 My name is Sharon Matsuoka, the Executive Director of the Hawaii Restaurant Association and the Hawaii Restaurant Association Educational Foundation. I am your host and mahalo for joining me here on the ThinkTech platform, Restaurants of Hawaii. Today I'm super excited. Whenever there's something new, it really excites me and we're going to be talking about something new and innovative, which was launched. And I want to congratulate Russell and Valerie Hata for again inspiring all of us as we talk today about inspired chefs. I'm going to kind of go through an opening first and then I want to introduce my two guests today. Chef Zone launched the Inspired Chef at Chef Zone, a specialty and gourmet destination within its club store, a cash and carry outlet of why Hata and company limited. What special specialties can consumers expect to find in this intimate gourmet market located within Chef Zone is what we're going to be talking about today. So I'd like to first introduce Chef. Chef, please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your background. Hi, Cheryl. Yeah, my name is Joran Strang. I'm the culinary consultant over here at Chef Zone and specifically the Inspired Chef. So I'm over here consulting and helping build this store that you said Russell and Val is their inspiration and dream to have something like this for many years. And finally now it's come true and we had the grand opening just a few weeks ago and it's really amazing. My background I most recently I was the owner and chef of Tango Cafe in Cacaco for the last 15 years. And last year I sold it and retired for about five months and now I'm over here helping them out. Before that I was working in hotels post to my career. I was the Prince Hotel before that. I re-opened Mauna Kea Beach in 95. I was in Tupola Bay on Maui and I worked at Raffles Hotel in Singapore. I opened the Ritz Hotel on the big island and worked at the Kalani. So it's been a long time. I came to Hawaii like 40 years ago. So I pretty much know the local market there. Well, all of the places you've mentioned I have been to Chef and I'm so sorry that we never had an opportunity to meet. So thank you. Thank you so much for being on this show. My pleasure. And my dear friend Joe, Joe, oh my goodness, you know, we see each other so briefly and we've never really had an opportunity. So I'm so excited to sit down with you for 30 minutes and find out more about the inspired chef. Joe, as you mentioned, you have many titles and your title that you are holding at the inspired chef. You can start with that title and then go on through all your different titles. Joe McGarry. Thank you, Cheryl. I do think I'll go through all of them and wait to get 20 minutes. But at the inspired chef, I'm on the extensive advisory committee for the inspired chef. I've been working with Russell on the idea for chef's own since before it was even a building when it was just a thought and an idea at nine years ago. And I've been part of the chef's own family since day one. We have a clinic there for restaurants. We run our module and clinic out of there every Wednesday morning. And it's just been a delight to see the inspired chef come out of everybody's desire and true passion for bringing gourmet foods back to Hawaii. We did, of course, have a beautiful gourmet food store many, many years ago and strawberry connection that many people remember by Becky Choi. And now it's, you know, it in a new form is back at chef's own. We're really excited about being able to talk to you about it today. And I think, Cheryl, what we're going to be able to do is help people tremendously with their holidays this year. We're going to take away a lot of stress. We're going to show you some incredible things that you can buy to make your holiday gifting and cooking so much easier. So yes, that's who I am right now. Lojo and, and I are at chef's own every Wednesday to welcome any restaurants with issues or problems. And I get to also work alongside chef and Becky and the inspired chef. Great. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us on this show. And I love to go to the, to the chef's own. It's sort of like how men love to go to hardware stores. I just love walking around the chef's own and just seeing everything and, and being inspired. So I'm going to give everyone our viewers are a little bit of background about chef's own chef's own was launched in 2014 and it offers. Thousands of unique local and national products, many of which are available nowhere else in Hawaii, which is so awesome. As I mentioned, I just love walking around and, and seeing all these things, not even knowing that they exist. So it's exciting. The inspired chef is chef's own latest gourmet and specialty destination located within the chef's own inspired chef's own restaurant, which strives to offer unique ingredients and products you will find elsewhere. They're expert team led by chef. String and Becky Choi search for the finest food, our finest artisanal foods and producers around the world on this special episode chef will join us and share more about the exclusive specialty products consumers can discover here. The inspired chef carries specialty meats. These is imported delicacies chef selected spices and seasoning gourmet packaged foods, hard to find baking ingredients and much, much more. Whether you're a professional chef or a passionate home cook chef or someone like me who's still learning, you'll discover new and innovative products to inspire your culinary creativity. The chefs that inspired chef has everything to take your cooking to new heights. So let's start off at the very beginning. Chef, could you please share the inspiration starting the inspired chef and the vision you have for the market? Well, like the word says, I mean, it's a very appropriate inspired chef. You know, it keeps coming up because that's exactly what happens when people come to the store and then to the inspired chef section. People always tell me that, oh, I got so inspired by just seeing the products and even somebody's chefs. And again, it truly is a store for everyone. You know, I see former colleagues and then chefs coming in all the time all day long shopping for their, you know, sort of their regular items. But with the inspired chef, now there's all these other items that they can add there and so to their dishes. You know, things like a lot of trouble products, we have all these vinegars, we have great oils, there's truffle, shakers. I mean, there's just so many different things. But like you mentioned before, it's not only that the special items in the specialty section, but also throughout the regular store. We also have many different items that are, you know, new and exciting. We have all these great seafood, great meats available, there's some gourmet sausages. I just thought a lot about this special white lamb, alba white lamb from Australia that is really exclusive and very, very nice. It's like the wagyu of lamb. And we have things like artichokes that are frozen artichokes that I know that the chefs love to use. So there's really, you know, for everyone, for professional chefs, for home chefs and foodies, because we have also have a great selection and these are some of our best sellers. Foodies that, you know, they love food and they love, you know, maybe not so proficient in cooking, but we have so many items that are, like Joe McGerry likes to call it fast food. And then it sits like this gourmet pasta that you can have ready in about 15 minutes. And all you do is add chicken stock, or if you want to keep it big and you can keep it big and just add water. And you go home and you can have a meal done in 15 minutes. First of all, we also have all these, you know, we have all these trouble oils, we have aged balsamic vinegar, and so on and so on. But the list of parts is endless. It is endless. I'm going to share with you my husband's favorite. Whenever I go down there, which is pretty much once a month, you'll see me walking out of the store with three bags of the boiled peanuts. Joe, it is my favorite favorite item. If I go to chef's dinner and I don't come back home with boiled peanuts, it's because it was sold out. That's how popular it is. And I love it because the guys all know in that cold room that that's what I'm hunting for. You're right, chef, I'm not a chef, right? So for me, I just love walking around and saying, I didn't even know that that was manufactured or made. And, you know, you want to try a little bit of everything. So Joe, who can shop at the Inspired Chef? Well, anybody can shop. So the nice thing about chef's zone is it's a cash and carry store that caters to both the food industry and all of their needs and also to the general public. We call them our Ohana members. Anyone can come in during a visit to chef's zone. The store has been beautifully decorated by Balhansa and her team. And it's really stands out. You can just look for the plate wall and you'll find the Inspired Chef. Anyone can shop there. I think the thing that we would love people to know is that you're on mention that I call a lot of the stuff fast food. I truly mean that this is fast food of the highest possible quality. There are so many ingredients that are handcrafted that are made by the most expert people in the world. The Cipriani range of pasta, for example, if you look for them in the beautiful Tiffany blue box, you'll find that that's exactly it. Look at that. That looks like you should be in a jewelry store, right? Inside that beautiful box is dried pasta that is dried in such a way that when you put it into water in four minutes, it has become its beautiful soft silky smooth. In this case, Tabliatelli south. And you need to do nothing more than just scoop a little of the pasta water with some Parmesan cheese, put that pasta into it, and you have a most stunning dinner that I can tell you anyone from three-year-old toddlers all the way up to any age in your family is going to love. And so there are some of the things that I'm most excited about sharing with people, because I know, especially a lot of the foodies that Yoren is talking about, they love food and they love eating, but they don't cook very much. And to be able to come into the inspired share and find such high quality food that you can literally take home and you can make a cheese board. You can make supper for your girlfriends. You can give your kids this beautiful made pasta in minutes. That is a really special thing. Of course, there's the very high end caviar and sloped salmon and some of the looses are stunning and Chef will talk more about them, I'm sure. But we also just have this beautiful range of, I think, very accessible, affordable foods that make you stop for a minute and just think, this is so worth eating. So worth eating. Even the sardines, Chef, we should mention the sardines because I think a lot of people just think sardines are, like, I don't know, not foods that's gonna make this quality of the simple kind of sardines is ugly. Aren't they? Very much so. I mean, I agree. Again, I must tell you a story right before I came to this meeting. I was on my way up and this lady and her husband were in this store and she was saying that, well, I don't like vinegars. I don't like balsamic vinegars a lot. Well, you haven't tried these. These are special. And I made her taste them and, sure enough, she bought balsamic vinegar, the cherry balsamic from Vilamadori. So again, I mean, it's all a matter of, and that's what we do almost all day long. We kind of educate people and we have so many samples and that's really the most fun about the store is that we have so many samples that people get to try them and, yeah, they get a game. We all use the word inspired and just like her. I mean, she's just, well, I have never had this one before. This is great. I'm gonna put this on ice cream. She's with strawberries, like, now we're talking. It's a whole new dimension of, like, discovery. And that's kind of a common theme with pretty much everybody that comes in there for the first time that they haven't experienced that yet and they really get inspired. Nice. I love it. And as Joe mentioned, you know, there is a membership. You have to get a little card. And I'm a card, a chef's own card carrying gal. And you just fill out a form and it's free. And when I tell people it's free because many times we have meetings there and I've mentioned to everyone, you just got to sign a form and then just get a card and you get it right there on the spot. And anytime you come in, now you have a membership card. I love it because, you know, you're going into, like you said, it's a cash and carry joke, right? So I love that. Thank you very much. And then I was gonna ask Chef, so when these items are being selected, what is the criteria, Chef, before they can be put on the shelf at the inspired chef? Well, again, first of all, we're looking, you know, again, Becky is the great assessor for all this. She's the one who has all the connections from her server connection days. So she has already done all this. And so she knows some of these, you know, most of these products and the vendors, and she has, you know, made contact again. And we did go to New York to the Pestic Food Show. So again, the number one thing is the quality of the products and, you know, the uniqueness of the product, that's everybody else carried and we're not really interested. And what the process, what we do is once we find a vendor that our products that we're interested in, the line of products, do it with samples. And that's where I come in. You know, that's my job. I know it's kind of hard, but it's somebody has to do it. So we will have taste things. I will cook the food if it needs to be cooked. So we just sample it and we try it. And as a team, we will decide that, yes, we're gonna carry these products. And we believe that this is something that the customer is going to like. And really for me, a very important thing is that how I feel about it. Because if I'm passionate about it and I believe in the product, then I can really talk about it. And if I mention to people usually, they believe me. And again, we have the samples for most of the products. So, and again, the pastas, for example, and I'm a firm believer in them. And I just like Joe said, you know, it's a great thing. I use them myself and I can cook. Absolutely. Absolutely. And we're getting ready for the holidays. And I shop for my husband at Chef So. So now I'll be shopping at the Inspired Chef. My husband is also a home chef and he's a restaurateur. So he loves, you know, making dishes that are just so great. The holiday products and the gift sets for the Inspired Chef. Joe, can you cover a little bit about that? Oh, yeah, absolutely. So one of the most fun things right now at the Inspired Chef is the collection of gift boxes that have been really thoughtfully curated. So you can come in, you can, you can, you know, pick your own items and take them out and make your own boxes. But we've done all of the work. I should say we, because I haven't done it, but the team have done an amazing job of putting together boxes that start at around $50 and go all the way up. And there's everything from if you want to just go home and have a night, you know, there's a girl's night in dinner box. There's olive oil and gift boxes, truffle gift boxes. There's make your own at grocery board boxes. There's, there's every kind of, there's the pasta ones. How could you forget? So there's so many different varieties of gift boxes that Chef and Becky and the team have really very thoughtfully put together. And of course, Valhalla. And I think what they've done is they've made such beautiful Christmas gifts, holiday gifts for people to take all the effort out of it. So if you do have someone in your group who is a foodie, who is a home chef, who loves to cook, then the work has already been done. The boxes are beautifully packaged. And inside, you know that there are super high quality ingredients. One of the things that I absolutely love, and I'm just so snobby about this, having had it many, many times in Europe, is the Italian Christmas Delicacy Panatoni. And I think if anyone in Hawaii has had Panatoni from Hawaii, from Costco or wherever, you know, you'll think of it as kind of like a sort of, you know, quite hardish, cakey kind of a thing. And I'm here to tell you that Panatoni is not that. Panatoni is a light, beautiful fruit bread that is almost like the ones that they have in chef's own are so perfectly made. There's such high quality that when you cut into them the distribution of the fruit, I guarantee you've never seen anything like it. There's every level of every piece of saltana or dried fruit. It's their salt are fake. They're delightful to look at. So it's that kind of thing, Cheryl, that I think sets it apart for the holidays. The gift boxes, quality of the ingredients a little, the joy that people have when they look at them. I took some Panatoni home the other day and sliced them to show my kids. And they were just like, wow, that's unbelievable. I mean, just perfectly, beautifully crafted food items. And these ones I would grab because they're going to go super fast. I've already ordered a dozen of them like so. But they made lovely gifts. You know, they're beautifully boxed, ready to just hand over by themselves. I mean, if you put together a Panatoni and a bottle of Prosecco as a Christmas Eve gift or a hostess gift, I can't tell you how much people love them. That is perfect. My mom loves Panatoni and we are a fruit cake family. Everybody in our family loves Panatoni. I kind of love them. It's kind of crazy. So thank you so much. I mean, you're getting us so excited, Joe, to swing by. And I'm going to ask Chef, Chef, with the gathering season coming around Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then the New Year's, right? For those novice chefs who really want to elevate their traditional holiday meals, is there something you can recommend to our listener? Absolutely. Let me just go back to what Joe was mentioning about the Panatoni. We also, one of my favorite ones of the Panatoni is the gluten-free one. And we eat some of a lot of gluten-free products. And it was kind of surprising when we were tasting. And again, that's one of the things we did. We had like eight or nine different Panatonis and we chose the three favorites. And one of them was the gluten-free one. So that's why I had to bring that in there. But as far as specialties for the holidays, one of my favorites, again, I'll go back to the Alba White Lab. We have this lamb saddle that we have, which we have a really, really nice roast. If you take out the bone inside, which there's a video of that on our Instagram showing how to do that. It's a very simple thing, really. And then you can fill it with whatever you want. Just fill it with some herbs and garlic or maybe a duxel mushroom. You tie it up and you make that into a holiday roast instead of just having ham or turkey. But of course, we also have all the other meats. We have lots of meats. And again, as far as the specialty goes, we have all the truffle products, which you can always elevate your sauces and whatever condiments you have with it. But we do have a lot of bride in the store that you can then, again, elevate to your regular, this best sort of or elevating sauces, especially. I love that. I love it. So now as we coming to the end of the poll, I just want to be sure, Joe, is there anything that I missed that you would like to discuss or share with our viewers about the inspired chef? You missed anything. I think it's hard to cram all of it into a really short period of time. So all I would say is if people have the opportunity in the next couple of weeks for sure, come down and see all of us. I'm there on Wednesday mornings. All the time. And you know, you'll be astounded by some of the smaller items, too. Chef's talking about some of the most luxury items that are so useful. Some of my favorite things are the little jars of mustard. There's this beautiful whole grain mustard for friends. There's the most incredible array of fig spreads and jams and marmalades and things that you can put a scoop off onto a cheese board that will just lighten up every bite. There's this delicious little Buschetta's dried and ready for, you know, holiday tables and things. So I think it's really a place where we want you to come and browse and taste. They taste all day long, as Chef said. And really get to enjoy some things that will make your holidays easier and lighter and brighter. And we just all can't wait to see everyone there. Thank you, Joe. Thank you so much for joining us on this show. Very overdue, overdue, sweetie. Chef, please, what did I miss? Is there anything else that you would like to say as a closing statement? Please take your time and share with the viewers. Well, again, just like Joe said, you know, come down and see us. And I mean, we'd love to talk to people about the products. And a lot of times, you know, I will also help you tell you what you could do with them. I think that's really, again, you know, it's inspiring people. It's like I go and show them some of these products and I tell them what they can use them for. And, you know, I'm a resource here at Chef's own. I mean, that's why I'm here, you know, sharing my knowledge and things that I used to make with some of these products. And another thing that we didn't show, we did not mention about all the Italian infinity desserts that we have, which are also very special and we have, you know, there's the de boron, key rays that are just excellent that I used to use at my restaurant. And, yeah, like you said, the frozen desserts, we have lots of chocolates that, you know, people are really buying this some of the year. And all kinds of chocolate, you know, I use them myself for brownies. We have the borona chocolate line. So just a lot of great products. So, yeah, just come down and then see us. And, you know, don't hesitate to come and talk to us. Again, I spend all day long telling people what they can do with these products. And then that's what I love to do. And Chef, when I go down there, I'm really, I'm really naughty. I see all the chefs walking around in Chef's zone and I'll look in their carts and I'll ask them about all the items and I'll ask them what they're going to do with it. And then they inspire me because you got to know when you go down there, you see all the chefs in their shopping and walking around and it's a great time. Hey, what are you going to do with that? And I see you're buying that and where'd you get that? Which aisle is that? And they're all looking at me like, Cheryl, I'm trying to shop here. And they've got their list in their hand. I just love, you know, I just love being at Chef's zone. Like I said, that's my hardware store. Like men go to hardware stores, that's my hardware store, right? Is there anything else, both of you, that I missed before we wrap up the show? I'd just like to remind everybody that, you know, in addition to Chef's zone and all offers and the inspired chef in all the offers, we also have our logo clinic there every single week. We've been there since day one and we're there as a resource just to help restaurants. So you can come when Russell first opened Chef's zone, he wanted it to be a resource for the food industry, not just a place to shop. And so we have way more than just incredible food and we'd love everyone to come and check it out. Thank you very much. And in closing, you know, we just really want to thank Russell and Val Hata for again inspiring us by creating the inspired chef. Many of the viewers already know this, but I am going to one more time give a shout out to Russell and Val and the Hata Foundation who has pledged $200,000 over the next five years to help the food service industry. And as Val, as Joe just said, Russell's commitment to the food service industry is just amazing. So much amazing work has come out of Russell's leadership. And again, my name is Cheryl Matsuoka, the executive director of the Hawaii Restaurant Association and the executive director for the Hawaii Restaurant Association Educational Foundation. The Hawaii Restaurant Association is the organization unifying, representing and supporting Hawaii's restaurant and food service industry. Thank you, everyone, for joining me today and we'll see you at the next episode. Thank you. Thanks, Sarah. Thank you, Cheryl.