When my phone rang at the precise time for my interview with Bobby Flay, I picked up and was surprised to have the man himself on the line. "I thought I'd be getting a call from your people," I said as I laughed, "who would then patch me through to you." He laughed with me, replying, "I don't have 'people'."Despite not having people, Bobby Flay is a supernova in the culinary universe. With cookbooks, restaurants, product lines and oodles of TV shows, he has so much going on that I asked him the question I ask all celebrity chefs with overloaded plates... "Just how much time do you spend in your restaurants?" He quickly corrected me. "You have it backwards. I spend 80% of my time in my restaurants. Taping my TV shows doesn't take much time, and then they get aired a lot. That's the thing people don't realize. The most important thing is my restaurants. It's the thing I want to do most, it's where I'm most comfortable and most happy."
That's a good thing, with five Bobby's Burger Palaces, three Mesa Grills, two Bar Americans, and a Bobby Flay Steak in Atlantic City, he told me, "I'm on a constant tour of my restaurants." If he wasn't most happy in a kitchen, he'd be one miserable guy.
Thing is, Bobby Flay didn't start with a great love of kitchens, he just needed a job when he quit high school at 17. "I wasn't passionate about food until I'd been cooking for a while. I started long before food became part of the mainstream media. I just wanted to cook, period. I had ups and downs in the business, then after about four years I met Jonathan Waxman (Barbuto) and that's how I became very passionate."
Waxman introduced Flay to Southwest cuisine. Having grown up on New York's Upper East Side, Southwest obviously wasn't a part of Flay's culinary landscape. "Jon was the first chef to bring California cuisine to New York City," explained Bobby. "And that cuisine has a lot of the Southwest in it. I fell in love with the ingredients... the flavors, textures, and colors. Jon opened my eyes to that cuisine."
Bobby took his open eyes on a tour to work in some Southwest kitchens, learning from what he called "the forefathers of Southwest cuisine," among whom were Robert Del Grande of RDG Bar Annie in Houston, Stephan Pyles of Stephan Pyles Restaurant in Dallas, and Dean Fearing of Fearing's at the Ritz-Carleton.
"They were incredibly gracious with me. I was this young New York City punk, and they let me in their doors, opened their kitchens to me, and taught me so much. I'm very grateful to them to this day." Then Bobby added, "I think this is the most giving profession there is. While we're all competitive, everybody is generous with each other, with their time, knowledge, and kitchens."
Traveling to Texas also helped Flay become a BBQ master. Given that I grew up in LA, BBQing year round and now jonesing for BBQ during my NYC summers, I always wondered where Flay got his passion for BBQ. After all, growing up in NYC doesn't lend itself to year round grilling, let alone having a yard to grill in even in summer (if you're lucky you get a rooftop). He told me that as a kid his family would spend summers on the Jersey Shore, where they would grill outdoors all summer long. "It was very basic BBQ," said Flay. "But I took the concept of simple grilling and added my own twist to it, like I do with all of my food."
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