When Steve Lawson, a degenerate misfit, falls in love with cooking despite his initial dreams of becoming a business marketer, he finds himself addicted to the camaraderie, self-accomplishment, and the pressure of working in the grueling, chaotic environment of a restaurant kitchen.

After starting as a dishwasher in a cool new spot, he quickly moved up through the line and fell in love with the job. After a busy shift, he realized this was what he wanted to pursue for the rest of his life. During the holidays, he found that the clientele could be grumpy, but he and his fellow cooks and chef found time to enjoy each other's company and get through the shift together. Despite the pressure and long hours, Steve found that the camaraderie and constant challenge of improving his craft kept him coming back for more.

In this episode, you will learn the following:

1. Exploring the unique camaraderie between cooks, chefs, and those in the restaurant industry; 2. Understanding the journey of a chef, from dishwasher to sauté chef, and the passion that inspired the transition; and 3. Examining the difficulties of working during the holiday season, from the perspective of a chef in an open kitchen.

Other episodes you'll enjoy:

The Lady Line Cook

Austin Maynard

Ariel Guivi

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[00:02:38 ]

All right, Steve. Tell everybody. Who are you? Hi, I'm Steve Lawson. I've been cooking for about eight years.

[00:02:46 ]

I really enjoy it. And besides cooking, I just hang out with friends and just be me. Just be you. All right, so you've been cooking for eight years. What got you into cooking?

[00:03:00 ]

I worked in fast food first, and that was just a bullshit high school job. And then there's a cool new spot opening up in Denton, one of my buddies is going to be a buster up there. And he said they were hiring and paying pretty well, so I was like, I'm going to try that. I'll be a dishwasher. And cooking was never supposed to be my ideal job, but I ended up falling in love with it.

[00:03:25 ]

What was your ideal job then? Just working in an office, I guess. We're business, marketing. Marketing, okay. Yeah.

[00:03:36 ]

You went to school, right? You got a degree? Yeah, I did go to school. Okay. No degree.

[00:03:40 ]

Oh, no degree. What were you studying before that then? Business and marketing. Oh, business and marketing. So you just wanted to get into business and Marketing?

[00:03:47 ]

Yeah. Okay. I want to own my own business. I don't know what, but something. All right, and then you just kind of fell into cooking then, huh?

[00:03:56 ]

Yeah, I started dishwashing. Got a lot of prep thrown at me. Like, not a lot of prep, but a lot of bullshit prep, like cutting fries and making little sauces. Eventually moved up through the line up to sushi, and I really enjoyed it all. Nice.

[00:04:16 ]

How did you know us for you then? I mean, you were going to go to school for marketing. You're in business, you thought there was something there, otherwise you wouldn't have. And then you just kind of fell into cooking. Just literally fell into it.

[00:04:31 ]

How did you know? I guess after the first couple of years when I got on the line, I noticed a lot of people were like me, just like kind of degenerate. I've always kind of been a degenerate a little bit. And I was like, all these people are really cool. I can go out and have some drinks.

[00:04:50 ]

I was always with my friends, so that's why I enjoyed it. And then that made me love the job. Okay, so is that what you're going to it for every day then? It's like the camaraderie of it all. The camaraderie back then, but now I take it very seriously.

[00:05:08 ]

Well, we all kind of take it seriously. The camaraderie kind of gives you an almost an excuse and why you enjoy it, but even then there's that. It keeps me coming back. Yeah. All right.

[00:05:26 ]

Is there a specific moment that you can think of that you are just like, fuck, yeah, this is it. This is fuck the business, fuck the opening, all the other stuff I wanted to do. I'm cooking. I'm going to be a chef.

[00:05:41 ]

I guess my first busy night on flat Top or Saute. Slinging out a busy shift flawlessly is one of the best feelings in the world. And then I was like, this is for me. I think this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. Nice.

[00:05:59 ]

Just getting your ass kicked one day and you're just like, this is it. I want more of it. Yeah, this is fun. I mean, just the self accomplishment. All right, and the fact that you can always get better at it.

[00:06:13 ]

Yes, absolutely. I love that. And it's so earlier, we kind of talked offline. I asked kind of what inspired you, and you said yourself to get better. You're always after that chase to get better.

[00:06:32 ]

How are you working on that right now? I just go into work every day and try and get better at what I'm doing. I'm working saute right now at the place I'm at, and I just try to make every dish better every time I go in. When you say better every time, translate that you're following a specific recipe, right? Oh, for sure, yes.

[00:06:55 ]

But just making sure it's consistently plated every time, garnished the right way and looking nice, and also efficiency and speed at it. Okay. Do you do anything at home or when you're not at work to kind of improve yourself with that? I've been trying to cook more at home, and I feel like cooking at home helps you be better at work. It's sometimes hard, though, just like for everyone else.

[00:07:22 ]

Sometimes you just don't want to cook. No, no. Yeah, I get it. Even here for me with my wife and all her friends are like, oh, you must cook all the time. I mean, I do now, but back up until a few years ago, no, I never cooked at home, and it was just like, Cobblers son has no shoes, so I get it.

[00:07:46 ]

When I was cooking full time too, I think I'd come home, my dinner would be like, a beer and an easy mac for sure. Or just, like, fast food or ramen or just like, sometimes no food at all. Yeah, because I would remember you cook all day, and you've got the adrenaline, everything's going. You finally leave, and then it would take me about half an hour or so, 40 minutes, and then all of a sudden, I'd be like, fuck, I'm hungry. I realized I hadn't actually eaten anything, and then that's when I'd pick up fast food and, yeah, the healthiest diet ever, for sure.

[00:08:25 ]

So what else inspires you? There's got to be something out there that you're just like, man, this is awesome. I love this. I mean, you're chasing a dream now. In a period of eight years, you've gone from dishwasher to a souf.

[00:08:39 ]

I mean, you're as a soup at a pretty high end hotel in Dallas. So, I mean, you're doing a lot of things right. What's pushing you more to I like it. It comes back to me being better and just, like, going to the next level of cooking. I've done the approachable fine dining.

[00:09:00 ]

Now I'm pushing for the fine dining. That way, I'm pretty well rounded in all aspects to be an actual soup chef. Approachable fine dining. That's the first time I've heard that term. Yeah, it's what my chef said it, and honestly, it made, like, perpetuity.

[00:09:18 ]

It's right there on the bubble of being fine dining, but it's not like I don't know, it's normal people. It's not pretentious. It's not pretentious. Yes, I got you. So, I mean, it's great food, presented well without the pretentiousness, but probably the fine dining price tag.

[00:09:35 ]

Exactly. It's still very expensive. Yeah. Okay, so let's talk shifts. This is probably at the hotel as well, the shift that no one speaks of.

[00:09:46 ]

Now there's probably plenty of brunt shifts that you can recall for sure, but what are some other nightmare shifts where you're just like, I just don't even want to revisit those anymore. Honestly, I worked every holiday last year, like Thanksgiving, Christmas, Christmas Eve, New Year's, Valentine's Day, and Thanksgivi