Luke’s Diner: Antonia Lofaso

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Hey, everybody. Scott Patterson. I am all in. Podcast 111 Productions. iHeartRadio Media. iHeartRadio. podcast luke's diner episode with the one and only chef antonio lafaso uh she's an award-winning chef restaurateur cookbook author and television personality from top chef chopped worst cooks in america just to name a few she also is the owner and executive chef behind los angeles restaurants Scopa Italian Roots, Black Market Liquor Bar, and Dama.

You're doing so good.

I'm not doing bad. You're doing great. You can now see her in Food Network's Kitchen Undercover and Bobby Flay's The Line. Welcome, Antonia. How are you doing? So good.

Thank you for having me.

Oh, it's our pleasure. You got a few shows on the Food Network, not just one, but a couple. Let's start with Kitchen Undercover. where you go undercover with your sous chef nester and with the employees to find out what's really happening in these kitchens. What are the most common qualities among kitchens that do not perform well?

You know, I have to say we're in the fifth episode this week of Kitchen Undercover.

The finale is next Tuesday. It was a whirlwind.

You know, obviously I've opened restaurants in Los Angeles that have not just survived a lot of the things.

That have happened, but have thrived. I've also had restaurants that have closed.

So I understand sort of the struggle that happens when you see restaurants doing really well, and then all of a sudden they don't, and where you can go in and look. And really what Nestor and I do is, The owner knows we're there. The staff knows that they're being filmed. They don't exactly know what it's for. They think it's for a documentary. So we get to really see what's happening. And honestly, the biggest issue is always communication.

It's the communication between the front of the house, the back of the house.

The expectations.

You know, a lot of times owners feeling like they're not doing enough and all of a sudden creating menus that have 75 different things on them. And it's like, I bring everyone back to the basics, which is cleanliness, organization, communication, and what does your customer want?

Serve your customer. And that's it.

I mean, I cook dinners a lot of nights here. I need all of those things. I need communication.

Just for dinner at home.

My communication is stay out of my kitchen. You cannot use the sink while I am cooking, preparing the meal.

No, I actually make a joke at my house where the kitchen is my domain.

Yeah.

Like, you know, well, I don't go to clubs anymore, but like back in the day when there was a red rope and a bouncer with like a list.

Like that's who's, that's who is in my kitchen. We're like, unless you're on the list, like you can't get through the rope.

Just for a minute, I said, no, go upstairs, use the bathroom up there. I'm busy. All right, so what's the cover story you and Nestor used to get him in the door as just another new hire? Has that ever... Anyone ever come close to figuring out what was really going on?

So it's funny.

I think, you know, I think a lot of times the chef figures it out or any kind of anyone who's really paying attention because you can't really fake, you know, he's gone in under the ruse of being a culinary student who needed to get his hours of, you.

Know, of practice.

He's gone in as like a new hire and he's like pretending like he doesn't know how to clean shrimp. And it's like this is someone who's cooked at a very, very high level. And so it's funny trying to seeing him sort of fumble through. But a lot of people, unfortunately, catch on because at the end when I announced it, everyone's always like, what?

Or I knew it, you know, like they felt something. So it's hard. It's hard to kind of keep him fully undercover. But it doesn't matter.

People still, you know, do what they're going to do, which is good because then we can really get into the nitty gritty and then fix it.

Right. Well, what's the most unhinged thing you've watched a line cook do on camera thinking no one was watching?

This is the problem is that they know we're watching. So it's not even... The problem is, it's just habits form.

And when bad habits are formed and they're not broken, nobody really thinks they're doing anything wrong.

That's actually the problem.

So then I go in and be like, hey, by the way, you can't use the trash can to hold your tongs because that is.

Unsanitary. And everyone's like, but why?

I think that one, that one for me, I like made up a song about it.

It was like a whole thing.

Cause I try to bring a little bit of like humor and sarcasm to, you know, listen in the restaurant industry all over. We were, we're shit talkers, you know, we like to poke each other, you know, you know, and so in a good way, in a, in a fair way, but I also think it kind of softens the blow when you have a little humor behind it.

Right.

And so I try to bring a little bit of like humor to the whole thing so that, listen, at the end of the day, we're not like we're not doing brain surgery.

You know what I mean? Like we're we're we're cooking.

Right. All right. So, you know, you have this tough love attitude. That's great. Going into these kitchens. Is it is it hard for some restaurant owners to hear that?

So, you know, I think I do a pretty good setup with them, which is like, listen, you are wearing your heart on your sleeve, and I commend you for it because we're about to go in there and we're going to see some things that we probably don't want to see, right? Feedback, as much as it's necessary to grow, is sometimes uncomfortable and somewhat painful. And I kind of set that stage where it's like, you asked for feedback and I am so prepared to give it to you in the most honest, direct, with resolution type of way.

But it's not always pretty.

And so there were a couple of times where I'm like, I don't know, like, could this be the time where I get thrown out and.

Then tell me like, you're out of here? It never happened.

It was very much like, I thought there were a couple of times and then, All of a sudden I had, you know, tears and thank you and you're right. And, you know, because also it's very cathartic when you know when something's wrong. The staff knows when something's wrong. Owners know when something's wrong.

You just don't feel right. And you go to work feeling dreadful.

And I think having someone come in there with like a white flag being like surrender everything right now.

Let's start over.

There's this feeling of catharsis that happens. And by the end, there's happy tears and everyone's reinvigorated.

And that's what feels really good.

Listen, all the clips that you see online and everything that you do, you're seeing the worst parts of it, but the worst parts of it are this small. Then you see this rebuild and you see these people coming together.

You see back of.

The house, in front of the house, mending, chefs and owners, servers and bartenders. You see everyone feeling this sigh of relief being like, we wanted this place to succeed.

We didn't have the tools, but now we do.

Right. Beautiful. All right. Let's talk about Bobby Flay's The Line.

Yes.

Where chefs like you compete against some of the country's award-winning restaurant staff. This is a Really cool new concept.

Dude, this was a hard show.

Yeah. Well, he handpicked you for his home team. He did.

And let me tell you, like when, when he calls and is like, do you want to do this? I was like, like all of a sudden, like I don't have anaphylaxis.

I'm not allergic to anything. Like my throat closed. I was like, because it's nerve wracking.

This was probably one of the hardest challenges, you know, besides like tournament of champions that I've had to do because it's This is such an incredible concept that Bobby came up with where we are his home team, myself, Claudette Zepeda, and Michael Jenkins. And every week we take on a visiting team. And we know nothing about the visiting team at all. The only thing that we are given.

Is the type of cuisine.

So every week we are challenged with, as the home team, with, you know, modern Asian, burgers, brunch. You know, American Italian, Costa Rican. It is the it is all over the place, you know. So one minute I'm thinking about Middle Eastern and then the next minute I'm like, I need a good brunch service. And so it really challenges us as his home team. To be very well-versed in a lot of different styles of food, a lot of different styles of service, and a lot of different styles of cuisine.

Honestly, being very good line cooks.

Like back in the day when we actually were on the line cooking, not just running kitchens.

So we're cooking like you wouldn't believe.

And then the visiting team has all the advantage in the world because this is their cuisine. This is what they do on a daily basis. This is what they serve their customers. And they come in four against four.

Mm-hmm. Wow. And there's a pivot strategy, strategy, mids, service based on the real dinner ratings, right?

Yes, because here's the thing. Like when a chef is designing a dish, we usually, it goes through like a process, right? We don't just like get ingredients, make the dish and then put it out. In this scenario, we kind of are doing that because we don't really have weeks or months to prepare for a dish. And so there's situations where it's like, okay, wait a second, that didn't work.

And we're getting feedback in real time. That's kind of the beauty of it.

And also it's a beauty and a curse because you're sitting there cooking. We have 80 dishes to put out in 90 minutes, which do that math.

It's like, a little over a minute a dish. Okay.

To put out or we don't get points for it. There's five total stars that can be given by real diners in real time. So they come in, they get a menu. There's 12 dishes on that menu. They're in no particular order. They can order the way they want to. We don't know how the dishes are going to come in. It might be visiting team. It might be our time.

It might be a mix of both.

We have no idea.

So it's like a real service. And in that moment, they pull up an app on their phone and they're like one star, two star, three star, four star, five star.

And we start to get the averages.

We have these huge monitors that stand behind our expo station.

The expo is where.

The lead chef of the day is making sure the food goes out to the right table. And behind us, we just keep turning around being like, so-and-so's dish is a 3.1.

So-and-so's dish is at a 4.2.

So you're seeing in real time if you're failing or succeeding. Yeah.

All right, let's talk amazing competition, amazing pressure. Everybody should watch it, really. It's so fun. Let's talk a little bit about Gilmore Girls. It's going to be a shock to you, but I played a diner owner named Luke Daines. Hey, did you know that? Wow, what a shock. What is one piece of advice? that you would give a local small town diner owner to keep his restaurant going for years and years to come?

You know, honestly, I think consistency, whatever that is that everyone comes in for that. Everyone talks about that. When they walk through the door, they're pissed for some reason. If they, you don't have it on the menu, you are consistent every single day. So when they know they're coming in for, when I go to a diner, it's like a, you know, a tuna melt, turkey melt, BLT, like I'm a sandwich person, that it's the same every single time that you.

Can count on it.

Like people count on being like, I'm going to this diner for X, Y, and Z. And it's the same every time. And it makes me feel the same way every time.

It makes me happy.

Consistency. Well, now here's a question that I, it's, it's, it's, I know this is out of left field. And I don't think anybody's thinking about it in the fan base, especially Gilmore Girls fan base. Do you think a Luke's Diner would be successful? Do you?

I mean, I'm a Long Island girl.

So I grew up with diners.

So I now am all over the place, all over the country. And the diner culture, right, of Long Island and those sort of like outer areas of New York, aren't really prevalent.

I love a diner.

Whenever I'm back anywhere in like the New York tri-state area, I am like, where's the good diner? You know, it's like you can get the Greek omelet, but you could also get like the burger, but you could also somehow get like meatballs, mashed potato, meatloaf, mashed potatoes. Like it's got 75 different things on it.

Everything's done well. All of a sudden you got a Dover sole wrapped with like spinach and feta. You know what I'm talking about? I love a diner. I don't think the diner should ever go anywhere. In fact, there needs to be.

More of them. All right. I'm working on it. I'm working on it.

All right.

What is a diner staple you would never want changed on a menu if you were to pick one?

A diner staple.

I mean, I'm a big like breakfast diner, you know what I mean, person.

So I'm just like the omelet, the hash brown.

Or the, you know, the potato that they do. Sometimes it's like a potato or an onion or, toast, bacon, like don't change your French toast, your pancakes, your like morning specials.

Your omelets, your eggs and stuff like that.

Okay.

When I go to the diners in Long Island, like I love a Greek omelet.

Like that's like my whole thing, you know, and listen, everyone goes like burgers, French fries, burgers, French fries, gravy, you know, French dips, like all of that, like the classic things.

But to me, like diner breakfast is like no other.

All right. Let's say lightning does strike. And look at that. There's a Luke Steiner flagship somewhere. Okay. There it is. You're driving by. You go, Bobby, Nestor, get the hell over to the side of the road. Let's go to Luke Steiner. Join the line. We'll get you to the front of the line. We'll get you. Thank you. Thank you. Right. Right.

First class right there.

I want to BLT.

That's what you want to BLT? I want to BLT. All right. Where are you going to sit?

Oh, I'm going to sit in a booth. I need to sit in a booth.

Yeah, we got a booth.

I want to sit in a booth, and I want you to have one of those, like, rotating cake displays.

Do you know what I mean? That has all the cakes and pies in it and it turns and.

Like the entire time I'm eating, I'm just like, what dessert am I getting?

Like, am I getting the chocolate cream pie?

What about a jukebox that you can flip it? Like a little box. Yeah. Old school.

They have to be at each of the booths.

Yes.

I don't want to have to get up from my booth to go to the jukebox.

No, there's no way.

All right.

Well, look, all right. We're running out of time here. Thanks for chatting with us. Antonia, Kitchen Undercover season finale airs Tuesday, September 1st, and Bobby Flay's The Line premieres Tuesday, September 8th, which is when my cookbook comes out, my diner cookbook comes out, at 9 p.m. Eastern time on Food Network and streams the following day on HBO Max. Antonia, it was a pleasure. Good luck with everything. Thank you.

Just win. Keep eating. win some more, keep eating. We'll do the same. That's the plan. Hey everybody, don't forget, follow us on Instagram at I am all in podcast and email us at Gilmore at I heart radio.com.

Luke’s Diner: Antonia Lofaso

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