Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel Transcript
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everyone. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe. And I'm your host, Kerry Diamond. I'm currently on the road and very excited to tell you about a new miniseries we're doing called Restaurant (R)evolution. Today and over the next few weeks, I'll be talking to folks doing things differently in the restaurant space. The restaurant industry is going through a great deal of disruption, whether it's employee shortages, tipping versus no tipping, a shift in what fine dining means, and the popularity of pop-ups and ghost kitchens. Some restaurants have even started using robots front and back of house. In the midst of all of this, there are people changing and challenging the rules.
I'm talking to one of them today, Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel, the chef of Birdie's in Austin. Tracy and her husband, Arjav Ezekiel, are the co-owners and Arjav runs the beverage program. They call their concept fine casual and they offer their employees paid family leave, health insurance, four weeks of planned and paid vacation, and more. Birdie's was just named Food and Wines Restaurant of the Year. So congratulations to Tracy and Arjav. I had the pleasure of eating at Birdie's earlier this year and it is clearly a special place. Stay tuned for my interview with Tracy.
Our Restaurant (R)evolution miniseries is supported by OpenTable. OpenTable is proud to sponsor the Cherry Bombe dinner series called Sit With Us. Sit With Us highlights amazing female chefs and restaurateurs in the Cherry Bombe network. Our Sit With Us series this summer took us to Olamaie in Austin, AOC in Los Angeles, Zou Zou's in New York, and Foreign Cinema in San Francisco. If you live in or are visiting one of those cities, I highly recommend all of those places, and you can book them on OpenTable. Part 2 of our Sit With Us series will take place this fall. We're headed to Brooklyn, Minneapolis, Seattle, and Houston. Stay tuned for details. From helping diners find the perfect spot for any occasion to helping restaurants do what they do better, OpenTable is a champion for dining around the world and works to make the experience better on both sides of the table. Visit opentable.com for more and be sure to download the OpenTable app.
Restaurant Revolution is also presented by FOH. If you are a chef, pastry chef, or restaurateur passionate about what you do, you need to know about FOH. Founded in 2002 by Simone Mayer and Mayda Perez, partners in business and in life, FOH shares your passion for excellence and creativity and wants to help bring your vision to life. The FOH team designs and manufactures smart, commercial grade, and distinctive dinnerware and tableware collections, serving pieces, buffet essentials, and other tabletop categories for the food service and hospitality industries. Headquartered in Miami, FOH has showrooms and distribution centers conveniently located around the globe with items always in stock and ready to ship. You can visit frontofthehouse.com for catalogs, showroom appointments, and custom capabilities. You can also view products by category, from porcelain to flatware, drinkware, and unbreakables. Again, that's frontofthehouse.com.
Now, let's check in with today's guest. Tracy, welcome to Radio Cherry Bombe.
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Yay. Thanks for having me.
Kerry Diamond:
Tracy, before you got here, I was reading your website. You don't call Birdie's a restaurant. Rather you call the concept fine casual. Can you explain what that means?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Sure. We serve fine dining food but in a very casual setting. Our food is sourced the same way you would in a fine dining restaurant, we pay attention to those same cooking techniques, and we are very spontaneous in that we cook very seasonally. However, instead of a white tablecloth, a huge dining room team, we have a very lean dining team. But we feel like you still receive the hospitality you would. You just might have to wait in line if we're busy.
Kerry Diamond:
The hospitality was amazing. We had the pleasure of eating there a few months ago. I feel like our experience was a little different because we got to hang out with you probably more than the average diner does, but I read that it's counter service. So are you literally ordering at the counter and waiting for your food to be dropped to the counter, or is it brought to you?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Sure. You walk into Birdie's and if there's a line, just wait in line and we have a server coming through the line with the wine menu and you can have beverage in line while you wait. We call it wine and line. We also have a fantastic non-alcoholic list so they can-
Kerry Diamond:
You do have.
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
... take in that as well.
Kerry Diamond:
I worked my way through, I think, the entire non-alcoholic list.
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Thanks. And when you make your way to the front, you just grab a flag. You have that experience you would typically have with your server at the counter. Grab your flag, sit down, and then from there it transfers to a more traditional style restaurant where we have dining room team members checking in, "Do you need anything else?" Grabbing more wine, adding on more food. And to me, the best of both worlds because by having that very lean team, we're able to tip out our entire team cooks, dishwashers included.
So in a traditional restaurant model, you have to pay for so much. But we tried to figure out a way to really strip everything down and say, "What do we really want from a restaurant?" And we signed our lease one month before COVID dropped, which allowed us a lot of time to think of what we really wanted out of a restaurant and how do we be a healthy business? Because when you're a healthy business, you have the time, the space, the clarity to say, "How do I take care of my team?" But if you're like, "Man, I'm sweating to keep the lights on right now. We are just really in it and buried," you're just thinking about your bottom line rather than your employees.
Kerry Diamond:
Which is the case for so many. You have an amazing resume. You spent time at Del Posto, Gramercy Tavern, Blue Hill, amazing, highly regarded places. Why did you gravitate toward fine dining after culinary school?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
For me, at that time in my career, I thought that to be a serious chef, you had to be in fine dining. That was 2008 when I graduated. And I just wanted to be the best I could be and I felt like I needed to work in the best restaurants I could get into and learn from the best chefs and that would teach me the most.
Kerry Diamond:
Were you always ambitious or was this something drilled into you at culinary school?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
That's a good question. I think growing up, my mom always pushed hard work. Her dad came from Calabria, Italy and moved to Brooklyn when he was 12 with a penny in his pocket kind of story. And she always talked about hard work. I played soccer a lot growing up and I was committed to that for a while. And then I got really into music and I was floundering in terms of typical high school, college kid. But once I found cooking towards the end of college, that's when it set in is like this is what I'm going to focus and laser in on. And that's when the ambition started.
Kerry Diamond:
We need to give a shout-out to Lula Cafe. You worked there in Chicago before you went to culinary school. I've only eaten there I think once or twice, but it is one of those special little places that everyone wishes they had in their neighborhood.
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Oh, they're the best. Jason and Leah are just amazing humans.
Kerry Diamond:
Where did you go to culinary school?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
I went to CIA in Hyde Park.
Kerry Diamond:
How was your experience there?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
It was great. I was an older student. I was 25 when I started and I had already gone to a four-year university. I had worked at Lula for a year and a half. And so I was, I'm air quoting over here, older compared to a lot of the 18-year-old students. So I got the "let's party" energy out of me and I was just ready to be the best I could be. I was very serious every day. I became the group leader of our class. I was just so excited to be there and to learn as much as I could.
Kerry Diamond:
You graduate, you wind up, as we mentioned, in these fine dining kitchens, and you went from one great kitchen to another, spent a lot of time in Danny Meyer's organization. What did you like about working in these kitchens?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
What I loved about working in fine dining in general was just the intensity, the push. I think overall, I would mentally take notes of every restaurant I was in and I'd be like, "I love this. I don't love this." And through the years of working through different restaurants, some places did some things amazing and other things maybe I didn't love.
And so in creating Birdie's, I looked back on all those experiences and I was like, "Okay, what are my favorite things? Let's include those and then let's just nix the things I wasn't crazy about." And when it came to working with Danny Meyer and Mike Anthony at Gramercy Tavern, at first I was a little surprised with how nice everybody was. My first week, everyone was just so chipper and happy, but we were also still pushing to make excellent food. And it was this really interesting energy of friendly positivity but still pushing for excellence. I love that combination and it's something that we try to instill at Birdie's.
Kerry Diamond:
When did you start to think about having your own place?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
I've always wanted my own place.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, really? Even back in your Lula Cafe days?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Mm-hmm. I didn't realize how long my journey would be. It was like when I was at Lula, I was 22 or 3 and thought I'd have a restaurant by the time I was 30, which ended up being very off. I opened Birdie's at 39. But for the best. I think everyone has their own path and their own journey, and I learned so much along the way and I had so many fantastic experiences along the way. And Birdie's wouldn't be what it is without all of my unique experiences.
Kerry Diamond:
You met your husband along the way and he's your partner in the restaurants.
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
How did you two meet?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
We met opening Untitled at the Whitney in Meatpacking District in 2016. A few of us from Gramercy Tavern left and went to open Untitled. I begged Mike for six months to let me come with him, which is crazy because Gramercy Tavern's this incredible institution of a restaurant and it's definitely will always be my favorite restaurant I've ever worked at. But I knew I wanted to open my own place and I wanted to do it with Mike. He's an even keel, thoughtful, smart, fantastic chef. And I was like, "Okay, I got to see how Mike Anthony does this." And we actually opened two restaurants. We opened Untitled on the ground floor and the Studio Cafe on the ninth floor, which was wild, going up an elevator with guests with racks of products. So sometimes, you'd have the food going up in the huge art elevator with people. It was just a real interesting experience.
Kerry Diamond:
They don't want to be moving the Andy Warhols at the same time that you're sending the croissants upstairs, right?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Exactly, or the soup. But Arjav and I met there and we became best friends and then turned into more. We were actually living in the East Village three blocks away from each other. And so we were the closing managers and sometimes we'd walk home together and catch up, or we'd take the L train home together. And one night we had a couple of Negronis at a bar in the East Village and I told him, "Hey, I would love to open a restaurant with you someday. I can really see this. We're really aligned with a lot of things." And without missing a beat, he said, "I think we're going to get married someday too." And sure enough, both happened.
Kerry Diamond:
Many a love story has blossomed on the L train so I bet there's a book somewhere. Someone could write about all the relationships that have started on the L train. Why did you move to Austin?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Well, I'm from Houston originally and Arjav, he was born in New Delhi, India but he grew up in Portland, Oregon. He moved there when he was 12. His parents are still there. So he was pushing for Portland and I was pushing for Austin because my family's still around Texas, and I just thought Austin is a cool, up-and-coming city. There were some great restaurants here but seemed like still more opportunity and definitely seemed less daunting than that of New York City. Which I initially thought I would try to open in New York but then I started crunching numbers and I thought about so many great restaurants that had to close for whatever crazy reason, and thought that Austin might be a little easier. So we flipped a coin on our couch in Brooklyn.
Kerry Diamond:
For real?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
For real. Flipped a coin one day. It was like, I don't know, that point in a relationship where you can't agree on something and you're like, "Look, let's just do this crazy thing and then whatever it says is what it is and we're not looking back." And it was heads and we came to Austin.
Kerry Diamond:
You flipped a coin and it was destiny.
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Truly. And I think Austin was for sure the right place. This town has been so good to us, so supportive of us. A lot of our best friends are restaurateurs and chefs and they couldn't be more supportive, so it all worked out.
Kerry Diamond:
So as you two are conceptualizing what you're going to do with this restaurant, tell us how you did that physically and mentally. Were you preparing spreadsheets, notebooks, Pinterest boards? How did the restaurant come together?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
All of the above. Started in Brooklyn. We started off, it's funny, to be this Italian wood-fired, kind of fine dining-ish. Imagine the tavern room in Gramercy Tavern but Italian in Austin. That's what we were thinking. And then once we started crunching numbers, we were like, "Ooh, that's a lot of money to raise. We don't have that money." So we ended up dialing in our concept.
COVID, it allows a lot of time to really say, "Who do we want to be?" And we knew that the restaurant model traditionally was not really working. And so we had traveled to a little bit to LA. We loved the models of Destroyer, of SQIRL, having that elevated food but still that counter service model. And we were like, "What if we did this at dinner and what if we had a really strong beverage program? Would that work? Would people wait in line for dinner?" And so we rolled the dice and thankfully it worked out.
Kerry Diamond:
How did you raise money?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
It was tough. Arjav took the lead on that. He pretty much pitched to anyone and everyone he's ever met. It's definitely really awkward. Not my strength by any means. I'm not great at talking about, "Invest in me. I'm so awesome." The most I ever accomplished in terms of resume-wise, in terms of the ladder was sous chef. So I wasn't an executive chef in New York running my own kitchen. And granted I had a great resume, but it's a little different when you're not the absolute one in charge. So Arjav really just took the reins and did a great job. We only raised 300K so we did it on a very lean and mean budget.
Kerry Diamond:
That might sounds like a lot, but to anyone who's opened a restaurant, you know that does not go very far.
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Exactly. So it was a really challenging year and a half through that process. We signed our lease one month before COVID dropped and we still had a third of our race to finish. And so it was a little stressful at night saying, "How are we going to get this 100K? How are we going to get this a 100K?" Construction's moving and we're sweating.
Kerry Diamond:
Had you hired anyone outside the two of you?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
No.
Kerry Diamond:
Wow.
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
No, it was just us and we didn't use a broker.
Kerry Diamond:
Thank goodness you didn't hire anyone.
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Oh my gosh, 100%. We thought about some different ways of raising capital. There's certain companies that do certain ownership splits and we were like, "We just want to keep it simple." That was just our whole philosophy was keep everything lean, keep everything smart, keep everything simple. And it did work out.
Kerry Diamond:
Did you have to give away equity?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Yeah, we have 40% equity on the B side that our investors have, and we own 60% together.
Kerry Diamond:
The name Birdie's, how did that come about?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
The name Birdie's came about because initially before I met Arjav and I was living in New York, I fantasized about having my own place called Lady Bird. So I thought it was a little piece of Texas in New York, Lady Bird Johnson. And once we decided on Austin, I thought Lady Bird just wasn't going to work because there are so many Lady Bird references within Austin, Texas. We have Lady Bird Lake and just so many other things.
Kerry Diamond:
The Greta Gerwig movie.
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Mm-hmm. So we decided on we were walking through Prospect Park one day, just like, "Shoot, we need a name." And then I was like, "Well, what about Birdie's? It just feels easy to remember. It's lovely. It's sweet. It just sounds good, sounds right." And he was like, "Yeah, that's it." And so there we were in Prospect Park and we named Birdie's.
Kerry Diamond:
Let's talk about some of the things you're doing that go against what the industry norms are. I made a list. I've got paid family leave, health insurance, four weeks of planned and paid vacation every year. Why are you doing these things and how have you been able to implement them?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Well, we knew that really taking care of our team was number one in what we did. We knew that if our team was happy, if they were excited to come to work every day, everything else would fall into place. So whenever we set that in our heads, it was really easy to set up our non-negotiables. So we opened the doors with a fantastic insurance package. We opened the doors saying, "We're going to close Sunday, Monday." We didn't want to work those days. I don't think our team wants to work those days. They can always plan, "I'm going to go to San Antonio to see my family or do whatever." And that was just a really steady thing in their lives I think they would value. It's something Arjav and I value knowing we don't have to worry about the restaurant on Sunday and Monday. Everything we did was we really just want a healthy work-life balance for our team. So everything really came from that place.
Kerry Diamond:
It must have crossed your mind that very few independent restaurants are able to offer any of those things to their teams, and most just don't. Why did you believe that you could do it differently?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Well, we thought by having this leaner business model, we could. Typically, in a traditional restaurant model, you have to pay so many people, the hosts and the back waiters, the front waiters, the captains. And we just have seven people in our dining room team plus the service director and Arjav. And in the kitchen, we have six cooks, two dishwashers, Heejae, our sous chef. It's just us. So by having this much more stripped down restaurant model, we're able to pay everyone a high hourly wage and then we offer a flat tip pool. That flat tip pool means dishwashers, unlike anywhere I'd ever worked, can make a really healthy wage. And all of these things were just really important to us because just the way New York laws are created, I can't speak for now but for when I was there, is you can't tip out cooks unless they're with the guests for 50% of the time or more.
Kerry Diamond:
Right. And if folks don't know what that means, you can't pool tips. So the back of house isn't getting the tips. The front of house is getting them.
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Right. So by us having this unique laborer model, we're able to take care of our team in a really meaningful way.
Kerry Diamond:
So in Austin, it's legal to pool tips.
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Mm-hmm.
Kerry Diamond:
You can do that. That's great.
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Austin, in terms of owning a business, it is an awesome place to open a business. You have a lot of flexibility to do what you want to do.
Kerry Diamond:
That's good to hear. You also had to become an expert on all these things though. You went to culinary school. You didn't go to business school. You worked as a sous chef, not on the administrative side. Navigating things like family leave, health insurance, tax law, tip law, all of those things is a full job in and of itself. How did you two navigate that?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
I think Arjav does a lot in terms of operations, but we do discuss everything together. And then in terms of legal details, we always bring in an attorney for one-off questions here and there to make sure-
Kerry Diamond:
Thousand dollar questions, thank you very much.
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Yeah, I make that call quick. But we work together and everything we do is how do we create the place that we want to work at, and then we just figure out the logistics from there.
Kerry Diamond:
Why do you think it's so rare to offer these things?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
I think because of the way the traditional restaurant model is. There's just very... A lot of people don't know who don't work in restaurants. You're talking single-digit profit margins for that model. And whenever you're functioning that way, you don't have the bandwidth. You don't have the means to offer that. And one more thing that we do is we have a 3 1/2% health and wellness fee for every check. So that 3 1/2%, what that does is it goes towards an employee fund. So we close for that month a year. We close two weeks in August. We close two weeks in December to January. And that's a paid vacation. Essentially all of that money that's being taken out of everyone's check, that 3 1/2%, goes towards a fund just to our employees. So that also helps close that gap.
Kerry Diamond:
Did you consider a no tipping model and putting 20% on the bill?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
We thought about that and we just weren't sure that would fly in Texas. And we also say, "If you don't want the 3 1/2% percent on your check, we'll take that off." And I think two people in the past two years have asked for it to be removed. Most people don't bat an eye. If you spend 100 bucks, that's $3.50. But it does add up over the course of a year and it allows our team to... A lot of them go to Europe or to Mexico or wherever they want to travel and not have to stress about paying the rent.
Kerry Diamond:
That was my next question about your customers. Have they embraced all of this from the start?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
I would say 96% of them are into it. The 4% that don't get it, that want to make a reservation, that want things the way they've always been done, they come in, they don't get it. And we're like, "Hey, that's cool. You can go somewhere else. There's plenty of other restaurants doing a different kind of business model." But most of the people who come in get it, especially what our frequently asked questions on our website. We now laminated it and put it in line so people can read about why they wait in line. Because if you don't work in a restaurant, you don't know. It's not their fault. And so we just really want to, I don't want to say educate, but we really want to just pull back the curtain and say, "This is why we're doing what we're doing. We're trying to take care of our team. We want this to be a profession people can work in for the rest of their lives, not just a temporary gig between things."
Kerry Diamond:
Were there any bumps in the road initially in implementing these practices and policies?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Yeah, for sure. It took us about four days to figure out we needed to serve a beverage in line. People were hot. We opened two Julys ago. It was like, "Hey, they're upset." So giving them an ice-cold beverage and line definitely helped. I loved how at Franklin Barbecue, they've got this cooler of beer you can have while you wait. And it just is an experience. But yeah, it just makes it fun and takes the edge off waiting in the hot sun.
Kerry Diamond:
What is your advice for restaurateurs and chefs listening who would like to do things differently as well?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
I think learning about the laws of where you live is really important to just know where you can get creative, where you can create the restaurant you want. We couldn't create this concept in California, for example, because of the laws and the way they work. Because Texas has such a looseness around restaurant laws, we're able to really create what we want. So the exact Birdie's model would not work in other states I know necessarily, but it's just about learning about that community, what you can do, and then saying, "Okay, just because it's been done a certain way in the past doesn't mean we have to do it that way." And really just creating the restaurant you want.
Kerry Diamond:
You've obviously had a lot of mentors. You mentioned Michael Anthony. You worked for Danny Meyer's organization for so long. I know you're friends with Brooks Headley from Superiority Burger, good friend of both of ours. In addition to them, who are your kitchen mentors but then who are your mentors in terms of the restaurant rule-breaking?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
That's a great question. I think that working at Del Posto, I was there for three years, Mark Ladner on pasta and the way you finish the pasta in a pan, all of those principles, how do you build a sauce in the pan, pasta is such a simple thing and the moment it comes together is just magic. And I think he really taught me that in a very... We were doing 400 covers a night sometimes. It was like a fresh, dry, and risotto station on the entire pasta line. So huge kitchen. And Birdie's is the exact opposite. We're a tiny kitchen but nonetheless, we move fast and we use those same principles on how to make a pasta at Birdie's.
Kerry Diamond:
So all those folks I met behind the counter, is that the kitchen?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
Or you have a second space?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
That's it. So during the day, we have our AM cook. Phil gets in at 8:00 AM. He takes in deliveries, he does prep work, sauces, kind of the bases for everything.
Kerry Diamond:
Right in that space?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Right in that space. And then at around 1:00, Heejae, our sous chef, and our team of three cooks right now and come in and they prep for the day. And that's really it. I think we're going to add on one more cook going into busy season, but it's a very small team. We try to be really organized but it can be tricky whenever the menu's always changing.
Kerry Diamond:
And you do change the menu daily?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Mm-hmm, yeah. Typically, something changes every single day. We've got our beef tartar. That's the only savory dish that hasn't changed. And then our cookie and soft serve also hasn't changed. But everything else just evolves with the season.
Kerry Diamond:
Back to the restaurant rule-breakers, who are your mentors on that side, if you have any?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
I think Brooks from Superiority Burger, and he was the pastry chef at Del Posto when I was there is definitely one. Just in terms of way he approaches everything. He doesn't really talk about it, he just does it. And I spent a month at Superiority Burger when I was between things and I lived-
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, you did?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
I lived two blocks away. He is like, "Ah, come hang out."
Kerry Diamond:
So you know how to do prep in a tiny space?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Yes, yes. He's just... Just being around that someone who's truly brilliant, I think you try to extract what you can and learn those pieces and see it from their eyes. And I think that Arjav and I are both naturally a little rebellious in our spirit and we knew we wanted to do something different than what we've done before.
Kerry Diamond:
Superiority Burger, for those of you who live in or near New York City or will be visiting soon, has a shiny brand new location. Let's talk a little bit more about your food, because obviously to go along with all your humane front-of-house practices, you have really great relationships with your farmers and your purveyors.
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Yes. Our relationships are everything. Being a seasonal restaurant in Austin's very different than one of New York. So if you've worked in New York, you go to the Green Market four times a week. You go there. There's just this amazing abundance of every beautiful vegetable. It changes every week and you just go and you grab what you need and off to the races. And here, it's a little different because we do have a couple markets, but they're much smaller. It's really about developing those relationships with those farmers. And it's a lot of phone calls, emails, text threads with our sous chef, and we're always just trying to figure out what's coming up, what can we get that day, how much do we need? And so we do 86 things or run out of things a lot during service sometimes. And there are nights we've changed the pasta, no joke, four times because we're going one sauce into the next, into the next, into the next, which can be a little chaotic.
But I just love that energy of a restaurant. I love that change. I love that moment of like, "Hey, we've never made this before but let's go. Let's just taste it and be confident with the techniques we know and make it delicious." And for me, it's not about my style is not testing a recipe for months and months and months. It's just about going with the flow and feeling it. And I think it makes our cooks better too, to learn how to cook and taste like that rather than just following a recipe all the time.
Kerry Diamond:
You've definitely become known for your pasta. I've read that. And the few people have said, "Oh, the pasta place.” I don't know that I would necessarily call you the pasta place.
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Yeah, we only have one on the menu right now. We used to have two and it just became too chaotic and waits for too long between courses. And so right now we have one, and sometimes we'll have a pop-up second one like Tuesday or Wednesdays.
Kerry Diamond:
You do warn people on the FAQs about the wait.
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Mm-hmm, yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Not just the wait in the line, the wait in between courses.
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Yes. It's such a small kitchen. We have two line cooks and then one, we call it a support position, that just helps out whoever needs a boost. It's just tiny. And sometimes we'll have tables of eight sit down and we ask a little bit more of our guests because we are so small and the passes three feet wide by two feet. And it's incredible what we can put out of this little kitchen because we have a huge backyard in the back. The backyard feels awesome. It's 65 seats. The inside's 25. Feels to me a little like New York. And so I think it's challenging to put up that much food in that little space, but by warning our guests saying, "Hey, it might be a wait," I think they can roll with it a little bit.
Kerry Diamond:
Do you and the team work from recipes? I know some places that have a daily changing menu don't necessarily follow recipes.
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
That's a great question. We've evolved a little bit. Whenever we first opened, and I was there all day every day, we didn't have many recipes. If we did, they were very loosey goosey and we just tasted together and we went with it. And over time, we have some recipes for certain vinegarette. The beef tartar has a little bit of a recipe. And other things, we still roll with. It's important to me that we have some consistency but also we're not handcuffed to that because as the season evolves, the vegetable changes. And you have to just constantly be tasting and being aware of what's happening within that vegetable. And I feel like I never want a cook to be disconnected because they're just following their recipe and they're not tasting. They're not in touch with it.
So I would say we have some recipes and it has helped us when I can't be there all the time because we have an eight-month-old right now. And if I come in before service had tastings and things aren't exactly right, that's ultimately on me for not setting up systems and teaching enough to set them up for success. So for us right now, it's a happy medium of some recipes, some not.
Kerry Diamond:
That never really dawned on me, but we had the team from King on our cover earlier this year. The women who have King in Jupiter-
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
I love that restaurant.
Kerry Diamond:
... in New York City. And I had no idea they didn't cook from recipes at King. It really blew my mind.
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Yeah, it's definitely a much more challenging way of cooking. And it's definitely not common in the states. I feel like it's more common in Europe, and we take a lot of inspiration from Europe as well.
Kerry Diamond:
And it limits who you can hire because a lot of people feel really connected to recipes.
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
100%.
Kerry Diamond:
And afraid to deviate.
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
And I think we might've experienced a similar thing they experienced coming from London to New York. And then even for me from New York to Austin, it was just like, "What do you mean there's not a recipe? What do you mean taste it?" It was like, "Yeah, just taste it." And I think it flexes a muscle that cooks haven't ever worked with, but I think it's a fantastic learning moment.
Kerry Diamond:
The King and Jupiter team, two of them just had babies, which we're super excited for them.
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Yay, yes.
Kerry Diamond:
Do you mind talking a little bit about how you are dealing with being a mom and a chef and a restaurant owner?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Sure. So I think just to backtrack a little bit before I even became pregnant, we had to have fertility support. I did six IUIs and two IVF retrievals, and it was partly in COVID and partly as we were getting the rush on opening. So we would have no joke, a line down the block, and then we'd have to run to the walk-in and Arjav would shoot my medication in me and we'd just keep going. And it was a lot. And I think the hormones they have to inject in you so you can produce eggs, it was a lot to manage and I would always just have to take a lot of deep breaths so I stayed calm. We have sometimes a hot kitchen. And with those hormones, it could be a little challenging. I will say one of the harder times of my life.
However, we were fortunate that we did get pregnant. I got pregnant at 40 and we had Remy in November, and that's been a challenge too. I got really sick also during my pregnancy and I was planning on whenever I have the baby, we'll make sure we've got our sous chef properly trained and we'll be very organized. However, I got so ill I couldn't be there during prep just abruptly. I couldn't get out of bed. I couldn't hold down water. I couldn't eat anything really. And then when I would walk into work to expedite service because we didn't have a sous chef at that time, I would have to wear a 95 mask because the smells were so overbearing and I would just run into the bathroom to throw up. But that was just a real struggle. That was definitely, I think, being sick while I was pregnant, it was the hardest time of my life.
And then actually whenever we had Remy, that was actually easier because we knew it was coming. But yeah, you rely on your team. It was just incredible to see our team step up and figure it out. And we'd have phone calls and our job would be running to farms to grab something we were short at, and everybody just stepped up. So I'm just so thankful for them. Now, we're constantly trying to figure out a balance. We don't have a nanny right now, so Arjav and I just split duties in watching Remy. Sometimes he'll be pouring wine in service with Remy in the baby carrier. And we're just a neighborhood restaurant that's family run. But like I said, it all comes back to taking care of our team, because we're able to step away when we need to and know that we're supported.
Kerry Diamond:
And did you name him Remy because of “Ratatouille.”
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Maybe kind of. We just love that name. And then there was a moment we said, "Oh, there was Remy in “Ratatouille”." And it was a cute coincidence. So maybe subconsciously.
Kerry Diamond:
Plans for expansion. I'm sure that's the last thing on your mind, but I don't know. You're ambitious. Maybe you want more places.
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Yeah. We're thinking about a few places in the future. We always want to do more but at the same time, we never want to expand too quickly because we don't want to do a project that we don't feel 120% about. So we're definitely casually looking at spaces. We have a few concepts in mind but we're very particular about everything around a restaurant. So I don't think Birdie's, for example, could have gone in many other spaces. There's just something special about our space that is quintessentially Birdie's and we couldn't have put that in 99.9% of restaurant spaces in Austin. So for us, we just want to make sure we find the right space and then put in the right concept, and it needs to be the right time with our family and making sure our team's supported at Birdie's. So we are looking, but we're very thoughtful about how we do it.
Kerry Diamond:
Just speaking as someone who likes seeing change in the restaurant industry, it would be wonderful to see someone like you two have additional places. So you can just put into practice what you're doing just even more.
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Yeah, thanks. We feel like the restaurant model of Birdie's is really the future of restaurants for us. There's a chance if we do one fine dining-ish restaurant, maybe it's like a hybrid different model. But for our other casual restaurants if we do wind up opening more, it'll definitely be this counter service model. Allows us to be profitable in a way that we couldn't otherwise be. And we paid back our investors in nine months which we're really proud of, and we're able to have a healthy work-life balance and our team can too. So for us, there's just no other way We're excited to expand. We are thinking about it.
Kerry Diamond:
How do the people like you come together in this industry and spread your ideas even further? I know doing media is helpful, but it would be wonderful to see all of you band together who are making real concrete change.
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Thanks. Yeah, we definitely have a large network between Arjav and I. He spent many years in Washington DC so he has a network of great restaurateurs there, and myself in New York. And we have friends in Los Angeles and Portland, and we all definitely have a lot of offline conversations and they pick our brain about our model and how it works and the nitty-gritty behind the numbers. And we're pretty transparent because if we feel like we've caught onto something and we were inspired by, like I said, the SQIRL, Destroyer model, how we can take that and continue to mold it and readjust it in a way that's a better future for restaurants.
Kerry Diamond:
Do you think you'll ever write a book one day, either a cookbook or a business book?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
I would love to write a cookbook. We're dreaming about that right now. On the recipe note, I keep checking with Heejae, our sous chef. I'm like, "Hey, Heejae, you wrote that down, right? Do we have that recipe written down?" And so I lean on her to make sure we're running these recipes down. So if we are lucky enough to write a cookbook, we don't have to start from ground zero.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay, let's do a speed run. Speaking of books, one of your favorite books on food or cookbooks?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Right now, I love “My Calabria.” It's literally about Calabrian cooking. It's like grandma cooking of Calabria. My grandfather's from there so there's that connection. I love looking at that book for unique recipes.
Kerry Diamond:
Best food movie?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
“Ratatouille.”
Kerry Diamond:
Of course. Favorite kitchen tool?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Microplane.
Kerry Diamond:
One thing that's always in your fridge at home?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Hellmann's mayonnaise.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, you're Hellmann's girl. I love it. Favorite childhood food?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Spaghetti and meatballs.
Kerry Diamond:
Snack food of choice?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Honestly, I snack on whatever's lying around. We typically have fruit lying around at Birdie's and I'm always just snacking on whatever's lying around.
Kerry Diamond:
Footwear of choice in the kitchen?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Danskos.
Kerry Diamond:
Any motto or mantra that gets you through the day?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
We have a mantra framed at Bar One, and that's, "Life is either a great adventure or nothing at all," from Helen Keller.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay, last question. If you had to be stuck on a desert island with one food celebrity, who would it be and why?
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Maybe Jamie Oliver. He just seems like he's really resourceful and we could make really delicious things together. He seems super fun and nice. I've never met him. Yeah, Jamie Oliver. He seems pretty awesome. He's working with what seems like a lot of fantastic initiatives to create change over there and over here. And yeah, I have a lot of respect for him.
Kerry Diamond:
Tracy, I have so much admiration for you and what you have created, and I'm just so excited to continue to watch your career. I can't thank you enough for stopping by.
Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel:
Thanks for having me, Kerry.
Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. Thank you to FOH and OpenTable for supporting Restaurant (R)evolution. Our theme song is by the band Tralala. Our producer is Catherine Baker. Our associate producer is Jenna Sadhu, and our editorial assistant is Londyn Crenshaw. Check back next Wednesday for another episode of Restaurant (R)evolution. Is there someone you think is a restaurant revolutionary? Leave a rating and a review and drop in their name. Thanks for listening everybody. You are the Bombe.