Bobby Flay's recipe for success
If anyone has figured out a recipe for success, it's chef Bobby Flay. Not that there wasn't a lot of trial-and-error along the way. He shares some of his recipe now with our Tracy Smith:
At Gato, Bobby Flay's white-hot new restaurant in Manhattan, don't be surprised to see the man himself behind the stove. If you're lucky enough to score a reservation here, chances are Flay will cook your dinner.
"I said to my business partner this is a passion project," he told Smith. "We're going to do this because we want to do it. We're not going to make any money in this restaurant. But it's what we want to do."
"Are you making money?" Smith asked.
"A tiny, tiny bit."
And right now, money does seem to be taking a backseat to Flay's obsession with wowing his customers: The night Smith was there, he put together a massive seafood dish, as a kind of a warm-up for his Christmas Eve "Feast of the Seven Fishes." Then, he served it to his bar patrons -- for free.
"You can call it an obsession, but to me it's my job," he said. "It's my work. It's a thing I love to do. Way more than television -- no offense."
"Do you think that some people didn't see you, or don't see you, as a legitimate chef because you're on TV?" Smith asked.
"It's really easy for people to discount you because you're on television," Flay said. "I'm not really sure why that takes your skills away. But I understand it. And I stopped fighting that fight a long time ago."
Does it bug him? It used to a lot, he said. "It doesn't bug me anymore."
Good thing: For most of the past 20 years, Flay has been a nearly-constant TV presence on a number of networks, CBS among them.
- Bobby Flay's Ultimate Burger ("Sunday Morning," 07/28/13)
- Mesa Grill's Pumpkin Soup ("Sunday Morning," 11/19/10)
- 'Tis the season for egg nog ("Sunday Morning," 12/19/08)
- NEW: Bobby Flay's "Sunday Morning" brunch (12/21/14)
He also, it seems, has confidence to burn, and is known as a kind of kitchen gladiator. On his latest Food Network show -- the aptly-titled "Beat Bobby Flay" -- people are lining up to take him down.
But before he was a household name, you might say Bobby Flay's toughest enemy was himself.
Born in Manhattan in 1964, Robert William Flay showed an early interest in cooking, and not much else -- except killing time with his pals on a New York City street corner: "That's what kids did then in New York. We hung out. We ate pizza. We got into some fights. We played some video games. We got chased by the cops because our boom boxes were too loud."
He flunked out of a series of New York Catholic schools, some more than once.
Smith asked, "Were you bored? Were you angry? Were you like the angry young man who just didn't have time for school?"
"Not really," Flay replied. "I had nothing to be angry about, really. Maybe I was bored. I mean, I guess I was, 'cause I wasn't interested at all."
He did manage to show up on a regular basis at Mimi's Pizza on New York's Upper East Side, where he a got as a delivery boy at age 12.
He tells people he graduated from UCLA: "Yeah -- University of the Corner of Lexington Avenue!"
Truth is, he quit high school, and his father made him get a job doing grunt kitchen work at another restaurant. But instead of scaring him back to school, that little restaurant job changed his life forever.
"I remember waking up in the morning, laying in my bed, staring at the ceiling and saying to myself, 'I can't wait to go to work today,'" he said. "It hit me: I was working with my hands. I was creating things. And I could actually do it. I didn't have to open a book. I was learning in a practical manner."
Excited and inspired, Flay went on to cooking school, graduating from New York's French Culinary Institute (now the International Culinary Center) in 1984. Seven years later, he had a New York City place of his own: Mesa Grill.
He was all of 25 years old.
So did cooking save him? "Oh, totally," he said. "Cooking definitely saved my life. I mean, I think I could've easily gone down a bad road, for sure."
Like what? "Well, what was I going to do? I mean, how was I going to make a living? What were my skills?"
"Honestly, Bobby, you think you would've turned to a life of crime?" asked Smith.
"Uhm, I'm not gonna say that. But a lot of my friends did. I took the different path."
And it worked out: Mesa was a huge success, and Bobby Flay now has 24 restaurants to his name.
Life outside the kitchen's pretty good, too: for the past 10 years he's been married to actress Stephanie March, and he has a daughter, Sophie, from a previous marriage, who is now a college freshman.
"I got the greatest thing ever," he said. "I got Sophie who's happily surpassed me in the educational world."
But there are times when it seemed he may have stretched himself too thin.
In 2008, a New York Times reviewer wondered if he'd taken his eye off Mesa Grill -- and took away one of the restaurant's two stars.
He remembers it clearly: "Oh, yeah. I was in a taxi when I found out that he was taking a star from me.
"It was a long day. I got really drunk that night."
Still, Mesa Grill survived, and flourished, right up until the rent got too high and Flay was forced to close it down last year.
The same thing happened with another place, Bolo, which that left him with a hole in his soul that only a new restaurant could fill.
And that was Gato.
Right after Gato opened, a New York Times restaurant critic came calling again. This time, the review was glowing.
Smith asked, "So what'd that feel like in your gut, to read that?"
"It was an amazing -- just (sigh). I could finally exhale!" he said.
Anyone who's tasted his food knows that he's not afraid to spice it up. But Flay also knows how to savor the sweet.
"It's the holiday time, it's the time when people are counting their blessings," said Smith. "Do you do that sort of thing?"
"I feel blessed and lucky every day," he said. "My father always said to me, 'Think of the word 'content.' If you can feel like you're content most of the time, everything is good.'"
"Are you content?"
"One-hundred percent," Flay replied. "Plus a little more."
For more info:
- Gato, 324 Lafayette Street, New York City
- bobbyflay.com
- Follow Bobby Flay on Twitter (@bflay), Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube
- Bobby Flay highlights on The Food Network
- International Culinary Center