 Up next we have someone who, if you've been at NOMA for the past, or any time, over the past five years, this man would have affected your life. He affected mine with his dedication, leadership, perfectionism, organization, he's a dreamer. I remember one really late night conversation after Saturday Night Service must have been 2 a.m., where I talked about what this man might do next, and he said he wanted to feed a lot of people. I thought maybe he just didn't want to do 45 covers of service, maybe open something a little bit larger, fast casual, affect change. I didn't really understand then what he would end up doing now. Dan Giusti was a head chef in America before he hopped upon and ended up at NOMA in, I believe, 2011 or 2012. He then became head chef and led the kitchen for about four years. He left to go back to the United States to feed a lot of people, a lot of children. He opened Brigade, which is a company designed to feed school lunches to children, hitting all the marks that already exist in place by food boards for nutritional content, cost, but decided to do it a little differently. He cooks food from scratch, gives children fresh food options, instead of the stuff that I grew up eating in my high school lunches. Today he's in conversation with Christopher Ying, so please give a warm welcome to Mr. Dan Giusti. Thank you. Dan Giusti. Yeah, that's me. That's it. You had the job, man. Fuck it. You're the head chef of NOMA. Yeah. Why the fuck would you ever leave that? Yes. I asked him, you know, working at NOMA was clearly the best opportunity of my life, and the only reason that I'm here speaking today, to be honest with you, everything that's happened in the past two years is because I worked at NOMA. I think anybody would have wanted to hear anything from me, but, you know, I didn't get into cooking to cook like they cook at NOMA. Not to say there's anything wrong with it. That's not why I got into cooking. What'd you get into cooking? I got into cooking because I come from a big Italian family. I liked food. I liked being taken care of. I liked the idea of taking care of people through food. And, you know, when I got into cooking, I didn't know about any fine dining chefs or big restaurants. And when I went to culinary school, basically from that point on, it was this trajectory to do whatever I could to kind of be successful. And in this world, to be successful is being the head chef at NOMA, so that's what happened. So you're not successful now? That's a good question. I think a lot of people, as much as there's a lot of recognition for what I'm doing at the moment, luckily, you know, I'm here getting recognized for this, I think a lot of people out there wouldn't consider what I'm doing successful. I mean, at the end of the day, there's a lot of people and a lot of people here have been like, man, great job. It's amazing what you do. It's just fantastic. But those same people would never do what we do. They just wouldn't. I don't know why, per se. I think there are moments where we've been recognized for what we do. And again, most likely because I came from this place. But if I didn't come from this place, probably nobody would give a shit about what we do. Therefore, if you're a young chef who works really hard, why would you want to be a part of that? Yeah, so I mean, I'm kidding when I'm like, why would you ever leave NOMA? But you've been getting that. You've been getting a little like, oh, it's so nice that you're taking this time to do the first NOMA game. It's cool that you're taking this break from your real career. Yeah, I feel bad. Most people say it in the nicest way they do. They say, man, thank you. Thank you for your work. You know, like I'm a charity case or something like that. Like I'm going to return. In fact, I didn't, and I hate to say it. I'm not going to mention the publication. But I did an interview with Food & Wine a month ago. And after that interview, the woman who was interviewing me asked, so would you have a restaurant? Is that what you do? You have a restaurant and this is just, I mean, not to mention I wasn't necessarily anticipating that article after that question. But at the same time, it was pretty funny because most people just, they think, they think it's a charity. They think what we do is like, I've taken a step down. I've sold out. I used to work a lot of hours with super high expectations in a tough environment. And now I have weekends off, Christmas off. And you know, I grew up in a world that was selling out. And I always thought that my whole life. If you worked in an institution, if you worked in a hotel, it was a cush job. You know, so it's interesting how that works. I think that a little, I mean, convinced me otherwise. Isn't your, isn't your job easier now? Isn't it easier for you? Didn't you sell out a little bit? Yeah, I mean, I think most people understand the challenges of maybe school lunch if you don't. So basically the way it works is if you're in the United States and you cook lunch for school kids, you have to cook a meal that fits very specific nutritional guidelines. It's an 85 page document. If you are to serve that meal the way it is, you get $3.31 back from the federal government. That $3.31 covers everything involving and producing that meal. So from food to labor to maintenance, if you have a vehicle that transports food, it's paying for that vehicle. It's paying for gas for that vehicle. So at the end of the day, we have about $1.25 for food. 25 of that sense goes towards milk because in our country, we have to offer milk as part of our lunch. It's a political thing. So you have a dollar. So you can imagine just from a food perspective, preparing a meal that kids enjoy, that fits nutritional guidelines, that costs a dollar is extremely difficult. But beyond that, I'm a firm believer that even if within that context, we could produce the best food that was ever made. As most of you know, who have kids or around kids, that doesn't mean they're going to like it. So beyond that, how does this work? And quite frankly, the reason the food system is the way it is, because most people don't give a shit about food. So it's true. I mean, it's funny because you're here and you're surrounded, but in our country, nobody cares about food. And when you, for example, take an aggressive standpoint in a school and say, you know what, we're going to change the menu to make this food slightly better, some parents are very happy. Of course, there are parents who know maybe about Noma and what we did and there's a chef, so the food should be better. So we shouldn't be serving certain things. But then there are other parents who question why you've taken these things off the menu, because this is what my kid eats and this is what they enjoy to eat. So it's a very difficult setting that the food is almost secondary to everything else. I think in our country, the food system is so broken. The idea of trying to change it through food is kind of naive. I think before you change it through food, you've got to get people to understand why it's important. I think you just described what you do like it's easy. I think that the people in this room need to think about that dollar, your feeding kids with a dollar and you've got to feed them five different things. Yeah, I mean, and that's the problem. So if you can see, think of what I just put into context and say that there was not a chef or anyone with any kind of food service background that now needs to execute these meals in a school. That's basically the state of school food in the United States right now that I could be a 28-year-old man or woman who happened to go to school and I'm a registered dietitian and now I oversee 25 schools and their food service program and I'm the one who needs to create a menu and train people how to make that menu. Well clearly if they're not chefs, they're not going to be the ones that are going to be teaching people how to cook this food. So basically what happens is great nutritional guidelines, you know, those of you from the United States where there are quite a few of you here and I was the same way I was in Copenhagen during this time, but when Michelle Obama was in the White House it was like this big thing, like nutritional guidelines and all these things, but quite frankly what happened is there's all these people who were cooking food, there was people from the communities that had been cooking food in these schools for 20 years and then all of a sudden you put an 85-page document nutritional guidelines that's analyzing saturated fat and how many calories and this and that, then they couldn't do it anymore. So now you have to produce this food in a factory somewhere and it gets just sent to these schools and that's what's happening at the moment. Schools just have food that's in a bag because that's the only way they can accommodate for this. So what we're trying to do is figure out how do you do this and it's challenging, super challenging. I've spent some time in Copenhagen, I don't think anything costs a dollar here. There's nothing that costs one dollar. Tell me about who you're feeding. Tell me about these diners of yours now. Yeah, so the communities that we're in at the moment, so we started in New London, Connecticut, which is a small town equidistant between Boston and New York. So it's on the east coast, it's on the water. Connecticut is traditionally a very affluent state in the United States, but it's also statistically the state with the most disparity between wealth and poverty. The kids in New London, one in four under the poverty line out of 3600 students, 70 of them are actually legally homeless, if you can imagine, that these kids actually show up to school every day and this is a crazy point because honestly when I decided to do what I'm doing, as much as I was doing it for the right reasons, I don't think I quite understood why I was doing it. You get into cooking because it fulfills you. If you cook food, it makes you feel good about you, about what you can do. And when we started doing school food, it was the same way, it was making these meals and we're posting them on Instagram and it's like, man, people think this is cool. They're like, wow, look at these school lunches. And those same school lunches were not the ones the kids wanted to eat. And then when you're in the lunch line and you see a kid go by, it happened to be a three-day weekend because Monday was a holiday and that's nice and everybody's happy to have a holiday except for the kid who doesn't eat at home. So the kid who doesn't eat at home was seven years old and shows up and he's clearly not taken care of and he's dirty, chooses the peanut butter and jelly sandwich which you hate the fact that you have to serve it because you're this accomplished chef over the meal that you've come up with that you think is great and you think you're God's gift to earth because you're a chef and you're changing things in a school, it's frustrating. And then all of a sudden you realize like of course the kid fucking takes the peanut butter and jelly sandwich because he's not gonna eat till the next day and he's not gonna take a chance with this meal he's never had before. So this is this funny thing that you learn in these schools that what we do is we think food is so important and we see food in a very specific way and that's understandable because we're very passionate about it but quite frankly most people don't see food that way and I think it's very important if we're ever going to make a change, if anyone in this room is gonna make a change and everybody in this room has the influence to make a change, you have to put yourself in everybody else's shoes and understand why in fact they're eating certain types of food and it might mean that you're serving food to people that you're not super passionate about or you might not think is good enough because it's not seasonal because it's not local, because it's not sustainable but if you're gonna serve food that's seasonable, local and sustainable you're never gonna be serving food to people that don't have the means to buy it. So it's very important to adjust your expectations and how you're gonna feed people. So you're not feeding the kids organic, sustainable? No and it's funny because we've had a lot of peers a lot of my peers have come and seen what we do and they're disappointed by what we do. Your colleagues are disappointed. Yeah, in the sense that, oh I thought this was gonna be something else I thought you were gonna be serving a different type of food and I said, I don't give a fuck what you think because it's not about you. And it was true, but more importantly, it's very naive. I mean anyone should understand, if anyone in this room can't, and it's funny because I still, and I hate to say it and I don't wanna say it because we did a session yesterday about good food and how you feed people but if you have $1.25 to feed people and that's your constraint and you're feeding kids and you start to prioritize things like sustainability and locality and seasonality then you don't fucking understand how the world works. You don't understand what food costs and that's strange to me because everybody in this room should understand what food costs and you just can't do that. You just can't think that that's how you're gonna feed people. Now do I think that organic food is great? Would I love to serve everything local and sustainable? Of course. But if that was my attitude towards these things we would never be feeding any of the kids that are feeding right now and they'd be eating the same shit that they're eating before. All right, Dan. I'm a young cook sitting out here in this audience and I'm looking at you and I'm like, that's cool. Has Jeff Noma left to feed some kids? I'm just making me feel pretty good inside right now. His work is hard. I don't wanna feed kids. What do you want from me? Yeah, I mean I've heard that so many times like that's cool, we love what you do and then those people never come around. Those people never say let's try it. And I honestly don't expect that that's gonna be something that people choose and that's not what I'm here to say. I'm not here to say that cooking for kids is the truth and you should leave a fine dining restaurant to cook for kids. That's not what I'm saying. But I think it's important if you are getting into this career that you cook the way you wanna cook. I think the way things are set up now only certain types of cooking gets recognized and obviously everybody wants to be recognized. I like to be recognized, we all wanna be recognized but cooking in a school you're not gonna get recognized. Opening a sandwich shop on the corner that serves a sandwich that's only $6 and the beef is not local and sustainable and happens to come from the center of the country because that's the kind of beef that you wanna serve and that's gonna make your sandwich $5 and allow you to serve it to your community rather than only serving people that are affluent. I think you should do what you wanna do and be confident and be happy. And I mean a lot of this talk has nothing to do I feel with a lot of the theme of this conference to where it does come in line is that there's a lot of turmoil and frustration in kitchens and I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that and this is the people who work in kitchens and the people who run kitchens is that you have this certain idea of what you're doing or what you're trying to do with food yet you feel the need to also get accolades. You feel the need to be number one you feel the need to get three Michelin stars. It's very tearing and if you think it tears on you as the person in charge imagine the people that work for you they have no fucking idea why they're there. They don't know what they're doing. Am I there to cook food to innovate to do this or am I there to win an award? And this is something that's really frustrating and I think the way things are set up and a lot of the folks in this room are the people that make these decisions it's a lot of great people out there who feel the need to do a certain thing because they'll never get recognized and I think if I'm a young cook or I had advice to a young cook it would be just do do and cook the way you want to cook and more importantly the people who are the leaders in this field you're the ones who need to start it is realize that don't let fucking accolades dictate what you do I mean I'm always shocked by the amount of people that are in this room that essentially they're like gods and can do whatever they want. You can do whatever you want but in the end of the day if someone has Instagram and they have 10,000 followers and they say something poorly about what you're eating or it's not in line with what they ate in Hong Kong the week before then this is a problem and that's bullshit. People should be cooking what they want to cook and be happy to cook that. I mean that's what this industry is about but somehow I feel like it's going in a different direction and by no means is that why I left Noma because I think Noma is an amazing place but I left because I wanted to cook the way I wanted to cook. They're clapping for you but I don't think that they're convinced man like it's not as easy. There's been a lot of clapping here. It's not, no I mean it's nice, feels nice. I must think lack of clapping would be more impactful. I know you feel nice though. I mean you're making it sound easy, it's hard. I can't walk away. I got too much invested. I put too much into the career. I want my own Noma. I mean I'll be honest with you. There's a couple things. One when I left Noma. Was that hard? I wanted to do what I wanted to do. Was it hard? Yeah I mean there were moments but quite honestly it wasn't that hard. It was what I wanted to do and I think one thing that crossed my mind was well I'm not opening a restaurant that's as good as Noma. And if you're an ambitious person that was enough for me to just say fuck it I got to do something else because I'm not going to be the guy like 10 years later trying to compete with Renee and try to make this restaurant. But you know I think it was, it's not a hard decision. I mean what do you have to, I will say and this is something I've only shared with few people and I don't know if it like detracts from my story here but there was a point where I was at Noma and I was like maybe I'll just start another career. Maybe I'll just like do comedy, you know. Getting lost and killing, see? But I legitimately thought that and I think there's, I mean this is a whole another topic and I want to go up on a tangent but like what's there to lose? Like who fucking cares? Like go do something else. Like it doesn't matter. Like why would you work a career for 10 years in like hopes to do something when it might not happen? Why have a five, 10 year plan when probably it's not going to happen? You know things are going to change dramatically on your way. And I say that in the most positive way. If you would ask me when I was the head chef at Noma would I be cooking food for kids? I would say absolutely not. I wouldn't know that was going to happen to me. These things just come on top of you. So it's just, it's a really interesting thing the way it works so, you know. As far as I know there are no sparkling water companies that give awards to school lunches. What a... Where do you, I mean you don't have, there are no accolades. You're in there every day. Like what does success look like now? Yeah. If not an award, what does it look like to you? Yeah I don't think there are any awards. I maybe after this conference some will throw us a bone and give an award for best school lunch in the world. I think there are a lot of voters in here. I think that New London schools might end up on those ballots. Fucking hope so. I don't know what we do. We need to get it. But I think, you know there aren't any accolades but I will say that I think when you're cooking when you're cooking or for that matter when you're doing work that you're really passionate about and you believe in it, you don't need awards. And don't get me wrong when I worked at NOMA you know when I was the head chef within the first five months of us being there we lost the number one spot on the 50 best and that fucking sucked you know and like I can understand when you, and it sucked because I just took the job. So it reflected poorly on me generally but. So I'm not gonna stand here and say that I don't like that. I don't like accolades and like the way that feels but I think if you're back to what I was saying before if you cook in a way, you work in a way and you're doing something you truly believe in and it sounds like cliche but this is the first time in my life that I'm actually experiencing that. Like I'm very happy. I don't need an award to kind of tell me that things are right. And is it tough sometimes? Yeah it is because sometimes you don't know if you're doing the right thing. When you kind of venture out on your own and there's no one to justify what you're doing and tell you yes you're fucking great. In fact it's the opposite. You have like 800 kids unanimously decide that the food you cook is fucking gross. But if you. No but like people think a bad review is like painful but you have, you can put that in perspective. Yeah I mean I will say and Rene can be a test of this is when I was at NOMA I was absolutely obsessed with everything. I mean I knew who was eating. I was on Instagram seeing who was tagging pictures while they were eating. Trip advise. I mean he used to yell at me. He would be like what are you doing? You know like I was crazy. I was so obsessed with feedback, so obsessed with it. And the littlest thing I mean in a place like NOMA if one person wasn't, you know I always tell a story that Rene would be like well how were they? How was it? And I said well they were great. Was that it? You know it was always looking for that exclamatory sentence. This was the best meal we've ever had. That's what we were always looking for. And so it hurt when that didn't happen. And now it hurts a lot more because I think, you know I don't have a tremendous amount of sympathy for adults especially if you have the means. But if you choose to go to a restaurant whether it's NOMA or any other kind of restaurant it's your choice. You choose to go there. You can do, you know what you're getting into. You can do research. You can figure out where you're going. The kids that we feed have no choice. They have to show up every day. And in most cases like I was saying before this is the only food that they'll eat. So I feel grave responsibility to make sure that what we're doing is the best that's possible. And that's what keeps me going every day. And when you serve a particular plate of food and a kid who's starving just chooses not to eat because they're really kind of uncomfortable about the food you serve. And this happens to be a student that's dealing with things outside of school that they should never be dealing with at the age that they're at. It makes you feel fucking horrible because you've decided to do something that now is essentially taking a meal away from a kid. So again when people don't have options and people are struggling, it puts even though in the schools that we operate in these kids eat for free. They don't even pay a cent for the food that they eat. But they don't have a choice either. And it's a funny thing when you're feeding people that might not have a lot of money or not have a choice that we feel the need that we can just tell them what's right and what's good and eat this. It's good for you. It's good. That's the wrong way to think. They should be able to say like I like this. I don't like this. And it doesn't matter if they're four or five years old they should have a choice. And this is ultimately what's gonna allow them to understand more about food. Do you feel like you're, I think that a lot of us will look at what you've done and think of it as you having changed jobs. Did you change jobs? No, not at all. I mean that's a big problem. And I think as time goes on, this world of food is becoming very separate from the rest of the world of food that is responsible for people eating on a daily basis. And more people from this world need to know that it's important to get into these other parts of cooking. There's a much, I mean to say there's a much bigger world of food out there is it's a joke. I mean this couldn't be the smallest gathering and representation of food out there to be honest with you. And I say that and I don't say that in an offensive way because for what it's worth, the people in this room are some of the most influential people in food. They are, period. But as far as representing how many meals for example are going and getting to people every day, it's a small representation. I mean in our first year of serving kids in New London we served over a million meals in one year. We're going to New York City schools this fall. They serve a million meals a day. You know and that probably represents more food being served just like that than the people in this room. I mean I don't know everybody in this room. And I just think that the people in this room should have more influence over more food. That's just how I see it. How many people do you want to feed? I mean like I said I think there's so many ways to feed a lot of people and it's not going to be in a restaurant. It's not going to feed that many people. That's a no brainer. Within a restaurant you're never going to get to that many people. There's so many environments out there where you can get out and feed lots and lots of people. And I would hope to think that there's no limit as to what we can do and it doesn't matter if I'm doing it or someone else. I mean for the fact of the matter this shit's so fucked up in the United States. You know we started a business but there's so many schools, there's so many kids, there's so many people. It's not like a competitive thing. I would hope and we're trying to find people to do the same thing that we're doing. Do it on the West Coast, do it wherever. Compete with us, fair enough. I mean my goal would be within 10 years. We're feeding several million people. And as much as when I had this conversation with Dave as he mentioned I did have that conversation with Dave about feeding millions of people. And maybe at the time it was seemed, I don't know, slightly ambitious. It almost seems a little underwhelming now. Because when you talk about millions of people that's not that much in the grand scheme of things. It's really not. And when I kind of walk around this tent and outside and see the people that are here and the influence that the people have in this room regarding food and beyond. There's no reason that this group of people if I on my own can affect millions of people that with the people in this room we can affect like a fucking ton of people. So that's super important to remember. You know. This is the last thing I wanna ask you. You got a tough job. You got an important job. Do you have a good job? I have a great job. I have the best job I've ever had because I'm happy. And yeah. All right. I know better than to say thank you. But yeah, you don't say thank you. Good work, man. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.