, that are passed down from generation to generation, and Chef Jeff, what you’re going to hear in this episode is he was blessed to learn from what he calls the sabia, the women in Spain. He literally, he’ll tell you the story. You’re going to hear it. He was honored to go learn from these women that are sharing these long lineage of recipes from generation to generation. They invited him in to learn the magic of cooking through their their eyes, and their specialty, by the way, was meat. So a lot of he learned charcuterie. He learned how to sauce meat, do different rubs on meat. It’s it’s a real beautiful story, and in this episode, you’re gonna hear about get like a lens of what it’s like to be a traditional chef. What is that restaurant experience like for a chef? And we even dive into what is the restaurant experience and why is it so attractive to so many of us? That was a phenomenal part of the conversation. But if you’re looking to take your culinary skills to the next level, this is the episode for for you, because you’re going to learn from a professionally trained chef who has learned from the masters and has sat with the women that are passing down the history and the Con and the the depth of connection that food can create for All of all of us. So it’s a really different interview than I’ve ever done before. Chef Jeff has owned many very successful restaurants. He’s been a part of many restaurants that have been honored with Michelin stars. He has written his own book on charcuterie. He was an Olympic level pairs, figure skating. I mean, this guy has so much you can read all about it and eat like a girl, and many of you are enjoying his recipes, but on this episode, you’re gonna get a real glimpse into the knowledge that comes from a man who has sat with the Masters, and that knowledge is now being passed on to you. So enjoy. Welcome to the resetter podcast. This podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again, if you have a passion for learning, if you’re looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. So okay, so here’s where I’m going to start. This story is with your with your figure. Because when we went to put the book together, I’ve told you pieces of this, I was really clear that my specialty is nutrition. I understand it, but I am not a chef. So when I went to put eat like a girl together, I was like, we need some professional chefs. And then it was like, the next step was like, well, we need professional chefs that could understand why women need to eat a certain way. And that’s when your name came.

Cheff Jeff  

It’s, you know, my first question to you was, why do you want a guy for that, like, and, I mean, I understand that, you know, for a lot of men, I mean, look, I’m, I’m pretty careful with my health, and I understand things about what a guy needs. But yeah, in my background, like, I was a Paris figure, Skipper. I went to Olympic trainings. Center, year over year over year. I, you know my my Paris partner. I’ve had a few of them. They’re, you know, your closest friend, they’re your business partner. They’re someone, I mean, as a guy, as a pair skater, it’s your job to look out for this girl. Yeah, you know, you’re, I’m, at that time, I’m, you know, five foot whatever, as I was growing up, and you put this girl over your head, and you know, she’s that much higher up there. It was always instilled in me by my coaches and like, Look, she’s putting her trust in you. You need to make sure that you look out for her, that she’s coming down on her feet, and that you’re you, you know you’re taking care of each other, but that’s the man’s role, is to take care of the girl, and that’s, that’s the pair of skating side of things. But from the health and wellness standpoint, I sat in on those seminars. And, you know, it’s, it was, you know, for the for the Paris stuff, for the Olympic Training Center stuff, it was for everybody. It was nutrition. And so I was, obviously, in my own life, I look out for, you know, things that I need to do, but I’ve been exposed to what women, yeah, need for more than, I think, the average man, just because of, you know, the byproduct of being in those environments. And so when you came to me with this, with this project, and said, Here’s what we’re doing, we have to figure out what to cook and how to cook it, and I was, I thought, Well, I’ve been a pair of skater. I know a lot about, you know, health and nutrition, whether it’s for men or women, and I can cook, yes. So here we are. You know,

Dr. Mindy  

what’s really funny is you actually said two things to me that really hit me. One is you said the job in Paris figure skating for the man is to make sure that you always protect the woman. And you just said a version of that right now, and what has come up from fast like a girl, I went on all these podcasts, and the best podcasts were the one where men would interview me, and they would ask questions of curiosity, of how do I help the females in my life? And I learned that men wanted to be included in the conversation around women’s health, sure. So that when you said that, that I know, you know, I’ve come from this. And then we’ll get into learning from the elder women in Spain. It was just, you know, a beautiful way to bring your culinary skills into this lens in which you’ve been paired up. No, no pun intended so, so can we start with just so people understand your pairs background? Because it we’re not talking like you were just down and, yeah, you were pretty

Cheff Jeff  

far. Yeah, you

Dr. Mindy  

got pretty far. I

Cheff Jeff  

started skating when I was four years old. My mom took me to the local mall for those in from the Bay Area, San Mateo, Fashion Island back in the day, wow. And I sat down in the middle of the ice, and I started to cry. That was my first exposure to figure skating. Go figure don’t know where we went from there, but I did lessons, and many years later, I started doing pairs. We did pairs. Went up the ranks, as you do, and eventually got to a point where, yeah, we were competing at Skid America. We were representing the United States. We were, I forget what year we were Olympic alternates. Like, it was a pretty, pretty significant climb in skating that you know, from the typical, just the recreational all the way up through the ranks to representing your country and standing on a podium and hearing the anthem. Like, okay, that’s, that’s, that’s something we were on ABC, Wide World of Sports back in the day, the whole thing, wow. And

Dr. Mindy  

did you have the same partner the whole time? No, so, as

Cheff Jeff  

happens in pair skating, you know, as you’re growing older, and you know, whether one, you know one girl, you know the girl gets too tall, and you you know that doesn’t work anymore because one has a growth spurt. Or, you know, it’s someone there was even when my my partners were injured. I usually I, I’m a I’m a loyal person by nature. So I can think of one partner where I stuck with her even through the injury, and we kept training. And a lot of times an injury means the guys are a hot commodity in figure skating, okay? And so guys would if someone got injured, then they moved to the next guy. I’m I stuck with my partners, and, you know, so, yeah, I mean, overall we, we with a couple of different partners. I think I had 1234, or five over my career, okay, of more than two decades, and we got, we only got really pretty far. That’s amazing.

Dr. Mindy  

And the other thing I said to you in that first call was, I said, Are you familiar with the rhythms of a woman’s menstrual cycle and how you have to train differently, have to eat differently? And you said, you guys actually paid attention to that

Cheff Jeff  

we as much as a guy can. Like, yeah. I mean, absolutely. Like, there certainly you know when you reach a point when you know, when you’re when you’re training, and you’re getting older, and you’re you and your partner are getting older, and these things become a reality through puberty and all that stuff. You know, there’s, there are certain things that you need to do, like, you know you’re going to train harder or less hard, because there’s, there’s health issues involved with that, with whether it’s that time of the their cycle or whatever. And. You know, and also there, there are nutritional aspects to that as well. That, I mean, you know, this is relatively new information in the sports world, even today, Yes, yep. And so back then it will, we it was just generally known, from what I can remember, that, you know, yeah, there, the, you know, if, if my, my partner, would need to have, you know, have different foods at that time, then that’s just, you know, that that’s what it was, yeah, and it was less of a an explanation. I was just say that’s what we’re gonna

Dr. Mindy  

do, which is amazing, and that’s what my dream is for right now, is that we start all talking that language. So okay, then you got that one year career as a Paris figure skating skater ended, yeah, and you went into culinary I did.

Cheff Jeff  

I well. I wound up coaching for a while in between, and while I was well, I started out like going to to a college or hospitality management. I my coach is a phenomenal person named Tracy prusack, who is one of the most respected coaches, not just in figure skating, but in sport in general. Wow. And you know, so she’s the one who really instilled in me the idea of taking care of the partner and taking care of the girl. And you know, when you’re lifting her over your head, that, you know, whatever happens to me happens to me, but she comes down on her feet. And as So Tracy was the one who has been my mentor and coach. And there are those out there who’ll be watching this, who will know that name. And so I wound up, I was lucky enough to be able to coach alongside Tracy, with a lot of her students over the years, when I was transitioning from a competitive athlete and then coaching, and then also doing my schooling on the side, right. And through coaching, you know, you get another aspect of the sport, yeah, and that’s, that’s then from there, and I got into cooking. And, you know, it’s, it’s an interesting thing when you go into the cooking world and you’re, you know, I had a very good mentor on the chef side as well. But you’re starting from the bottom. You’re, you know, here’s someone coming out from Olympic level, you know, athlete top of the game, and you’re walking in and, you know, saying I’d like to peel onions now, and, you know, and, you know, getting the going through the typical, I’m not gonna call it hazing, because that’s not what it is. But you’re, you know, you’re, you’re the low man on the totem pole, yeah. And it’s time to learn. So that

Dr. Mindy  

thing in the bear where, what was that one episode, I think, he went to Noma, and he had to do one thing all day long. Like, yeah, what? Like, shine, the short, the forks, or something all day long. That’s, that’s reality.

Cheff Jeff  

Oh, that is absolutely reality. And it’s the reality of a few things. One, it’s the reality of what those operations need. And that’s just how it is, and somebody’s got to do it. But two, it’s also, it’s, I just went back and watched the Karate Kid and the whole, like, wax on wax off thing. Like I had to, for an example, I every day I had to do a case of onions. And I every day I had to cut them a different way. And, you know, the first day, it took me all day to do a case of onions, just to regularly slice it. And I can tell you all these stories, like my mentor. He’s around the corner. He showed me how to do it. He’s around the corner working, and I’m cutting. He can just yell, I can hear you doing it wrong. Oh my god. It was very you know. And he we laughed out all the time, but he was right. And so then, over time, very much like the Karate Kid, like you, you have that case of onions, you’d go from having all day to do it to now. It took me 20 minutes what’s next, right? And then you eventually progress to the kitchen. And that’s that was my training. And it was very much in that style of appreciating those little things, like the shining the forks, or whatever. Those lead to more things, and learn to your capacity to do more and grow right?

Dr. Mindy  

So then, would the would that make sense, that when we’re cooking in the kitchen, it’s the little things that make a big difference? Oh, there’s

Cheff Jeff  

a very famous saying that comes from a very famous chef. I believe, Marco Pierre White was the first one to say this saying. And he says, perfection is a lot of little things done right, or a million little things done right? Yes, perfection is not a thing. It is many things. And if they’re all done right, then you’ve met that goal. Oh, amazing. And that’s, yeah, absolutely like we we made, you know, earlier today, we made the salmon dish, yeah? So, you know, it’s getting the brine right, and then it’s getting the glaze Right, yeah. And it’s cooking the fish right, and then it’s getting the glaze on the fish right. And then, and then, by, by the end of it, we were all standing around the stove, picking at the salmon, because it was so good, right? It was only so good because all the little things were done,

Dr. Mindy  

right? I think that’s like a I love life philosophy, and I love looking at other other backgrounds, yeah. And it’s like, that’s really interesting. It’s like, the day, you get the days right, so you can get the months right, you know, it’s and then the months are right, so you get the years right. I really love that. So okay, now you’re in the culinary world and where. Did you start in a restaurant like,

Cheff Jeff  

yeah, I was very fortunate to fall into my mentors restaurant for a couple of years. And, you know, getting yelled at for cutting onions wrong when he’s not even looking at me, but he knew it was right, right. And then, you know, eventually I got into Cornell University. I was I got into the hotel school, and I’ll never forget it. I showed up Steve, my mentor, Steve Chan, very well known chef in the Bay Area, and I got the acceptance letter from Cornell. And I come to the restaurant, I’m like, because he was always a big proponent, like he he felt because I had some skill in the kitchen, not a lot. He let me know that, but enough that he said, you know, culinary school isn’t the best move for you. You need business school so you can and so I showed up with my letter from Cornell University, saying I got in, and he looks me up and down, and he goes, that’s great. You’re not ready. Oh, and what do you mean? He goes, you have more to learn here. And so I said, Well, I could defer for a year. He goes, Yeah, do that defer? And so you know what I did? I called up Cornell University after getting accepted and going through the rigorous process. Hi, poopy. And I said, you know, thanks for letting me in. Can we do this in a year? Yeah, they let me. I said, my mentor, they totally understood. Gonna come say hi, hello. It’s a good story. I know it’s a good story. And so I stuck around for a year, best thing I ever did, and he kicked my butt for a year. And then I went to Cornell and went from went from there, wow, yeah, okay.

Dr. Mindy  

And then where along your path that the other parts of the story that I learned, or that as a we were trying to put together this incredible culinary team for the book, was that you studied in Spain from the elder women. So I

Cheff Jeff  

was very fortunate that part of my Cornell I was Jose Andreas, the famous chef who is an incredible human being. And everything you’ve heard about him is 100% true. He is that guy that’s amazing. And he I got to cook in his kitchens with him, and then eventually he recommended me for a scholarship to cook in Spain for a year. And lo and behold, I got in and so I was one of only 12 people in the world. Wow. So cook got to go to Spain, cook at a bunch of famous restaurants, but I my first chef who I trained with in Toledo, which is where they grow the saffron. And he looked at me one day, it was kind of slow, and he said, Is there anything that you haven’t seen in Spain that you want to do? And I said, you know, I have a background in butchery, in charcuterie, and I would love to go to the countryside and learn how to do that there. And he the next day, he came in. He goes, Okay, tomorrow, you’re getting on a train, and you’re gonna go to my friend Carlos tristanchos place, and you’re gonna stay at his foot he owns a five star resort. You’re gonna stay at the hotel, work in the the one Michelin star restaurant. And I know you Just loving this good story. And you’re going to just wait to the part where you take care of the pigs. Don’t worry. You’re a dog whisperer, exactly. And so, and he said, You’re gonna, every weekend, we do the matanza, where we matanza is a very famous it’s like the party where they, where they harvest a pig. It’s, it goes back general, you know, millennia, but they’ll basically all the kind of the wealthier folk from Madrid take a helicopter out to Carlos place. It’s a big party. It’s a weekend thing. And then we make chorizo. We do all the things with the the pig that traditionally they would do. And it hearkens back to these traditions in Spain, when in poorer times before refrigeration, where you have what are called the savias, which are the wise women, and they work with the Matan seros, which are the butchers. And so they go from town to town, farm to farm, and they say, Okay, hi, you know, we’re going to harvest your pig. And they get paid to, you know, harvest one to however many pigs, and they break them down. The men are outside breaking them down. The women are inside, and the meat gets passed. And the women do the what, you know, they’re called wise women for a reason. They carry all the recipes and the tricks and the secrets for making all the the recipes, like the chorizos, the sausages, the the the other the braises and all those sorts of things. And so I got to study with some of the last sabia, the Matan seros, who works exclusively with this, where I was that every, you know, every week they would come in, and, you know, like, three of the women are named Carmen and three of the men are named Jose. That’s just how it is. And it’s I wrote about this, and I wrote a cookbook when I came back to America called Chocolate area, the soul of Spain. It won a James Beard nomination. You can go on Amazon and buy it and it, it was the first book that was ever written about this with photos, because they, they said, Look, you know, most people don’t understand we do. So we’re a little

Dr. Mindy  

nervous, I wonder, and or just about handing this, this treasure off to you. It

Cheff Jeff  

was an incredible honor that they said, Look, we trust you, right? You’ll tell our story. And that’s, that’s what you know, my, my, my agent, my. My publisher were kind of laughing. He’s like, my ugly face only shows up in that book, like twice. Because the book is not about me, right? The book is about this tradition, these stories, these people, this history, and the fact that really, no one’s ever talked about it interesting,

Dr. Mindy  

and are they when they were handing the wisdom down? Because this is another thing that you and I have talked a bit about today is that I, you know, in our culture, we as women get especially get older. We toss them aside, and it’s horrible. And I’m trying to, I really, actually, when you break down what happens to a female brain as she goes through menopause, our brain actually is the most productive in our post menopausal years. And there’s so much wisdom in the elder women, even here, and it’s the opposite,

Dr. Mindy  

yeah, but, but it there’s in just general and culturally, there’s so much wisdom that so many elders can give us. So I can’t even, like, as you tell the story, I’m sort of envisioning, like, here you are this like, how old were you? Oh,

Cheff Jeff  

I was in my just barely 30s. Yeah, so you’re, like, a young whipper snapper. I’m a young dude. Oh, they, they made fun. Let me tell you something, those sabias, they’re, they’re, yeah, they, they hazed me a little. They gave me a hard time. They’re like, you know when you’re when you’re when you’re making sausages and it’s a rather phallic exercise, yes, and you’re not making them, and they don’t look right, yeah, in Spanish and in English, you’re gonna hear about it in ways that are probably not appropriate to talk about. But then again, it’s just, it’s a party, yeah? And you know, the other side of that, of course, is because, you know, the women run the show over there the sabias and, you know, if you don’t work, you don’t drink, they hold the liquor hostage.

Dr. Mindy  

Smart is that actually a culinary thing? Like, if you, if, what, if you drink while you’re while you’re cooking?

Cheff Jeff  

I mean, this was not a, like, I wouldn’t call this a professional kitchen birthday. This was very much a party person. But like, also, you know, it’s so, you know, there’s Anthony Bourdain says it really well, is that, you know, those of us who work in kitchens and restaurants, and there’s a sort of pirate mentality of, you know, it’s these are the misfits who didn’t necessarily work out for a nine to five job, historically speaking. I mean, now you have people with architecture degrees all these, you know, they’re all they like. They’ll go into kitchens, yeah, so, but historically, with those of us who’ve worked in kitchens, and it’s just we gravitate in that direction, because it’s less rules, less regulations, and in years gone by, you could do it with a drink

Dr. Mindy  

in your hand, yeah, and, and, and it’s creation you’re creating. It is

Cheff Jeff  

very much an artistic surprise, yeah, which isn’t a surprise, then, that you may not know this, but quite a few figure skaters have actually gone the route of the of culinary that’s

Dr. Mindy  

crazy, but it makes sense. I mean, I you know, we’ve talked about the fact that my son is launching into chef light, and he was very artistic as a child, so you sort of see that through line. And I would say that’s what I love about cooking, just in general, is it is a form of art. It is the other piece of it. And you and I talked about this is everybody’s really obsessed with the bear, including our family. And that last, the last episode on the bear, really made me look at the art of cooking different, which is, it was where they bring all the chefs together. Yeah, they’re in the funeral and they’re closed the restaurant, and then they talk about these famous chefs, get up and talk about why they love being a chef. And it came across to me as something that’s very nurturing. It’s like you’re bringing together people around all different kinds of scenarios, but you’re connecting them via food.

Cheff Jeff  

Yeah. I mean, look, I’ll say this about the bear. There’s been a lot written about it and said, like, I mean, anything that’s on a screen, I don’t care if it’s a little screen or a big screen, right? It is going to be a somewhat metaphorical and sensationalized, look into whatever that thing is, simply because it’s entertainment. Yeah. Now they did a heck of a job with this, and they really put a lot of realism and thought. And I really liked the show as a whole, right? You know, it is some Hollywood going on. But that being said, you know, chefs tend to, we do tend to wax poetic a little about what we do. And just because, by nature of the fact that it is a there’s an artistic side to it, and there’s also, you ask any chef, when we make a recipe, whatever it is, the first thing we want after we tried it, is, we want someone else to try it, right? We want to give that to someone interesting. And it’s partly, it’s not showing off. And it’s not like, you know, it’s not like, I crave the kudos or the the attaboy that this is good. There’s something in the. Act of giving this thing that you created to someone else for validation. And it’s, I mean, it’s, it’s validation, it’s just the act of giving and hospitality, connection, love, there’s some love in there. Yeah, they always, we always say, hey, there’s love in this food. Like, that’s a, that’s a, that’s a real thing. You can tell when there’s love in food, and you can tell when there is no love in that food, right? And it’s a very real thing. And so to that end, there is a poetry to it all, yeah.

Dr. Mindy  

So what’s interesting is that I think you and I talked about this in the beginning, I’ve been thinking a lot about the power of the environments in which you eat your food. Okay, because we have so much emphasis about the our culture and like, Oh, you got to eat this. Don’t eat that. And that seems to be what everybody thinks about with food. But I’m curious, especially when, since you’ve owned restaurants, helped restaurants, been in so many restaurants, I’ve actually come to this conclusion that just as nurturing of the food is, just as important as the food is the environment in which sure you are, you are eating it. So with that in mind, then I look at something like the bear. I look at, you know, stories I’ve heard about the intensity of these restaurants where, like, the chefs are, like going after them. And I’m thinking, Wait, is that good for me to go and eat in that environment with with that level, especially if there’s a lot of bullying going on in the kitchen or a lot of chaos. Do I want to go and eat my in that kind of environment? What do you think of that?

Cheff Jeff  

Oh, well, there’s a few things going on that question, right? Yeah, first of all, the environment in of itself, in which we We consume food, which, I mean, you’re the doctor in the conversation, but certainly stressors affect how that food affects us, right? You know, so if you’re in a relatively calm environment, an enjoyable environment, versus one that is not common, enjoyable, or even if you’re just, you know, wolfing down a bowl of whatever in front of the TV, right? I’m, I presume correct me, if I’m wrong that those things, those things will affect us differently, how we how we deploy those nutrients, if we even get those nutrients Right, right? And what else is going on our body, the cortisol levels and all those sorts of things, right? So well

Dr. Mindy  

that I mean that. So we have two nervous systems, one that speeds us up and one that slows us down, and the slow down. One is called the parasympathetic, otherwise known as rest and digest. So rest and digest were meant to go together. That makes sense. So when I go to a nice restaurant where there is incredible service and a great ambiance and the food is great, like I can eat dessert, I can have an extra drink, I can do things in that environment and walk away and my and it is simulated into my body, because the environment itself was nurturing, makes sense, and put me in this parasympathetic state.

Cheff Jeff  

So there’s a big overarching word that we use in the business that talks about all this, and it’s the big word, is experience. Yeah, the experience of that restaurant. It’s a really interesting word, and it’s an interesting way that that’s utilized, because obviously we want, you know, when I when I make a Spanish restaurant, when I make a Asian nut Thai restaurant, there’s an overarching experience that I want the guest to feel and experience. And you know that really is the kind of that one of the guiding guide posts for how that restaurant and that that that dining, and all the things that fall under the word experience, how that person is made to feel in those four walls, right, right? Sometimes, and there’s some restaurants that intentionally try to make you uncomfortable or to challenge the guest and to make the guest question what’s on the plate and what’s going on those tend to be the more kind of Michelin e we can get in those later. But like the Michelin star places, the place that are actually trying to be almost like an edible art installation, right? And that’s a whole that’s, that’s maybe a whole different thing, where the food is a component of that experience. In the way that an interactive art or play is the same thing, right? Interesting. But that being said, you know, we come back to, why does, why do we go out to eat? Why we can make food at home? This

Dr. Mindy  

is a really good question. Why?

Cheff Jeff  

Why do we get out of our nice, comfortable home? Get out of our nice, comfortable clothes, put on other clothes, get in our car, drive to a place, sit in somebody else’s place and order food that we may or may not know exactly what’s in it or what’s going on.

Dr. Mindy  

It’s a really good question, yeah, and sometimes we wait hours,

Cheff Jeff  

yeah, just for the opportunity to sit in that chair and have that food.

Dr. Mindy  

Okay? So why do we do that? Yeah? Well,

Cheff Jeff  

these are, these are the motivating factors. I guess of you know, whether it’s being, you know, the the social experience, you’re meeting your friends, you’re you know, it comes it always, for me, it always comes back to that word experience, yeah, what is the value proposition? What is the experience that my Spanish restaurant or my, my, you know, whatever, whatever, my Thai restaurant or my pizza restaurant, whatever. What is the thing that is getting that person that they say I gotta go there because, and, or in the case of the grand Michelin restaurants that may challenge the conventions of the average guest. I got to go there because, yes, there are, there are folks out there who, they travel the world and their their goal that what they want to do is they want to dine at every single one, two and three star Michelin restaurant. They want to check those boxes and have those experiences and say I was there. So why? I don’t know that there’s necessarily any one answer for that. I have a thought on it I’d love to hear

Dr. Mindy  

because, because I think through the lens of neuroscience, yeah, and I think there’s a neuro chemical reaction that happens in a great dining experience, and that’s what pulls you off the couch and goes, go to go to have, like, another hit of the drug. It’s a hit of the drug. And the two drugs that you’re getting are oxytocin and dopamine. So oxytocin, anytime you’re bringing people together and gathering and connection, you’re getting you’re getting that oxytocin, like we’re getting oxytocin right now in conversation. So when you go into that environment and there’s people and there’s smiles and there’s like, like, they, you know, caring, like, I’ll tell you, one of the things I love the best when I go to a nice restaurant is when I get up to go the bathroom and they folded my napkin. Care

Cheff Jeff  

of you. Yeah? It’s like,

Dr. Mindy  

that concept

Cheff Jeff  

is so cool. You feel valued. You feel, there’s so much you feel from all that. Yeah, so that’s

Dr. Mindy  

oxytocin, and then the food is giving you these dopamine hits, maybe a little bit of serotonin. And if it’s a brand new restaurant, dopamine loves novelty, so anytime, really, you’re in a novel situation, you’re getting extra dopamine.

Cheff Jeff  

Oh, that’s so interesting. I mean that. Yeah, we, as a chef, and I’m gonna just say it, we, a lot of us, roll our eyes about, like, the new Insta tick tock food trend, like, oh, the the, you know, I got, I gotta go get my rolled croissant with the cream filling. And like, the one I love is, like the cotton candy burrito. I’m not knocking the cotton candy burrito shops out there. God bless you. Make money, like there’s, there’s things with all that, and you go, I don’t know that I’m ever craving that. And I wonder I the business brain to me says, Yeah, okay, someone’s clearly wanting to go there and get that. I know a lot of folks will. Now, that makes sense. What you just said, that the novelty aspect, they’re getting something out of it. What that novelty is? Yeah, maybe it’s, it’s, there’s some FOMO going on, fear missing out, or the LOOK AT ME ism that you get from Instagram and from being online. But if there truly is a dopamine hit of, you know, I got this novel item and look at and here it is. Yep, that explains a little bit.

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, no, I really do think at restaurants like the ones you created and cooked in there is a neuro chemical makes perfect sense, which that it has a which is why you literally will get up off the couch and go and drive, get dressed, drive and wait, because it’s like, that’s what dopamine does. That’s what oxytocin does, is it drives you to be attracted to it. So it’s really interesting. Mind blowing, right? And with oxytocin, The fascinating part about that is that when oxytocin is high, cortisol goes down. So now you’re taking a stressed out culture, and you’re giving them an opportunity to calm their cortisol down. That makes sense. And then if you calm cortisol, all of a sudden, you become more insulin sensitive. So people are actually having a better metabolic experience. If the environment is nurturing and fun and you haven’t even put the food in your mouth, we

Cheff Jeff  

always say the pineapple tastes sweeter in Hawaii. Yeah, there you go. You know,

Dr. Mindy  

it’s exactly that. It’s exactly that. So when I go to pick a restaurant, I’m kind of looking for that whole experience, unless it’s just utilitarian and it’s like, I gotta eat lunch. So that leads me to that question, which is, when I go to pick a restaurant, I’m like, Okay, I type in code words like farm to table or organic, trying to find my way into do they value? What I value is there, are there certain things as a restaurant owner, that you say, Hey, you want to look for these things to know you’re in you’re in love, you’re in a a caring environment.

Cheff Jeff  

I think what you started this with is important. Is you. Entered keywords that matter to you. And that’s, that’s the start point. Is, you know your your values, and the things that you look for in a restaurant might be different from mine. And so that start, the start of the conversation is, what do you care about? Oh, yeah. What do you like? Are you? Are you in your hometown, and like you said, you’re you need a quick meal. You don’t want a fast food burger that doesn’t meet your value of eating a certain way, you know. Or you know, maybe you, you know, you don’t want the mystery meat of, I don’t know where this came from, right? So I’m looking for something that meets my health goals. And then we go that direction. Or are you, you know, in visiting another town, New York, where there’s a lot of good restaurants, yep, and you’re going, Okay, I’m in New York. I’m here for however many days. I really want to take advantage and see what’s good right now and and then. So going down that path of, you know, what? What’s the hot place Can I get in these days? And, you know, what? What sorts of things am I? Am I looking me? You know, as I’m a little I’m pretty high context. I’m a chef. I travel, literally. I travel for food. Yeah, I travel and go, you know, we were just in Santa Barbara, or we I, when I go back home to the Bay Area. I mean, usually I’m hitting the haunts that are nostalgic. To me, nostalgia is a really big motivator for me, and I I’m really big right now on nostalgic foods and flavors like I don’t I don’t go for the newest, hottest thing, because just for me, I’m just at a point where it doesn’t impress me if I’m not gonna go and find the best smash burger that just opened. No, if I want a burger, it’s going to be really high quality meat. If I’m going to eat those calories, and have to answer my trainer, it’s, there’s gonna be a good reason behind it. The The meat’s high quality, you know, I can’t get it anywhere else. And I have, like, there’s about two places in in this country that I will eat a burger. Oh, only and one is, one is back home. There’s a place where I grew up, and it’s just fantastic. And I’m totally gatekeeping. They are, they are busy enough as is. Oh yeah, they’re, they’re like my grandparents parents went there, my grandparents went there, my parents went there. It’s legacy. And then the other one, I have a good friend who’s a butcher and a chef, and he’s a total savant. Anytime he’s making a burger, I’m eating a burger, I don’t care where it is, I don’t care what’s going on, because I can get it so rarely. And when he does it, it is so special. Yeah,

Dr. Mindy  

interesting. So you know what I look for in a menu is I actually look at a menu and I say to myself, do I eat these foods on a regular basis? Good question. And if I don’t eat them on a regular basis, I’m more inclined to go to that restaurant if you

Cheff Jeff  

don’t have access to them. And it’s something that like you it’s a special occasion, or just, you know, hey, gosh, I can’t think of the last time I had beets, yeah, or whatever, you know, but,

Dr. Mindy  

and that’s that comes through the lens of health, because it’s not just like the dopamine, which I’ll get because I have never eaten this before, but if you look at the microbiome, the microbiome wants you to feed it diverse foods. So like, I don’t, like, we don’t cook duck a lot, yeah? So if I go to restaurant, there’s duck, I’m like, nine out of 10 times I’ve been ordered duck. I love duck. Yeah, maybe we just don’t know how to cook it, but, but I’m it’s really an interesting I love that. It’s a lens that works for me is to be like, sit down with a menu and I do not ask myself, What am I in the mood for? I ask myself, What have I not eaten? And then from there, I decide

Cheff Jeff  

what your driver is, in some ways, I’m not gonna call it uniqueness, but it’s, it’s, you know, opportunity, yeah, kind of opportunity to have things that you wouldn’t normally have access to or so that’s interesting,

Dr. Mindy  

yeah, and variation, like the, if you look at the actually, and I wrote about this a lot neat, like a girl, how when we look at All the different vitamins and minerals you need to make hormones, and you look at all the different like 1000s of back different bacteria in your gut, all of a sudden, you realize the worst thing we can do is eat the same food over and over and over again. It’s actually because now we have really created either a monoculture with our gut, or we are missing the nutrients that we need to make hormones. But I think the same in the experience, absolutely,

Cheff Jeff  

it’s interesting, is with meal prepping. And, like I do, you know, I’ve done a lot of work with just trying to, obviously, like I’ve just, I put on the last seven months, I put on like 1012, pounds of muscle, and taken off like seven, 8% body fat. Work on my trainer, but you early on, what I fell into was meal prepping the same foods because it’s safe, it’s simple. And you know, there’s the as a chef, there’s you have your brain saying there’s eating for PrEP, there’s eating food to. To for your diet, this eating for pleasure. And so for me, a lot of times, that’s the question I ask myself when I go out, is, is it? Is this food for food for pleasure, this food for for fuel? And you know what? Well, that is. The interesting thing is, this is, and I’m not, I swear I’m not just tooting the horn of this book and the recipes and what we’ve done, these are foods I eat all the time, and I diversify it, but like the through working with this book, and then all with my own work on my own, I eat relatively keto anyway, but utilizing a lot of these flavors, you have the diversity and variety that you can do so many different things. That’s that’s truly, I’m not kidding. I at least five days a week, I’m eating same similar things the recipes I put in here, yeah, just because they work right?

Dr. Mindy  

And I actually it’s funny, because you and I talked about this in the beginning, like my whole thing was, when I wrote fast, like a girl, everybody started dropping weight, they started getting all these incredible results because they were avoiding food. But then I was like, But wait, food is medicine. We have to teach you how to eat food, because so many women, specifically were scared to eat the wrong thing for fear they would gain weight. The fear is big man. Fear is so huge. And so it’s like, how do we give the love of food back to women. And when I when we had these recipes, I think, you know, this, like we had, I hired four recipe testers to test both you and Leslie’s, and we just went go go to town. And the response I got back was like, holy shit. These are really good. That’s awesome. And then when they actually went to go take pictures for the book. You know, there’s like, food stylus. Yeah, there was like a team of like 10 people for the photo shoot of food that lasted 10 days. And every single one of them was like, Oh, my God, this food is incredible. So just, I just want you to know that, because I can’t wait for people to have that. I’m

Cheff Jeff  

excited. I mean, I said earlier about, you know, we put love in our food. I gotta tell you that there’s love in this food, man. Like, even when we cook today, we cooked it, you know, like, just for a video, and it was, like, put it together and, like, but it was, there was love in that food, yeah. And you

Dr. Mindy  

can feel that for sure. Did you ever see the moody movie like Waterford chocolate? Yeah, it’s so long time ago, yeah? And where they’re, like, crying while they’re making the soup, and then everybody eats the soup, and then everybody’s crying, yeah, crying. Like, I think about that when I’m in a restaurant, when I’m cooking for myself, or when you have me thinking about this through a recipe, like, when a recipe is made with love, there is an energy of love that now gets handed down in you making the recipe. So it’s, it’s really cool. Okay, Michelin star, I want to go down, down this path, gonna

Cheff Jeff  

get us in trouble? Got

Dr. Mindy  

it No, because we, we have a foodie family when we travel. We are those people that are like, identify where we’re going to eat along with I mean, that’s as high of a priority as anything else. So when it comes to Michelin star, of course, we’re going to try to find those. But some Michelin star restaurants are, like, four years old, 10 years old. Some are Michelin noted like, so what is it? Is it really what it’s all cracked up to be?

Cheff Jeff  

It’s an interesting I’ve, I’ve cooked in Michelin restaurants in Europe, in America. It’s, you know, it’s a point of contention in the culinary community that, you know, what, what are the, what are the the criteria for one star? Because, you know, a lot of times it seems like the criteria for a one star where you have one in Mexico, that’s a taco shop, yeah, God bless them. But then you have a, what, you know, a one star in New York, and it’s a full on brasserie, and it’s like, very much, not tacos, like it’s, there’s, there’s, there’s a lot going on there that’s beyond just, you know, not this, the tacos are easy, or that, you know, it’s, but it’s there’s a weird it’s hard to draw a line between the two, right, right? And so, or you go to Japan, and the one stars look like this. And so, you know, look, is part of whether it’s Michelin or any other award system, I don’t care who it is online or other. Is there a PR and marketing component to it? If anyone says no to that, they’re either lying to you or they’re trying to sell you something. So there is a PR marketing component to it, and that’s but that’s part of it, so that’s fine, but

Dr. Mindy  

on which part, like you want, restaurants want to get it, because now it’s a great peel,

Cheff Jeff  

obviously, it’s a feather in your cap, yeah, and it’s something that you can, of course, market within, you know for yourself, saying, I’m, I’m a Michelin star chef. I have a Michelin star restaurant, and not for nothing, right? To get that notoriety, ain’t easy, right? Like you actually, you know, they don’t just go around handing out like candy. You have to work for that, and you have to be good for a long period of time to get that accolade interesting. And so I’m not poo pooing by any means, the the idea or the. Or the institution. Yep, it very much is a noteworthy and very special thing, yep. But let’s, let’s be real, and let’s talk about for a moment, like the the whole, the whole picture. Because, you know, in that’s just, that’s, that’s the nature of the game, right? I don’t care what the award is, there’s, always a couple different sides to it. You got to look at, yes. Okay,

Dr. Mindy  

so then what I’ve also learned about Michelin star is it’s not just the food that they’re judging. They’re judging the service. They’re judging the the environment. What we’re talking again, we

Cheff Jeff  

go back to that word, yeah, the experience, the experience, it is, it’s, there are one star experiences, there are two star experiences and there are three star experiences. You go to the French Laundry and you plop down that coin and you have that meal, trust me, you are having a three star experience. Yeah, more often. I can’t think of a time that they would have ever dropped the ball. But for the most part, the expectation and the delivery that you receive is a three star plus experience, because Thomas Keller is basically god, yeah. So you know that, being said, it is 100% like think of it this way. You go to a restaurant, I don’t care where it is, you go to your favorite restaurant, or even a restaurant that you is not your favorite, that you don’t know. And the food is great, and the service is not even mediocre, yeah, bad, right? You going back there? No, that’s not a complete experience. There’s, there’s a problem there. And therefore, you know, should you get a Michelin star just because your food’s good? No. I mean, I’m not the head of Michelin. I don’t set the rules, but my gut would say no, right? Likewise, you go to a restaurant, whatever restaurant, and the service is incredible, not for nothing. Chick Fil A’s service incredible, interesting. Their food’s not bad either. Don’t get me wrong, they go like, like a fried chicken sandwich. But my point is, is that, you know, if the service is incredible, but the food is sub, is not Michelin star, should they get a Michelin star? Probably not. So it’s, it’s right, that the criteria is beyond just hey, is the is the food good, or is the service good? Is the wine list look like something, right? There’s this, there should be a certain metric for those things. That is, this is the line for this level. This is the line for this level, and so on, where, you know, not to get too political, but there are, you know, in recent years, they’ve come to question things like, are you should the should a component of those scores, and should the restaurant be graded upon whether they’re, you know, from an environmental standpoint, oh yes, yeah, doing things that are good or bad? Right? On a social level, are they doing things that are good or bad, or or not participating? And you know, that’s going to be a question for perhaps more intelligent people than me, but yeah, it’s, it’s a very real question to say, are these things that do or don’t make a great restaurant that should be noteworthy?

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, and is all that factored into Michelin? Like, do they think about that the environmental impact? I’m

Cheff Jeff  

I mean, they have a green they have a green award now as well. So I would imagine, if it’s not part of the regular rating system, it’s certainly part of the green one, yeah. But you know, for example, you have the James Beard Awards, and you have these other awards within this country and beyond the San Pellegrino awards, and I believe that they certainly take a long, hard look at the sorts of things that are compelling and important within the social realm, right? And, you know, that’s it’s up for debate whether, whether or how much those things should affect the overall judging. It’s an interesting conversation.

Dr. Mindy  

And I really do think what I’m gleaming from this is that when we do pick restaurants, thinking of it as an experience, not as a meal, would be really helpful. And then you’re getting yourself in. You’re getting the full neurochemical expression. Is

Cheff Jeff  

it an experience that you feel comfortable and willing to pay for? Yes, right to take part. Because at the other day, what you know when you’re going to a restaurant, I don’t care what it is, on some level, it’s, called Culinary Arts for a reason, right? There is a certain component of it, that of the experience that is entertainment art. And, you know, it’s sort of performance art. I we used to call it edible temporary art, very in a very snooty, you know, actually,

Unknown Speaker  

I think that’s a way to

Cheff Jeff  

do whether it’s a pizza on a plate, yeah, or it’s a fine dining Beef Wellington, yeah, there’s a component that’s edible temporary art that, yeah, maybe you’re just there because you just want a good steak. But there’s a certain performance aspect of that. Yeah. So.

Dr. Mindy  

So interesting. You know, what do you think about pairing, the art of pairing wine with it? Because now you’ve really taken it to another level. Sure, and we love pairing wine. And we’ll we, if we sit down a nice restaurant, we’ll do the wine pairing with it, and we’ll sit, and my husband, I will sit and talk about, like, what we experience. So I’m curious, what if you think it’s, it’s at does it heighten it?

Cheff Jeff  

If you as a restaurant owner, I love it because, yes, you know, show me the money. Like, I mean, that’s at the end of the day, your margins on things like wine and then, you know, it’s better than for food. So, you know. But that being said, like, look again, there are people who travel around the world specifically for that experience of going to great restaurants and having fine wine and being able to, you know, be fluent in conversation around that topic. And it’s, you know, I think, I think there’s a dopamine response from a neuro chemical standpoint, of it heightens that experience, both from an alcoholic standpoint, but otherwise as well, right? You

Dr. Mindy  

know what? I recently did some research on this, because wine, well, alcohol in general, but wine, it has a couple interesting qualities. And one of the things is, when done in small doses, it brings cortisol down. So if we think about this now, you’re sitting in this nurturing environment with in this experience of love, of coming to you and fit, hopefully, love, hopefully love, and it’s and you’re and you and you’ve got, you’re using food as a tool to enhance a connection with another human, or many other humans at the table. You’re drinking a glass of wine. You’re bringing cortisol down like for me, I think that’s health. I think all of that is health. But you take wine out of that experience, and now you’ve got people that are like alcohol right now is really being bashed as being unhealthy. And I actually brought this up on diary the CEO when I was on the podcast, and he asked me what I thought of alcohol, and I said, Well, I think there’s an upside and downside. Of course, the downside is a poison. It’s not great for your brain. But when in the environment, we’re talking about with good food, good friends, good conversation, the neuro chemical change that’s happening in all of that is healthy, and

Cheff Jeff  

so it’s a net positive, yes, and that it’s one of those things that one of those numerous things that can lead to the overall net positive. That’s

Dr. Mindy  

right, that’s right. So I love where we’re going with this conversation is because when you go to eat, are you going to eat for a meal? Are you going to have an experience? And when you put it through that lens, then all of a sudden, price starts changing too, because you’re like, Oh, if I was going to a play or I was going to a basketball game, where maybe I’m gonna pay $1,000 a ticket or a concert. We, we have no problem paying for that, because we’re like, that’s an experience, and

Cheff Jeff  

$42 beers while you’re doing it, yeah? But then you

Dr. Mindy  

go to a restaurant, I don’t want to pay so much, yeah? And it’s like, but it’s the same experience and same neurochemical reaction in your body, that’s interesting. And I feel like, again, I’m on a mission to bring food back as this medicine, but it’s also the food environment that can be medicine, and paying for it and looking at it through the same lens as a Taylor Swift concert, what might cost you $2,000

Cheff Jeff  

a ticket is doing okay with that ticket prices pretty well. He’s beating the French Laundry pretty hard. That’s

Dr. Mindy  

right, that’s right. So I just think we have our values around where we spend our money is really we spend our money in places that don’t promote health, and restaurants like Valencia gold and the other rents, restaurants that you have owned, started worked in I just think it’s, it’s medicine, if we do it right. I love that. I bet, I mean, and I hope I know you’re about to, like, start a bunch of new, new restaurants, some fun things. But I’d love to think of that

Cheff Jeff  

we, we my business partner and I, he’s incredibly intelligent marketing, mind and brain, and it’s anytime we talk about doing any restaurants and investing our time, our money, it’s always a holistic conversation of not just, Hey, we’re gonna make cool food. Hey, we’re gonna make a cool bar. It’s, How does this fit into the neighborhood, the community? What is, you know, what is, what is the why? Yeah, we need to answer the why in order to get to and part of it is that holistic experience of promoting this full again, the full experience that’s that’s it, that’s everything. You know, they

Dr. Mindy  

also The Five Love Languages. They just came up with a new love line language and its experiences well so, and I keep telling people,

Cheff Jeff  

mine is pizza, steak, and yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Mindy  

Well, again, I just several things that I want to just reflect back to you. One, spending the day with you today, like fun, so much fun. And you’re the thoughtfulness in which you put these recipes together, like down to the oil that is in an Asian Recipe. P slanting recipe needs to have be more consistent with what an Asian culinary style would be compared to the Spanish, right? Just, just incredible. But I’m also really excited about all the other projects you’ve got going on, because you you’ve got your hands

Cheff Jeff  

in a lot of to announce a lot of them soon,

Dr. Mindy  

it’s gonna be pretty fun. So if people want to follow you, yeah, where they follow you. Mainly,

Cheff Jeff  

I use a lot of Instagram at chef Jeff Weiss, okay, j, e, f, f, W, e, i, s, s. I mean, I’m on. I don’t really use the Tick Tock too much. Yeah, yeah. I just, I, it’s like, it’s like, junk food from my brain. I just, I can’t, yeah, mostly Instagram, and then our various restaurants as they open and our other concepts will, will link through, and we’ll, you’ll, you’ll see the announcements are coming up.

Dr. Mindy  

So if they join, like, I follow you on Instagram, if they follow, I follow you. So that’s amazing. Okay, last question I ask everybody, oh, God, this is gonna be really good. I’m very curious what you’re gonna say. What’s your definition of health, for you personally, and how do you know when you’re healthy?

Cheff Jeff  

That’s a great question. I know I’m healthy. My definition of health is when I look good naked store. I stole that line from American Beauty. That’s not fair. No, it’s when, when I’m able to get up and go out and do the things I want to do, and not necessarily worry about whether, you know, my body is telling me, if my body’s like, go for it, dude. You’re good. I know I’m healthy. Like, whether that’s, you know, I don’t have a headache that day because I whatever I, you know, I had, I had a drink last night. But, like, you know, you

Dr. Mindy  

can’t do what you want, right? I

Cheff Jeff  

mean, I really don’t drink hardly at all. It’s mainly just because I don’t like how it makes me feel for the most part, right? Because I really don’t do much of it. So that’s really, for me, my definition of health is being able to do the things I want, when I want, with the people I want, and just enjoy all that.

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, and that part of why I’ve been asking this question is, I think everybody’s like, I want to be healthy, and they’re like, chasing this target. They don’t even know what it is, and it’s very personal,

Cheff Jeff  

yeah, I think also the answer to being healthy is, don’t piss off your trainer. Yeah, probably because he watches my Instagram stories and like, I see you ate at that place last night. Like, No, I didn’t. Is he gonna make you I had, I had a glass of water and some some meat. Probably go push the sled.

Dr. Mindy  

Amazing. Well, I can’t wait to see what you do going forward. And I really, really feel honored. No,

Cheff Jeff  

no, I’m, I’m honored that you called me up and said, I want you to help represent what I’m doing, and I trust you to make these recipes that are gonna taste good and follow the the beliefs that you have. I mean, I’m I’m a guy, and you trusted me to be able to talk, you know, about women’s health and and kind of, you know, bring these recipes into that, into that world. So I’m honored. Well,

Dr. Mindy  

thank you. And I hope I mean, I my agent, and I keep saying, I’m like, I just end the publisher too. I’m like, this book is going to really touch people.

Cheff Jeff  

I think so. Yeah, it’s gonna be really fun. Yeah. So

Unknown Speaker  

appreciate you. Right

Cheff Jeff  

back at you.

Dr. Mindy  

Thank you so much for joining me in today’s episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we’d love to know about it, so please leave us a review. Share it with your friends and let me know what your biggest takeaway is. You