The Food Is a Bonus. Hospitality Is the Point. Chef Geno McWilliams Ep. 213

Christophe De Lellis is chef and partner at Mamani in Dallas, a French restaurant with an Italian accent that earned a Michelin star in 2025, less than two months after opening, and kept it in the 2026 guide. Before Dallas he spent 13 years at Joël Robuchon Las Vegas. He arrived in 2010 as a cook who could barely speak English and was running the kitchen as executive chef by 27. He still asks what can come off a dish before he asks what can go on. The Robuchon kitchen he walked into was nothing like the Paris bistros he came from. Asparagus peeled with a paring knife, micro arugula dressed by rubbing oil between the fingertips, a ruler for the brunoise, and a cook counting the dots on a plate. He says he was hooked right away. Then the executive chef left, his mentor asked if he was ready, and the answer he got was no, you are not ready, but you are going to have to be. How a chicken jus built from 180 pounds of wings, water, and shallot, with no salt, becomes about 70 percent of the sauce on his meat dishes Why he removes an ingredient before he adds one, and why he says better sourcing fixes half the problem How a duck dry aged for 14 to 19 days becomes one dish that blends French and Persian cooking, with the breast in an orange sauce and the legs as kebab André Natera and Christophe De Lellis cover why he walked out of a finance program on day one and went to cooking school in Paris, the visa call that came in the middle of a Tekken game, the year he left Robuchon to work for Shawn McClain at Sage at Aria, how a random message from Brandon Cohanim brought him to Dallas, why Mamani is à la carte with 100 seats instead of a tasting menu, how he balances a menu, why he does not want servers telling the chef’s story, and which station he says is the mark of a restaurant. It ends where every episode ends, with the Mount Rushmore, plus the line he would build with Joël Robuchon on the pass. Guest Christophe De Lellis Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christophedelellis/ Mamani : https://www.instagram.com/mamanirestaurant/ Links Lead Like a Chef App → https://studio.com/apps/andre/leadlikeachef Get the Books → https://chefspsa.com/books Shop Chef’s PSA Merch → https://shop.chefspsa.com/Get Episodes Early on Substack → https://chefspsa.substack.com/ Follow Chef’s PSA on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/chefspsa/

Paid partnership with Toast. This episode ends with a sponsored bonus segment on menu pricing, built on data from Toast's Menu Price Monitor and their free Menu Checker tool. Check your menu against the market → https://biz.toasttab.com/us1XN

Abraham Salum has one rule he wishes every restaurant would adopt. A friend of his makes everyone pile their phones in the middle of the table before dinner starts. First person to reach for theirs pays the bill. Nobody ever touches their phone. That same instinct for reading a room runs through the whole conversation. Salum opened Salum in Dallas 21 years ago on a block his own realtor questioned and a commercial broker publicly predicted would fail. He ran into him years later. The broker told him he had taken his foot out of his mouth a long time ago. Why he banned the words no problem in his restaurant and trained every server to say my pleasure instead How servers at his restaurant made more money in 2020 than they did the year before, even as the restaurant itself brought in 40 percent less The exact leverage he used against an insurance company after a flood to make sure his servers still got paid Andre Natera and Abraham Salum cover growing up between Mexican, Lebanese, Italian, and Spanish grandmothers who all wanted to feed him, running 300 staff across seven restaurants in Cancun by his mid twenties, the kitchen design mistake from opening night that he is still working around two decades later, a storm that punctured his roof and shut the restaurant down for four and a half months, and the two year process of writing his first cookbook, A Spoonful of Everywhere, a project he kept completely secret from his own business partner. It ends where every episode ends, with the Mount Rushmore. Guest salumrestaurant.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/salumrestaurant/ https://www.instagram.com/asalum/ Links Lead Like a Chef App: https://studio.com/apps/andre/leadlikeachef Get the Books: https://chefspsa.com/books Shop Chef's PSA Merch: https://shop.chefspsa.com/ Get Episodes Early on Substack: https://chefspsa.substack.com/ Follow Chef's PSA on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chefspsa/

Nick Walker is an FSR 40 Under 40 chef who oversaw the James Beard nominated Meridian and now leads 11 Whiskey Cake locations across Texas and Florida. He started in a kitchen at 15, under the table, and cut his thumb open on his first real shift when a slamming office door caught his hand mid cut. They poured kitchen whiskey on the wound, duct taped it shut, and he finished service. Why he believes a cook can cook food, but a chef has to manage people and run the numbers, and why so many talented chefs never make that jump The line he still thinks about from a mentor who caught him publicly berating a cook over garnish, telling him to be the sous chef he always wanted Why he says followers do not equal dollars, period, and what actually separates a viral line cook from restaurant success Andre Natera and Nick Walker cover what kitchen culture looked like before HR existed and why some chefs still cannot accept it changed, the real staffing crisis behind restaurants paying 28 dollars an hour and still coming up short, the formula behind a menu item that actually sells versus one built for a chef's own ego, and why Brussels sprouts and hamachi keep showing up on every menu in the country. It ends where every episode ends, with the Mount Rushmore. Guest @chefnickwalker Links Lead Like a Chef App: https://studio.com/apps/andre/leadlikeachef Get the Books: https://chefspsa.com/books Shop Chef's PSA Merch: https://shop.chefspsa.com/ Get Episodes Early on Substack: https://chefspsa.substack.com/ Follow Chef's PSA on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chefspsa/

Tim Laielli will not call himself a chef. He is clear about it every time someone assumes otherwise, including his own father, who is one. Eighteen months after posting his first cooking video, Tim was on set cooking against professional chefs for Gordon Ramsay on Next Level Chef. He built Bare Food Tim, over a million followers, without ever working a line, and he explains exactly why. His father worked two jobs his whole childhood and told him constantly not to follow him into restaurants. Tim listened, then found a way to work with food anyway. Three things worth hearing straight from him. Why he thinks most chefs make content for other chefs instead of the person actually watching, which is usually a tired parent looking for dinner ideas, not a technique lesson. The real numbers behind brand deal income, and why capping sponsored content around 10 to 20 percent is the difference between monetizing and losing your audience's trust. And the two paths he tells struggling restaurants to choose between when they want to go viral, an oversized showstopper dish or full personality driven content, because trying to do both at once usually does neither well. Andre Natera and Tim Laielli also get into the friction between chefs and content creators, why lighting matters more than the camera you shoot on, which dishes reliably perform online and which never do, and the moment Tim realized the platform had started driving him instead of the other way around. It ends where every episode ends, with the Mount Rushmore. Guest Bare Food Tim on Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/barefoodtim/ Links Lead Like a Chef App: https://studio.com/apps/andre/leadlikeachef Get the Books: https://chefspsa.com/books Shop Chef's PSA Merch: https://shop.chefspsa.com/ Get Episodes Early on Substack: https://chefspsa.substack.com/ Follow Chef's PSA on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chefspsa/