Burnt Hands Perspective
This is a raw and unfiltered look into the state of the restaurant industry as a whole, powered by longtime friends Chef/Owner Antonio Caruana and former bartender turned News Anchor/TV Host Kristen Crowley.
Representing all aspects of the industry from the front to the back of the house we will dig into the juiciest stories and pull from decades of experience in one of the sexiest and most exciting industries in the world...the food and beverage industry.
From international chefs, sommeliers, industry pros, and so much more, this show will cover all of it without a filter. You turn up the volume; we'll turn up the heat.
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Burnt Hands Perspective
Ep 43: Greek Roots and Restaurant Realities - From Souvlaki to Restaurant Ownership
Restaurant owners unite! We are going Greek!
We sat down with the owners of Brick House Diner to explore the deep connection between food, heritage, and the challenges of preserving authentic Greek cuisine in America. The episode brings together our longtime friends with Greek restaurant backgrounds to discuss how their cultural food traditions have shaped their lives and businesses.
We touched on so many topics in this episode:
• Greek cuisine offers flavors similar yet distinct from Italian, with regional variations throughout Greece
• Authentic Greek ingredients create dramatically different flavors – organic tomatoes, hand-cut fries, and fresh feta cheese
• Traditional dishes like spanakopita require homemade phyllo dough, a labor-intensive process that yields incomparable results
• Restaurant owners struggle with rising costs, slim profit margins, and the challenge of presenting rustic dishes to American diners
• Preserving cultural cooking traditions becomes increasingly important as older generations age and younger ones show less interest
• The restaurant industry has transformed from a highly profitable business to one where owners carefully balance menu pricing against costs
• Both the community and customers need greater understanding about the realities of operating restaurants in today's economy
Support your local restaurants, local people, and local shops – they're the ones preserving cultural traditions while facing significant business challenges.
Check out Brick House Diner - https://www.brickhousediner.com/
Richmond · 13520 Midlothian Tpke Midlothian, VA 23113 ·
Richmond -3336 N. Arthur Ashe Blvd, Richmond, Va 23230
Virginia Beach · 941 Providence Square Virginia Beach, VA 23464
"Brick House Diner is family owned and operated by The Routsis family. We at Brick House would like to thank you for choosing our restaurant for your dining experience. The Routsis family takes pride in preparing homemade dishes for our customers. If there is ever a problem in our restaurant please feel free to let us know. We are here to satisfy our customers and friends so we look forward to seeing you again for one of our three meals. We are sure you will enjoy it so make sure you tell a friend about Brick House Diner"
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All right, burhan's perspective right here, sitting here with my two buddies, go way back in time. Of course, kristen always here with me on the show and I'm here with her either way Hi. Depending on which one of us you watch probably her she's much better to look at than I am, but hey. I try, Anyway. So we go way back, guys. This is the Greek connection we're talking.
Speaker 2:Greek. Today we're going to Greece.
Speaker 1:It's all Greek to me, Probably well, not probably.
Speaker 2:It is my top three cuisines in the world.
Speaker 1:It is Italian, Greek, Thai.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:Flavor explosions. But Greek to me is everything Italian when it isn't right. So everything that I, if I ever say, man, this could be a little more Greek. It's the only time I say it, so meaning I love this stuff, I love the feta cheeses, I love that. When you there's, that's so basic to say, right, that's the most basic shit to say until you've gone there and ate it, then then it's a whole different world. Right, it's like eating mozzarella. Most people think mozzarella the thing about pizza or you know, cheese sticks or little string cheeses or something, until you go to italy and get yeah, um, it's an ld buffalo right. So if you go to Italy and get mozzarella di buffalo, right. So if you go to Greece and eat the feta cheese there, it's totally different.
Speaker 1:It brings you to another place in it, and all that shit. So what I'm going to say is this man, we go all the way back to the bars back when we were young, as does most people on this show, because we live in a small world. So here's what I remember the most. The first time I remember you three guys. Your brother John's not here right now. He couldn't be here, but this is how I remember you first. You ready for this.
Speaker 3:You don't know what he's going to say you might remember this.
Speaker 1:I'm in the bar, drunk as fuck.
Speaker 4:Last call. Last call. You remember that.
Speaker 1:Last call, drunk as fuck. Last call, last call you remember that last call and I smell something like what the fuck is that? Right, and my buddy ben and I were sitting there one time. We're like what was that? What does that smell?
Speaker 3:these three guys are walking around the bar with a fucking like a tray, an aluminum tray with aluminum foil, on top, with fucking chicken skewers that they grilled out these greek bastards, and they got the seasoning, the chicken or pork that they grilled out these Greek bastards and they got the seasoning Chicken or pork, one of the two, yeah, and they're walking through the souvlaki In the store.
Speaker 1:You're young, we're all kids, right then? Yeah, we're like 19, 20, 21 years old, right? Can't tell the secret.
Speaker 3:We were there early, but that's all right, we were in the bars early.
Speaker 1:Let me tell you what night and sell them for like two, three bucks a piece or something, right, I'd be like getting handfuls of them and that's what we met and I'm like these guys love food as much as I do and they're learning how to make money on it, right? Yeah, so, Kristen, you probably don't. I don't know if you remember that. You were probably working at the time. I was always working, that's what I mean Everybody was up there having fun.
Speaker 3:She was keeping us ready for the food.
Speaker 1:She was keeping us hydrated, so from that point on, I knew I had a fucking relationship with you guys and right away we started connecting. Then I ended up dating a Greek girl at that time and then I got more introduced to the culture and that was an amazing time too, because that's what really got me involved with the culture and being around you guys and meeting you guys and everything else there. We're still friends to today, me and her and Peggy what's up? You're out there, anyway. So that was a great time in life to be introduced to such a culture, because I've always grew up Italian.
Speaker 1:I had Greek friends, but I was never introduced to their Greek lifestyle, the cooking and it was so similar, right? Yeah? So the way you guys, you know you have a lot of similar dishes, that kind of translate to Italian. Maybe it's just because of the Greek and Roman connection back in history, or whatever it may be, but your versions of lasagna, your versions of eggplant, your versions of pastas and baked dishes and things like that, go ahead and spit some of them out.
Speaker 3:And I mean even the bread, all the way to the bread, the bread, yep. A lot of artisan-type bread stuff like that.
Speaker 4:Musacca bread, a lot of artisan type bread stuff like that, um, which is like two different types of lasagna, ones with eggplant potatoes, the other ones with a penne pasta or noodle type of noodle with a bechamel ground beef. Um, then a lot of stewed dishes as well too a lot of nutmeg.
Speaker 3:Yes, herbs that we don't really see a lot of men but it. But it also depends on the parts of Greece that you're from. Yeah, my family's from central Greece. We didn't use a lot of nutmeg or a lot of mint.
Speaker 1:Now Greece, central Greece, you say. Is that central islands? No, no, it's central Greece.
Speaker 3:Back from mainland, yeah, mainland, yes, gotcha. And so we didn't use a lot of nutmeg and mint. But when I went to my aunt's or went to other people's houses, they had mint, they had nutmeg, all that stuff it's pretty similar, but you had that difference.
Speaker 1:So Greek culture is huge and the Greek food is huge and the Greek communities are big. Right, you guys throw parties and eat man, it's not a joke, it's a fucking festival.
Speaker 3:There's 15 of us and we cook for 150. And you all eat it, and we all eat it.
Speaker 1:You eat it all. I'm saying we all eat it for sure. You know, and it's all fresh and it's right up my alley A lot of lamb fish. The fish is off the hook, right.
Speaker 3:So when you guys, you guys go back to Greece, quite often Not as're there.
Speaker 1:When you're getting there, you're on the airplane, you're getting ready to land. Something's going through your mind when it comes to food and shit.
Speaker 3:What's the?
Speaker 1:first thing on your mind.
Speaker 3:Where am I going to eat?
Speaker 1:What's the?
Speaker 2:first food I want the souflaki which is the pork on the skewer. It's different there, right, it's different. Oh man, you can't get it right.
Speaker 3:Number one, I believe, because everything it's 95% of it's organic.
Speaker 2:Yes. Correct the tomatoes, everything tastes different.
Speaker 3:Unbelievable Potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, I mean a lot of stuff's grown locally, especially if you go to the villages where my parents are from, you literally sit down us four sit down and order a meal. We want chicken. The chicken's out back hanging out until we order it Right.
Speaker 1:And then it's a wrap.
Speaker 3:Not like the chickens here we discussed in the other episodes. The potatoes are grown in the yard, the tomatoes, the cucumbers, everything is.
Speaker 1:So the best part. So when I'm going thinking about my cuisine, italian cuisine, when I'm ready to eat, I'm always thinking of it all day long, and right now I'm thinking of it I want. First thing that comes to my mind is basil. That's the first thing that comes For some reason. I just love it. It's the best smell, the best taste, the best everything in the world. To me, my number one trigger is basil fresh basil.
Speaker 3:I love it, and with you guys it's the same, except for it's oregano and it comes out on tomatoes, it comes out on cheese, it comes out on everything and I'll never forget.
Speaker 1:I was in um, I was in uh in gumanitza and I went to this restaurant. That was not supposed to be a restaurant. I think it was more supposed to be like a mechanic shop or something I don't know but.
Speaker 1:But it was. They brought out this pot of beef broth, right and, and they put it on this burner right. And the only experience I've ever had like this in my culinary world is one time when I was in Hungary. They do the goulash the same type of way. They come out on the fire with this crock, they put it in front of you and they kind of cook it in front of you and you serve out of it right On the table. It's a hole with a fire in it. Well, this guy brought out this pot of lamb sorry lamb broth straight. You could smell it, the foaming, it was ugly, it wasn't presented right and I'm like what the fuck is going on here?
Speaker 1:you know what I mean and he takes pasta spaghetti and just dumps the raw spaghetti in this lamb broth and I'm thinking to myself what is going on in my life right now? Why are greeks cooking spaghetti?
Speaker 3:first of all. Second of all, what is happening here? You my life right now. Why are Greeks cooking spaghetti? First of all, second of all, what is?
Speaker 1:happening here, you know, and he comes out and he puts the Greek cheese on it and I forget what it's called. It's like a white crumbly cheese, real soft, not feta, but it's just a very soft mild cheese.
Speaker 3:It's white, it's white. They call it manouri and it's a different type of feta.
Speaker 1:Okay, good, and it's very mild, very clean, and he sprinkled that on there and kind of tossed it like we would. No broth, though, just the pasta out of the broth. No strain or nothing, just you know, into the bowl.
Speaker 1:And he put the fucking cheese in there and tossed it A little bit of oregano on top. I'm telling you all, man, I eat pasta as a professional. This was some of the best shit I ever ate in my life. I don't know if they're. In a sense it was the broth you cook the noodles in, almost like fall or something yeah, but it just the pasta spaghetti with that cheese on it and the rest of a mechanic shop out of it was well it was a restaurant that looked like.
Speaker 1:It was just a couple tables in a garage. It looked like shit it didn't look like a place that you should be eating, and but it was. I telling you it was some of the best shit I've ever had in my life. I still think of that to this day and I don't know if I can go back to that island and figure out where the hell it was, if it's even still there at this point.
Speaker 1:I was with a friend who was a Greek guy there and we were going to check on some motorcycle parts and across the little place over there was this guy. He goes come on, you're gonna love it, trust me, I'm gonna love it. I'm gonna love eating with this guy's eating for lunch right here. Who's this guy?
Speaker 2:and it was that good. It was that good. Well, going to greece ruined me. I mean, it ruined me coming back here to eat food here, because it was, I mean, like greek salad. Like I can't eat greek salad with lettuce in it like I can't do that. It's not. And then once I had it there the way that it is prepared or supposed to be prepared there was no coming back. So now I'm ruined. I don't eat lettuce really. Anyways, I don't like green.
Speaker 1:But it's just one of the things. It ruined me. The funny thing is getting a Greek salad there with a pile of French fries on it and stuff.
Speaker 3:Everything's beautiful man and the fries are hand cut. Yeah, they're delicious and a pain, and they're golden brown, they're not white dude, the salt on, it's better, everything's good.
Speaker 2:Now we're all you can tell me because this is the conversation, but growing up with the food culture and bringing it back here. So you have the restaurant like you know. How much of it do you get to really stick to?
Speaker 3:Greek food in a sense we used to do, actually, one night a week. We used to have a Greek night and do Greek foods and my aunt, who's obviously greek, um, she would make, uh, two or three dishes and then that's what we would have that day and we did well, um, she's just gotten older now. I mean I can pull the weight, uh, but I think the what it's not a lot of people. You get a lot of people in there that want it. The presentation of it, like I was telling you a second ago, isn't always the greatest, because we talk chicken and potatoes, right. So my mom, growing up, chicken and potatoes was a big pot, big pan. She threw potatoes and chickens and she married everything, put it in the oven and came out. We all just threw it on a plate and ate, right. There was no garnishing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how do you?
Speaker 3:present that to you know when you have a restaurant.
Speaker 1:It's very rustic.
Speaker 3:Yes, same with. Like it's what they call Uvezi, which is a veal.
Speaker 4:A lot of stewed. Yes, it just doesn't present so good.
Speaker 1:but it's fucking amazing.
Speaker 3:Oh, it's unbelievable. The flavor is amazing. It's unbelievable, it's so delicious.
Speaker 1:So, like Kristen's saying, so, when you come in, you guys have restaurants, diners, and they're amazing. I go twice, three times a week, for real, not joking, thank you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no worries, that's great.
Speaker 1:So everything that you guys do is the highest quality at the level you're at right. So you have great burgers, you have great. Everything you guys do is with love when you put the Greek food like. I think what she's saying is it's it's hard to get the community enlarged to just have a greek restaurant, right is? Is that what I'm seeing here locally?
Speaker 3:yes, I mean there's. There's been a few, but they've never, really advanced.
Speaker 1:I've never stayed long it's not like italian food, where people just go, want it right, and here's a good thing. Maybe I'm wrong. Correct me please. American Italians have a different palate than Italian Italians.
Speaker 4:I am an.
Speaker 1:Italian restaurant more European than I am American. Once a week I have an Italian American Heritage Night. That's out of respect for the heritage of Italian Americans. But I don't see that much in Greek food. You've never really been overrun with the American Greek food, have you, or have you? Is there American Greek food that you don't? That isn't really Greece Like the yiddle. Yiddle.
Speaker 3:Like the yiddle here. What you get here is nothing what you would get in Greece.
Speaker 1:That's the pile of French fries on the meat. And all that On the meat with the sandwich, with the pita bread, right.
Speaker 3:Because in Greece what they do is they'll take meat and they'll layer it and then cook it and then they'll shave it off. Here it's processed, and then they make it into process, into a cone, and then they cook it and they take it off In. Greece. They literally it's layered meat.
Speaker 1:So each layer is marinated and then they layer it on an Italian, then it's stacked and then cut.
Speaker 3:And, I think, the only reason why it's not allowed here, because it's probably a health code violation.
Speaker 2:Because they're stacking it.
Speaker 3:Because, the inside. Yeah, because, like the, it is a huge.
Speaker 1:Listen, I'm a chef dude, I've done this all my life. It is a huge health risk. Yes, seriously, dude. Yes, yes, seriously, do yes, because the amount of hours it takes you to prepare it and the amount of hours it takes you to cook that keeps that thing in the danger zone.
Speaker 3:So far along the middle of the middle has got to be bad.
Speaker 1:I would probably core that middle out and throw it away but increase, they get away with it.
Speaker 4:They are because their bodies can accept people reading it but they also go through it too. I mean you know it's a four-hour period that you need to get it cooked or done. Typically, these people are going through it because they're selling jars left and right or gyros left and right.
Speaker 1:It's funny you say that too, bill, because here's the deal. Not to knock Americans, I'm not, but for every Greek person who would understand how to put that cone and prepare it properly, you have four or five employees who don't. No, and they're the risk. It's not the Greek. It's not the Greek. It's not the Greek people. It's not the people who understand the culture, no matter what culture you're in. It's not them.
Speaker 1:It's the people who don't respect it or understand it who make that a dangerous situation, because they're not handling it with the pride they're not handling it with the passion they should. They're not paying attention to the outcome, because when you're making this in your country for your country people, the people expect it to be done a right way, because they want to eat it a right way. That's the outcome they're looking for. It just so happens that that outcome also is safe. Yeah, so if they're not worried about the outcome here, they're not worried about the safety of it either. Yeah, you know what I mean. So in order for it not to spoil, right, you have to do it right, period. Yeah, here they don't understand. A lot of people don't. The majority doesn't I'm not saying everybody by any means, but there's a lot more risk factor here when you're in a melting pot of people instead of just people who understand it.
Speaker 1:It's easy to go to only greek guy in a restaurant here and five-year employees are not, and they're trying as hard as they can to understand it, but they just simply don't because they didn't grow up in it same thing, in an italian kitchen. And that's where italian american food became so popular is because it was able to be. For all those who didn't really understand it, it was still good enough to get by at a level people could understand. So that's why we have such a difference of Italian food versus Italian food. But in Greeks it's the same way. Now, when you go to, how hard do you find it? Whenever you guys throw down with some Greek food at your restaurant, you bring me out some. Some of it. I love most 90% of it. Sometimes it's okay.
Speaker 1:But I think the more traditional, the more eh, I think you have to grow up to like that.
Speaker 4:But just like the traditional spanakopita and tiroba, that's actually made with homemade phyllo, not the store-bought phyllo. Like my mom taught me years ago how to make my own phyllo, I roll it out when we cook for our family dinners. I roll it out myself. I don't buy the store-bought phyllo.
Speaker 1:You got to roll it. Roll it a process. Oh, it's a hell of a process. Yeah, it's a process.
Speaker 4:Paper thin and then put all the ingredients together.
Speaker 2:But the difference is night and day.
Speaker 4:But nine out of ten people aren't going to know that because they're used to the phyllo. That's already store-bought and you know they're going to be like oh, this is good.
Speaker 1:The store-bought. Phyllo doesn't really fucking rise properly. It doesn't have the air layers that it needs, it doesn't crisp up properly and still have that moisture level inside to where it's crispy but yet still moist. It's dry right, it's like a wafer stacked wafers that just get, because once you freeze something and recook it, it's going to suck.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so making your own filo is a process. For anyone who doesn't know how to do it, look it up online. Just go to how to make it at your own fucking pace. How long does that take? You'll see how many times it's a process. It's just like making bread. Yeah, each layer.
Speaker 4:It's layer after layer after layer, and you need to make a traditional spanakopita in the round pan like my mom used to make. I use your traditional spanakopita in the round pan like my mom used to make. I use uh 12 kilos I mean layers of phyllo.
Speaker 4:So it takes me about I don't know 40 minutes to make the phyllo and then after that I got to put everything together because I put um, so it's called actually from one of my mom's friends called prasopita, which means green. So we put leeks, spinach, green onion, any type of greens you can put in there, I don't like dills.
Speaker 3:I'm sure you would love the greens. It's so good. I do like the green.
Speaker 1:Ricotta cheese lots of butter.
Speaker 3:Well, bill, the next time you make this, let me in on this, we can be there, but what you need to see is if we should have what they have here, for example with the frozen phyllo.
Speaker 2:You should compare. That would actually be really good. Let's do a show on it For real.
Speaker 3:Even the way it cooks is just completely different.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm sure Completely different. But amazing, and you can find some good product that's frozen but I know he knows you can tell the majority of people probably don't know You're in the industry, you would know what's this and what's that for sure. Definitely so good. When did you guys open the first restaurant? How?
Speaker 4:did that go, so our diner in Malothia Virginia, opened back in 2004.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 4:As I mentioned, that's when we started our brand.
Speaker 3:But this all starts back in probably the late 80s, no, early 80s, no early 90s, late 80s. My dad opened up a restaurant in Chesapeake Virginia, and it was called Four Brothers Steakhouse and he was there for 16 years. Wow, and it was we did okay, but there was four boys that my dad was trying to raise and all we did was raise hell and eat, yeah, so he was just barely about a house.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he was just like literally, we had a restaurant so we can eat you know what I mean um, so he did his, he, they did their part, they did. Well, what we learned was obviously from, yeah, what we learned in that kitchen um, when he was ready to, my dad was ready to kind of retire and sit back and my mom was done with the restaurant business and we obviously didn't want it. But now, here we are, all these years later right back into it.
Speaker 1:I don't think anybody wants it until you're old enough to understand and respect that it is who you are and it made you.
Speaker 4:That's exactly what it is.
Speaker 1:What would we be doing otherwise?
Speaker 3:I asked myself that all the time I tried other things.
Speaker 1:I tried other things and it always brought me back or in trouble.
Speaker 4:There's always a passion in what we do. We do what we do because we enjoy doing it. I mean there's nothing I would choose anything else. I mean I really enjoy doing what I do. But you got to have the passion, especially in today's society, even though you lose a little bit of passion because of you know, the generation, now that we got coming in for employees or cooks or you know, whatever the situation may be, has changed. But you still got to have the passion for the restaurant business because it's it's not easy well in the generations you.
Speaker 1:It's a good thing you speak of and um when you're talking about cooking the food and upholding the traditions and the youth your youth coming up are. Are your youth in the greek community still interested in cooking and carrying on that traditions or is it faded?
Speaker 3:It's faded.
Speaker 1:I believe it's faded and I believe how can they fade? It's a fucking flavor does not fade.
Speaker 3:They just don't want it, they don't want to deal with it, they don't want to work. No, they don't want to cook. I enjoy cooking.
Speaker 1:Find me some 20 girls that want to cook. You know you're going to make it someday. Who else is going to fucking make it? You just stop eating it.
Speaker 3:That's just like I told you my aunt she's 77. She still works with us.
Speaker 2:She still prepares some of this, she hangs out.
Speaker 3:She puts her hands in things.
Speaker 2:She touches things. Her hands are gold. She checks things. She touches things, she checks things.
Speaker 3:Quality control there you go, but it's like man, I can't, even though I can do what she does, I can't make it like she makes it.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 3:My mom and her sister have the same bread recipe, but two different.
Speaker 2:They taste different.
Speaker 1:Plus, you also got to remember the nostalgia has a lot to do with that.
Speaker 3:Yeah well.
Speaker 1:Because no one's ever going to make it like my Aunt Allie, or anybody else who made this food when I was little? I could probably without question, with all my skill and what I've been doing in my life, I could probably out-cook her Everything she cooks for me, though still nothing's better, yeah but if we were to put ourselves compared to compared, she's afraid to cook for me now because of who I am and I'm like you should never say some shit like that. Yeah, because I absolutely still from a little boy.
Speaker 1:That's that from what it is that that really resonated with me even though, even though, um, she was my aunt and and I was able to have that food as you would when you're go your aunt's but it was all my family, but hers specifically, always sits with me, and though I can cook my ass off, just a simple ravioli with a pomodoro sauce, that she makes is in this world, yeah, but maybe if I never had it before growing up and I tasted it now, I'd be like but I think because it meant so much to me all growing up.
Speaker 4:It's used to it. It's like your brain stuck on it, right.
Speaker 1:It's stuck on. This is the best. Yeah, and that's the best part about talking about food. I've been talking about food with you guys since 1990, fucking seven.
Speaker 4:Yeah, for real, for real. The first place I opened was on the ocean front. Years ago, after my dad closed the restaurant in Chesapeake, you came and showed us how to make chicken marsala.
Speaker 1:I remember that you had a catering event or something. I came in to have breakfast with you. I've just never made it.
Speaker 4:Before I was 18 years old, I'd never made chicken marsala. Did I make the whole thing with you? Yeah, I made the whole thing. You catered that, didn't you? Yeah, perfect.
Speaker 1:Royalties.
Speaker 3:That's where you started, man. That's where it all started.
Speaker 1:That's it, so I was cooking with Andrea LaBella, Italia then, I've been cooking most of my life. All my paid life since I was 13 14 years old, is working but here I am now, and here we are now, and we are what do you?
Speaker 1:what do you when it comes to? I know, as you get, as we get older, all of a sudden we look into our heritage. Like, all of a sudden, I'm mr italian and you're, you guys are mr greek, but but all growing up, yeah, we were greek, we're italian, whatever. But now that we're getting older, we're looking at our heritage and being like, oh shit, we gotta preserve this, we gotta do our part. You think that's always been going on and that's always gonna happen. You can't just go away, right?
Speaker 4:well, you can't go away. But I think it's also about raising our youth yeah like my kids now. Our parents taught us, you know, try to stick to traditions. And um, I married an american girl. Know out of our tradition but she stays up more with our faith, taking the kids to church. She does, she's very active, yeah, and she does more than I actually do because I'm usually at the restaurant or whatever, and you know, it's about the way we teach our kids to raise them.
Speaker 1:I think your wife gets her Greek by proxy. What does he call it? She won her Greek card.
Speaker 2:She has her Greek card.
Speaker 4:She speak Greek, yet no, she understands a lot of it. She speaks very little, but not.
Speaker 3:It all boils down to us doing our part with our kids, like our parents did for us. But it's hard, dude. It's not like I did.
Speaker 1:I can't say that that's not true. My kids absolutely fucking love pasta. They love Daddy.
Speaker 2:Pasta. They do love Daddy Pasta they love their pasta Sunday. Even at the restaurant, they go back and ask for that.
Speaker 1:They love the pasta. So I can't say my kids don't love it. They absolutely love it and look forward to it. They're not into the process yet and pass around.
Speaker 3:So do you cook at home too? Yeah, I do. You do See, that's what I mean. I don't really cook at home.
Speaker 1:I only cook at home on Sundays. I'll cook pasta. I'll try and do a pasta dinner. I always got a pasta. I eat pasta every day, some form of it. You know what I mean. I don't understand spaghetti and meatballs.
Speaker 4:I don't eat, I might as well be dead. That's how my mom used to be. She would never, get full if she didn't have bread every day with her meal.
Speaker 3:That's another thing. Italians and Greeks are all about that bread. Gotta have the bread If I was told.
Speaker 1:If the doctor told me I had to cut gluten out, if I got like celiac or something like that, I'm not kidding you, I don't know what the fuck I would do. No, you'd eat bread without what?
Speaker 4:what the quality of life is? I don't know. You gotta find something.
Speaker 2:I don't know gluten-free it'd be tough to do.
Speaker 1:I don't know what I would do then we also know the difference.
Speaker 2:There's a difference. We talked about this and the pastas and the breads like making it with the organic but, like the flour, doesn't have any any of the crap in it. So most people can travel to other countries and eat the pizza, the pasta, the bread, whatever, and not get sick. It's because we, you know here, it just makes you sick.
Speaker 1:The good news in Europe with Greece, Italy, France, most of Europe is they're underneath the European standard. So they're all getting that quality product because it has to be sold throughout Europe on the same standard. So if we get something from Texas, it's still produced by the laws of American standard. So you can get just as much shit from Texas as you can here, or you can get just as good as you can here, depending on how much money you want to spend Over there. The standard is the same in each country. So if I get something from Greece to cook in Italy, it's going to be of good quality and it's gonna be on the same standard, the wheats, like you said, the pasta and the dough and all that shit is very important.
Speaker 2:None of the pesticides and all the shit that's put on it, yeah.
Speaker 1:Every country needs a pesticide, a controlled one. There's a huge difference in what they're allowed to get away with and what they're again.
Speaker 2:They have strict standards.
Speaker 1:It goes back to the meat cone. Right, yeah, right, yeah, yeah. People over there aren't going to allow themselves to put shit on food because it's so important, the food, the final product, is so important they wouldn't want to bastardize that, yeah, and that's, that's a culture that I wish would start striking in america, more america. We eat, we eat to eat. You know what I mean? We eat to eat something. I'm saying yeah it's great.
Speaker 1:But so in your, in your restaurants now you're in the same struggle as everybody else Employees, staffing, purveyors, high cost of everything. How hard is it for you guys? Right now, I can sit here and talk about me having to put a $65 lamb chop on my menu, cooked at the level where cooking in here is a little bit different. But how are you getting by trying to survive and pay your bills on a cheeseburger when the cheeseburger costs you so much fucking money? What would you tell the people out there?
Speaker 3:My goal, what I tell them, is shut up and spend the money there's nothing we can do about it, just like you got your hands up like that right now. That's exactly how we are. We're like I mean, if it came to me cheaper, you would get it cheaper, exactly. They think we're all out here trying to. They think we're gold.
Speaker 1:Look, the restaurant industry fucking. 25 years ago people were gold miners when restaurant owners were wearing gold chains and Cadillacs. That was real and that wasn't a lot of work to do. That we were just gold. Money was coming in hand over fist because you can get a bag of flour for fucking $2.99 or eggs at fucking 12 cents a piece. That's what was happening back then, and we were not charging much less than we are now. That's right. So, yes, profitability back then was ridiculous. Now the profit margins are the fucking this big.
Speaker 4:Well, it has to do with everything. It has to do with where you're at your location, the price of rents, leases and all that.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 4:And then, at the end of the day, we just got to pass it down to the consumer, because that's all we can do to stay in business and there's nothing else we can do, and we're not individually passing it down to the consumer, as if we're punishing them just for coming to our spot.
Speaker 1:This is a natural. This is how it is. This is how it is everywhere. We're not going to be able to operate that anymore. That's going to have to rise. If you're operating at 30 now, you're on board. It's tough.
Speaker 1:I'm right on the cusp Between 29 and 33, I'm trying to stay there, but just with your employee, you almost have to remove the employee rate out of that. You know what I'm saying? Because now people are getting paid so much to work that that's taken away from that percentage. It's almost impossible to operate on that 30% business model as we used to, because the business model back then was different the percentage. We had a lot more room for flaw. Right now there's no room to move man.
Speaker 4:Not at all.
Speaker 3:And to making mistakes, like you know, you gotta cut your costs and try to eliminate mistakes in the kitchen. Eliminate your waste right, Correct costs. And trying to eliminate mistakes in the kitchen eliminate your waste right, correct, because that's what I said, when stuff goes up, you just got to eliminate as much waste as you can. Cut the tomato a little bit.
Speaker 1:This way you know. Try to get closer to the stem. Stop wasting half the tomato.
Speaker 3:Getting rid of the top yeah, whatever you can do to just kind of, you know, keep, keep that bottom line where it is and you know, with us.
Speaker 1:It's like like the rack of lamb, for instance. My lamb is very expensive for me. It costs me a lot of money. There's very little profit margin. I have the lamb on the menu so the customers coming in here can come in here, while other people get the other things. We spread the margins around the menu so we kind of make it all work out that way. But when we have the lamb that costs so much just to satisfy the palate, you fuck that lamb up one time and you just lost profitability for that whole rack.
Speaker 3:That's it. Yeah, it's gone, you're in the pocket. So you're.
Speaker 1:You're really in the. You're going to always make a little bit of money, but you're not going to make a lot of money to make profit. So one lamb goes wrong. One send back one fucking mishap. Bad news, you know what?
Speaker 3:I mean bad news, so we don't have that freedom of maneuvering, maneuvering around, yeah.
Speaker 1:So when's? When's the next greek trip?
Speaker 3:um, I was. I was discussing my brother. Now he don't know yet, but we're gonna try to get up, us, the four brothers, to go to greece for about 10, 10 days, two weeks, surprise, surprise so we'll see.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we're gonna try to, not 90 probably, you know, fall november, that's amazing.
Speaker 3:Right around that time that'll be a good time. We're going to try to probably, you know, fall November. That's amazing. Right around that time, that'll be a good time. We usually when we go, we usually go summertime.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:We've never been that time of the year, so we're going to try to make that trip.
Speaker 1:If you guys anybody in the comments you, when can they get you on social medias? Where can people connect with you? I don't have any social media, that's just me. How about the restaurant?
Speaker 4:Brickhouse Diner 04 is a restaurant in Richmond, in Midlothian. Brickhousedinercom is all our three of our locations and Brickhouse Diner Virginia Beach on Instagram and Facebook here in Virginia Beach Awesome yeah.
Speaker 1:Cool, so get in there. Brickhouse Diner. You'll probably see me there in Virginia Beach a couple times a week. A few times a week if you go there at the right time. I won't tell you when that is. I'll let it be a surprise. Anything you want to say to anybody getting in this business, any last words you put out there to anybody out there, and it could be nothing um, the the restaurant business is very tough and I think a lot of people don't understand that.
Speaker 3:Um, along with you know, with trying to do your best in the restaurant business, and on different scales. Obviously, here you are with this beautiful restaurant here and you do your lamb chops and we do a simple cheeseburger, in a sense, and it's just so tough all the way around and I think it's the same struggle. I think, if for sure, if everybody in greece, everybody, when you get out of, uh, out of high school, you got to do 18 months of military standard, I think here you should have to do two weeks of the restaurant business yeah, or the military instead of the military, right Instead of the military right.
Speaker 3:This is your military, because once you work in the restaurant business I think you start to realize and understand a lot more. And there's a lot of people that obviously haven't and I think the struggles with a lot of our business is the customer just not understanding and your staff in a sense, until they start to understand.
Speaker 1:For every successful restaurant. The minority are the ones that are actually passionate and the ones keeping the thing going. It's a lot of stress and a lot of pressure on them. Everyone else that works there is great, but they're not so much into it as a career, they're into it as their moment, for whatever it is they're doing.
Speaker 1:And you know and that's good too we have great team members, depending on where you're at oh yeah, oh yeah for sure, but it's a lot of stress on the passionate people, typically the owners and the management or the career chefs or career waitstaff. The people who are not leaving anytime soon are the ones that feel the pressure. But for everyone else who doesn't understand when they come in and write these bullshit reviews and all their nonsense and all the shit they want to say, it's ridiculous. What they need to do is just shut the fuck up.
Speaker 2:Seriously, just shut up, there we go.
Speaker 1:Learn a little bit about something. Get some culture to yourself.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean just kind of exactly Educate yourself a little bit about it and you'll understand a little bit more.
Speaker 1:And if you don't, then maybe you should just stay home and eat. I don't know what to tell you. We appreciate your business, but we don't appreciate all the real shit that comes with it gotcha gotcha well listen.
Speaker 3:Thanks for coming guys, if you like, our show.
Speaker 1:Please hit like subscribe. Support us, support locals, support your local restaurants, your local people, your local shops that uh mechanic shops that serve lamb broth fucking pasta Support everybody, when we do this again, bill's gonna make a spanakopita with yes, please, and then we'll bring one in that way.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I'm actually really disappointed you didn't show up with it. Yeah right, show up next time. Come on man, what the fuck. Come on man.
Speaker 1:Shit. All right, that sounds great. Awesome talk today.
