E145 Ron McKinlay

This week's guest is Ron McKinley, who joins us from Toronto, Ontario. Ron is the executive chef of canoe, restaurant, we work closely with producers, gatherers and suppliers to create dishes inspired by Canada's diverse landscapes and its distinct provinces. Ron has worked in many places globally, such as Scotland, Australia and the Middle East, and has learned and worked alongside acclaimed chefs, Tom Kitchen and Scott Pickett. We have a terrific conversation with Ron where we discuss how we got in the cooking, his love of rugby and his current role at canoe, plus many more topics.

Enjoy the show. Okay, we're back with another episode of the industry podcast. My name is Kip, this is Dan, how's it going? Well, thanks, Dan, how's it going?

Everything's good, man. I'm working, working, working, working. Nice. How's the January February timeline?

It's been for you guys, February, just as business, Jay? Surprisingly, yes. I don't know what's behind it, but we're not going to look at gift tours in the mail. It's good business for both months, shockingly.

Perfect. So hopefully we keep it rolling right through the spring. Speaking of that business, if you're in the neighbourhood, Kitchen and Water Loo, the two bars that I own, Sugar Run is a speakeasy in downtown Kitchener, and Babylon Sisters is a wine and cocktail lounge in Uptown, Water Loo, so check out those places. New menus on the horizon.

By the time you listen to this, we'll have new menus at both spots. New cocktail list of both spots already, so come check us out. I think that's all I need to say about that. If you want to be a guest on the show, then you're going to want to hit us up at info at theindustrypodcast.club, or you can DM us at the industrypodcast on Instagram.

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We should give a shout out to Zach Hanna as always for the artwork and Zach Hanna.co. Aside from that, we have a busy show today, so we're just going to get right to it. Ron McKinley is joining us right now, the executive chef of Can You Restaurant and Toronto. How are you doing, Ron?

Yeah, good. Good, how are you? Well, thanks very much for coming on the show. Yeah, I don't pleasure to thank you for getting me out.

Yeah, so we'll just start at the beginning. We're taking a read through your bio that you said, and I was kind of interested in how you sort of got into the culinary profession at the beginning, was sort of through the culinary program, but decided it wasn't so much for you. Yeah, I think the problem with culinary programs, or at least it was back in my day, was there was a lot of sitting and a lot of reading. If you've ever met any chefs, most of us aren't really into that.

That didn't work for me at all, and it really put me off right away, so it just didn't click and it wasn't for me, so I kind of shied away from it for a while. And then, you know, did my own thing and realized it's probably the only thing I'm good at, and I had a genuine passion for it, which I didn't realize at the time, and I kind of fell back into it later on. So I definitely tried to go through school because straight out of high school and whatever, that's stereotypical. You go to higher education and you figure something out, and it didn't work for me.

When you were in high school, did you find that it was the same thing? You just kind of a restful student? Yeah, yeah, again, high school wasn't a fit for me. I was good at sports, and I was good at art.

So those were the two things that kept me going and got me to graduate. But other than that, sitting down in math class or English or anything like that, nothing it interests me. And if I'm not interested in something, I just don't give any effort to it. So, yeah, it wasn't my place.

It's definitely not a high school. High school in general wasn't somewhere that I wasn't my cup of tea. But you did play rugby? I definitely did.

That was my cup of tea. But the cleats on and being able to hit people and run around and stuff like that, it made sense. I guess in the long run sports and hospitality just makes sense because there's a method to madness. And sports in general, when I was growing up, it was just something that was comfortable for me.

So, I guess that kind of, you made a lot of chefs now to the plate a lot of sports. And I guess having that coach in your life where someone just to tell you that you're either doing good or you're not doing good, very blatantly made sense to me and carried on in and chefing. I think a lot of the coaching I had when I was younger and playing at a high level was the same when I went to work for chefs that were pretty good. There was no bullshit.

You did something really good, good for you, or you did something really bad. And not so good for you. It's also gives you that sense of teamwork too, right? Which is vital in the kitchen.

Well, that's it. Yeah. No team, there's no iron team and that makes a lot of sense in the kitchen too. Even now, you can see my name on the menu, but I can't do any of what I do without the team behind me whatsoever.

So, it's easy to cook a piece of meat, but to do that for 200 covers a night and put it on a plate and have people impressed, you need a whole team behind you and it's the same on the pitch on the room you feel. There's always a couple of rock stars in the team, but without the guys pushing on and working those hard long hours, you can't do any of it. So, most of our listeners are going to be familiar with Canoe, obviously. Tell us a little bit about your team.

Can you know how big is it? How many people do you have working on the line on say Friday night? Yeah, it's pretty. I mean, a lot of people are kind of surprised when they see how big it is because we do have a big open kitchen and the customers can see, but what they don't understand is like a Friday night service for us, we will have, let's see, one or two, one or two, nine, probably about 12 cooks plus my senior team as well, they'll be myself and two other seniors and that's just for the restaurant itself.

But then we also have a team behind that's doing a lot of the butcher rework plus we have two private dining rooms that are kicking off most nights and lunches as well. So, I mean, we'll do, say on a Friday night, we'll do 200 covers in the restaurant alone, which will include, you know, 70 to 90 tasting menus and eight courses. So there's over 2000 plates leading the kitchen plus two private rooms where we'll be doing up to 30 or 40 at each room and we do catering for the TV executives in the same building. So, and that's just dinner, you know, lunch will flip.

We'll do 125 covers just for lunch alone, Monday to Friday, plus we have the two dining rooms and again for the TV executives, so we'll flip and then go straight into dinner service. So, it sounds like a lot of staff and, you know, lunch will have, you know, probably about 10 to 12 staff for lunch for the main dining room. And yeah, again, for dinner time, we'll flip into about 12 to 14. But when you put that, you know, perspective of how many covers we're doing and how many customers, it's not, it's no different than, you know, 50 covers you start having, you know, five or six, you know, five or six, you know, five or six, two, right?

So, it's multiplying. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

So yeah, we have a big, big, big day. But it's never been enough, to be honest. Yeah. Just like, like, imagine, I'm curious about two is like, for you personally, like how many hours a week are you putting in there?

It's got to be nuts. We're doing lunch and dinner like that. I know you're not on the line on all times, obviously, but exactly if you have an there's scheduling menu planning inventory, like, yeah, there's all that. But that's, that's where delegation comes down to it.

But I try to do, I mean, I try to be online every lunch and dinner. I call the line as much as I can. Wow. But to say that, I mean, also a really strong senior team that is there with me doing it, we kind of do the hard yards together.

Hours a week, I mean, you're on a lot. I mean, I'm there a lot. My senior team's there more than I am and are cooked to a lot of hours too. So, but I mean, at this level, if you're, if you're counting the hours and worrying about that kind of stuff, you should probably be in a different environment to be fair.

You know, everyone talks about this work life balance. And it's true, you do need it and you need to figure out what you want to do and your time off and figure it out. But the only work life balance I have is just realizing that what I like to do is my life. So you have to be just smart about what you do and your time away to, to make what you, what you're doing at work, you know, what you want to do.

I mean, I still get up every morning and I want to go to work and the day that backs up is happening is when I need to reassess how I'm living the lifestyle that I'm living. But yeah, that's an interesting point because like I don't, like, there is a big thing about work life balance, especially more recently when we talk about it. Like I'm, I also, I'm old now, I grew up in the industry front of house, rather than back house, but we never thought like that was just like, you know, you go fucking put the hours, I say, make your money. That's how you do it.

But now if there's so much more conversation revolving around work life balance, but I think that you're right. Like in order to do what you do, you better love it or do something else, right? Because you're not going to have that balance. Yeah, you have to, you have to love what you're doing.

I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm not in like back in the day, we'd be in the kitchen in the eight in the morning and leaving at one a.m. Or whatever. And you know, things like that have changed, you know, it has to be an attitude to work smarter than harder and be definitely implemented as best we can.

But you do need to love it and you do need to just, you know, you have to be honest with yourself. And this industry, if you want to work at a higher level, there's going to be hours that come with it. But that's also dedication and pride in what you're doing. And it's not to say that, you know, I don't want everyone working a 14 hour day.

You know, the industry is changing and you have to realize the workforce coming up is not expecting that and you have to look at that and figure out what changes can be made. So they don't have to go through what you went through, but you know, you're not going to be, and I wouldn't be very good at what I did if I only wanted to clock in 95. That's not fair. The team working on me.

They're not there to, they're not there for the, you know, they're there to learn. And then take them in both sides of it. I think you mentioned that working smarter than harder. You certainly don't have to divulge anything that you don't want people to know, but like, have there been any specific innovations in the culinary world that have enabled you to work smarter than harder?

So culinary world. I mean, everything from, you know, simple things like Sous vide and utilizing that in a smarter way, but without taking shortcuts, I think at the same time, I mean, you know, back of the day, if we were going to use a game board, we'd roast it to order, but now, you know, we'll take the, we'll take the breast off and we'll post that before service so we can have it out in a five, four or five minute pick up time, you know, things like that is working smarter than harder. And there's a lot of hard work behind the scenes before service. So smart, hard.

It's the key, right? Like, it's the key to everything. Yeah. It's exactly.

We can start something, you know, a day or two in advance so that service is quicker and not as painstaking, you know, but you learn that hard way. Like five years ago, I wouldn't have said that. So I learned that through some very difficult services and, you know, we're still evolving and changing as we go. And I haven't, you know, when I took on canoe, I'd never worked in a, in a kitchen this big.

I definitely glagged my way into this role. But we, you know, if you met me five years ago and you met me now, or you see not the kitchen was run five years ago and now I, I'm a completely different person. I see your teams are completely different mentality behind what we're doing and it's ever evolving and it's changing. You know, I think the time out during COVID made a lot of people reassess what they're doing and how they're operating, especially in hospitality.

And I for one was massive in that. I definitely looked at how I was functioning and working. And I think, I think we've all changed a lot for the better in many ways. I think it was a good thing that it happened.

I mean, I'm not an, I wasn't an owner and operator. So I can say that. If I was, I would be, you know, I'd be speaking a little bit differently, but I think as a whole, the industry needed that halt and we needed to stop and have a look. And I think it will benefit us in the long run, not right now, but in the long run, you know, so now I think a lot of changes will happen because of this reset that's occurring right now.

In terms of like staff, is it totally crucial? Yeah. And retain them as well. Yeah, retention is the biggest thing.

I mean, we're in a privileged position now. Like you said, a lot of people know of the restaurant, but it's still not easy to get the right people in the door. We can get 20 people, we can get 20 people every day coming in for a job we wanted to, but out of that 20, most of them won't be the right fit or really realize what they're walking into on the skill level they need to have just to have. I mean, for instance, I put an ad out for, for a sous chef and the amount of people that would apply for it, it's ridiculous.

And, you know, it's great that they're applying, but most of these sous chefs that are applying, they couldn't help cook one of the cooks on my line. So it's, it's, it's a bit crazy out there right now. I think there's a lot of titles being thrown around and a lot of money being thrown around to people that aren't skilled. And then the problem with that is it's these unskilled people take these jobs and they start training the next generation.

And it's a full circle of problems that keep happening. And like I get it from a business perspective, people need to hire people in these roles, but at the end of the day, they're not, they're not set. They're not ready for the role that they're taking. And we, like you said, retention's big.

And I've been very lucky. My team has been, the majority of our team has been with us for quite a while now. And you know, they're still, they're still there and they're still pushing and working very hard. And it's that keeping them is the biggest priority and keeping them entertained and keeping them wanting to show up every day.

You know, if their attitude's not good or you can tell that they don't want to be there, that's not a, it's horrible for the morality team to. It is hard right now. It's a brutal time for even finding people like the last resume I got, this was legit. He had had one job in the service industry.

He's been working at Swiss chalets since January of this year. Yeah. That's the thing that. Yeah.

I know it's, they just don't, a lot of the people just don't understand it. What it takes to work at a certain level. And like you said, yeah, you get, you get a resume like that. We get them all the time and there's, you just can't even entertain it.

There's no point. No, it's, but we are, you know, we're very lucky with a lot of the people that we get in. A lot of the young kids that we do get that stick around for a while, they might not be as skilled at the beginning, but their attitude and their willingness to learn. If you have a good attitude, you're really willing to learn, you can move out very quickly in a kitchen.

Yeah. You know, it's not, it's, it's not brain surgery. It is cooking. They're going to be so impatient and being willing to go through a service.

And yeah, you might get ball clubs, you might get, you might get a lot of shit thrown at you during a hard service, but you come back the next day with that same energy and want to do it again. I see that, you know, I see your team sees that. And then you respect that. And then you're going to go places.

Yeah. But it's very hard to find that personalities. Yeah, but after a while you can recognize I know what you mean. Like when you see somebody, you see the work ethic, like, okay, I can work with this person.

If they stick in at, they'll be okay. But you can tell. Exactly. You can tell right away.

Let's back it up a little bit and talk about how you got to where you are. So, okay. thing doesn't work out for you. Where do you go from there?

I just left. I got a good opportunity to just go play rugby overseas. So I took it. I went and moved to New Zealand and played rugby over there in Auckland.

Yeah, it sounds cool. And it was cool. I mean, as a 19-year-old, 1819-year-old kid going to leave home and going to play rugby in New Zealand is amazing. But I mean, yeah, amazing experience.

I'm glad I did it at the time. Ignorance is bliss, right? You just say yes, you jump on a plane. But the room I lived in was horrible.

The door end no hinges on it. Underneath the shower. I lived in a player's house, which was just off the field of the rugby club. It was a very well-known rugby club.

And again, like I said, the experience was cool. But even the shower, like you look to the side of the shower, you can see the floor beneath you. Like it was just a shithole. And yes, I was over there playing and living for free and all those cool things.

But I also had to scrub the showers and the urinals and the changing rooms. And it was humbling. And I didn't care. I don't mind how it worked.

But like I said, it sounds cool. It was just a yeah, I went to rugby in New Zealand. But the reality was there. There's a lot more too.

And I got my ass kicked too. Don't get me wrong. That's like someone from overseas to come here to play hockey. So you learn pretty quickly.

You don't know what you're doing. But again, I think that mentality wasn't still that was a good mentality to have instilled in me to flip the switch one day when I went back into cooking. So yeah, I went to New Zealand and played a couple seasons and then came home and basically blew up my shoulder, couldn't play anymore and had to figure out what the hell to do. And that's kind of how I fell into cooking, really.

Right. And so when you did end up going back overseas to cook? I did. Yeah, I was so after the shoulder thing, I came back home for Weba and I did cook in Vancouver for like a year or so, I think.

And I didn't know what I was doing. I was just cooking for the sake of cooking because I could do it. And I actually ended up going through sound engineering school for a bit because I was really in the music and like post production and stuff. But again, I'd be at school doing that, hey, bloody expensive too.

And I would just be looking at food on the internet all the time. And my attention span again, sitting in front of the computer wasn't my thing. So I ended up working at a restaurant and I was working with a guy. And he started telling me about Michelin and what it was.

I had no idea. And then I just kind of looked into it and realized that it was easy for me to get a password from my grandfathers from the UK. I used to Scotland. So I applied for my passport.

And that was it. I kind of applied to a bunch of Michelin restaurants over the UK got my foot in the door and just packed my bags and went. Nice. So what was the first place that you worked out when you went over there?

Definitely wasn't a Michelin restaurant. The only place that except I wrote, this was before I got a copy and paste and emails. So I individually wrote over 81 star Michelin restaurants outside of London in the UK. And only one got back to me, which makes sense because you know, at the time, my place didn't even go down.

This was 2005. Only one got back to me. The only one that did and they offered me a job right off the goal was in an island off the coast of the U.gashia, the coast of France. But it was part of Britain in the China Islands in Guernsey.

So there's like, there's four islands. There's what is it? This Jersey, Guernsey, the two bigger islands in Herman Sark. And I think Herman is still in the course of buggy.

There's not even any cars in this bloody place. So it was pretty remote. So I went to Guernsey. I was there for about nine months, just to save up some cash and then realized I just didn't like it there.

And then I got in a car with a mait of mine who was going to go travel for a few weeks. So I think we just traveled. We drove around Europe for about a month, just getting into trouble and doing what you do when you're 25 years old. And then we got on the ferry in where we were in.

We went to Amsterdam and when you're going to Amsterdam when you're 25, you shouldn't say that very long. It's too easy to get into trouble. And then we ended up in Rotterdam on the coast. And because we had our car, we got on the ferry, got in the hole on East Coast of England.

East Coast of England. And he's like, right, I'm going to go back to London. And there was a bus going to Edinburgh. And I wanted to go to Edinburgh because there was a chef that I wanted to work for.

So I just got on the bus. And that was it. I went to Edinburgh. And that's kind of where I stayed for a while.

So that's how I got to. I mean, it wasn't my first time in the UK because obviously I was in Guernsey, but like proper mainline UK was then. Edinburgh is a pretty cool city from what I understand as well, right? Like lots of amazing.

Yeah. Edinburgh's awesome. I love it. I've been that many times since I left.

I mean, I lived there for over five years. But yeah, it's all awesome. I mean, if you ever out that way, you have to go. It's a pretty beautiful city.

So talk to us about the sort of the stuff you're learning when you're, did you end up working for that chef that you were trying to? Yeah. Okay. So what are you learning when you're working for like this top chef in Edinburgh?

How to take a how to take a verbal how to take a lot of verbal views. So this was 2006, I think, and this was still very much in the heyday of old school mentality kitchens and you know, do it right or don't do it. And I mean, I won't get into any stories because I have a lot of respect for this guy. I don't want to get into getting any trouble.

But right. So that was Tom Kitchen and not to name his name, but that was Tom Kitchen. And that was Edinburgh in league restaurant called the kitchen. What I was learning there, I mean, everything.

I kind of relearned everything from from the start again, because anything I learned before was kind of just not the right way to do things. Everything he did was done properly. Proper technique, no corners cut. It's just really hard graph.

I mean, we were in there from, you know, on a Friday, we would get in there early at 7 a.m., put garbage bags over our chef whites and clean in tight kitchens and start to finish before 8 a.m. when the delivery starts showing up. And then we'd be there till 12 31 in the morning. So that was hard graph.

Like, it was okay. We'd have hairs, woodclocks, night teal, you name it, all this different game, coming in every morning from a gamekeeper that shot it that morning. No, it's crazy. Yeah.

We learned everything. I learned, you know, everything from, you know, just a proper organization to how to really put your head down, how to work through being tired, not, I learned how to not complain, you know, just get it done, get the job done, do it properly. How did, you know, really respect who you're working for? Because I definitely respected him and I still do.

We're still in contact with this day. Yeah, that, that place taught me a lot. I owe a lot to that to him and to that, that time of my life. Because if I, again, that's one of those jobs where every morning you get up and you go to work, you question what the hell you're doing this for?

Because it was not easy and it was not enjoyable at the time. I would say in the first year that I was there, we probably went through like 60 or 70 chefs. Like we were just walking out of the door every day. It was brutal.

It was hard. But, you know, I mean, the ones that stuck around and the ones that still lasted through that kitchen at a time, there's like four or five of them now that I could name that are all incredibly successful in doing their own things. Because, you know, that that was a place to do that and to learn how to, you know, actually cook. Like we were cooking proper.

There was no, there was no, there was no sous-d'e, there was no fancy gadgets in that kitchen. That was just, you know, pans. You have a pan of spoon and towel and a hob and that was about it. And the food that we're cooking was, you know, proper class itself.

So that was a definite game changer in the trajectory of my career. Pretty interesting thing to think about now too. Because like again, kind of growing up in the same sort of era where, you know, like even at the front of the house, if you're fucking up, you just kind of got yelled at and whatever, right? Like that's how you're trying to proper bartender as well.

And like, I don't think we need to go back to those times, but I do feel like there's something missing from the newer generation where you like, you need sort of a toughness and a will to get through it that you don't necessarily get if you're kind of baby. Yeah, I think the difference would I mean, I definitely don't think it should be like that anymore. And he definitely doesn't operate that way anymore. I mean, he's, he's learned and so by, but I think the difference is when I fucked up, I didn't want to fuck up again, right?

You know, and I don't see that in a lot of people now. They just go, Oh shit. Yeah, you're right. I just fuck up.

Yeah, but like, stop, stop doing it. And it really is that simple. I like just like what you're doing is a craft. So if you're not doing it properly, you're not doing it.

So why? Like, I just don't understand that. You're disrespecting everybody else around you, everybody above you, and beneath you who is playing, who is treating with a proper respect, if you don't give a shit, right? Like if you're, like, yeah, yeah, like you got like, we talked about earlier about working as a team.

Like if you were, I'd say you're playing in a basketball game and you're the fifth guy on the floor and you're just like loll gang back on defense, well, you're disrespecting all the other people on the team who are running hard back on defense, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Exactly.

Yeah. So I think that's the biggest thing. I just, I do agree though, that you know, people don't need to get, you know, completely yelled at all the time, but at the same time, they do need to be put in their place, you know, if they're not doing it right. And everyone reacts, some people need to kick in their ass, some people need you to take them aside and explain to them why it was wrong.

Like everyone has a different angle to get through to them. And you figure that out when you're running a big brigade like when we have, but you just have to figure out that angle to actually get through them. Like I said, is that's the hardest part. Like, yeah, so they need to, that's what they need to teach a fucking cook of schools is.

I was a hard lesson for me too, when I was first, when I won my first spot, because I was like, oh, just, you want to treat everybody the same. And that's not actually how you do it. You want to treat everybody equally, but you need to treat them differently to their personality, right? Yeah, absolutely.

They need everybody fairly, but not the same. Like, yeah, for sure. Some people just react completely different in certain situations and you have to see that and react to it before it happens. Yeah.

Some people need a day to day basis. Some people need to kick some people need the hug. Exactly. Yeah.

Exactly. And then once you figure that out, it'll help you a lot. For sure. So when you, after you were in Inglefer, while you ended up going to Australia at some point, is that directly after or did you come back to Canada for a little bit?

I did come back home, but only for a couple of weeks, just to say hi to mom and dad and get a visa. And that was amazing. So I just came home signed up for a visa because I was turning 29 at the time and I could get a visa before I turned 34 for Oz. So again, that's basically what I did.

My flatmate in Edinburgh was Ozzy and he'd talked me into going to Australia at the time. And there was a huge food team kicking off in Melbourne. And again, I'm, you know, ignorant of this list. So I just pack my bags and wet.

So I had been to the UK and Australia as well and like very different cultures, for sure. Like, yes. Yeah. So talk to me a little bit about like, how does the culinary scene differ in these two places?

And like, did you end up learning different things because you were in Australia? Yeah. I mean, Australia taught me that you, you have to really cook for the customer in many ways, because there's a different pallet over there. So just because you think you can cook right in the UK, if you go to Australia, you need to cook different because people eat and cook different things over there.

So that was good for me to see and learn. I think, yeah, there's definitely different cultures over there. Ozys are, I mean, I'm not living there anymore. So Ozys are a lot, they're definitely a lot, but the food team was fantastic.

And they have some amazing chefs there right now. They're some of the best food in the world, for sure. And their access to ingredients is incredible. Yeah, the seafood is amazing.

It's amazing. It's second and none. I mean, and that's me saying a lot because I come from Scotland and you know, Scotland's seafood is also equally as amazing thing. But it's two different worlds, you know, Scotland had amazing solips and like the scene in shellfish and then you go to Australia and they have amazing fish and tune it down there was crazy and all these other fish that I'd never seen before.

So it was a really cool learning experience for me in that regard as well. And from your bio, I learned that they don't talk about Michelin stars back in Australia. What do they call them? They have hats.

So right. Yeah. Same as you can get one or two, three stars in Oz, you can get one, two or three hats. And they're, I mean, they're not the same.

I mean, I wouldn't hold a two star and a two hat restaurant to the same level, but it's still what you go for over there because they don't have the Michelin rating system. So they definitely have places that are worthy of two and three stars in Australia, 100%. But yeah, that's the rating system there. So yeah, I mean, it works for them.

How do you feel about the rating systems in general, having like worked in like pretty much all over the world in like Michelin star or hat, rated places like what is your feeling about how the fairness of these ratings, the accuracy, whether it's something to strive for? Yeah, I mean, well, this year, Michelin didn't give us a star. So fuck them. Yeah.

I think the fairness, I mean, look, I still have a lot of respect for Michelin and that's kind of what I don't get any wrong. I still want to start like everyone, anyone would. And then we're still pushing to get one every day, but it won't change. You know, we didn't get one, but it's not going to change what we do.

And it's not going to change how we operate at all. I do think Michelin, they're not changing with the times as much as I'd like them to. But well, for instance, what they did in Toronto and Vancouver, I think they missed the boat in a lot of places. And you know, all the places that got us started on Toronto definitely deserved them.

They're all very good, very reputable. And you know, eating at any of those places, you're eating an emotional restaurant for sure. But what they didn't do is there's no place in time. You could eat at any of those restaurants, you could eat at any city in the world.

You're not going to know that you're actually in Toronto or in Canada. And I think Michelin should be, you know, there's those restaurants in the city that are such a good representation of this country and this city, that people coming here to eat at a Michelin restaurant should leave knowing where they've eaten and where they are. And they completely miss the boat on that one. In my opinion, and you know, it's the first year them being here.

So next year, you know, they might do a better job of it. But yeah, I don't, you know, a lot of chefs nowadays don't hold Michelin to the same standard that I did when I was a kid coming up through kitchens. And I think that that changes things. People aren't as worried about getting Michelin on their city as they used to be.

So I don't know if they, I don't know what Michelin's doing. If they're planning on, you know, looking at how the stars are rated or ranked, but nobody knows what they look for. You know, there's no there's no book that says, they need to do this, this, and this to get a star. So they can do what they want.

But I've never wanted to start that I walked away from and said they weren't deserving of one. So I mean, they still pick and choose properly. But I do think they miss places for sure. And of course, it's going to be subjective, right?

So like, there's no way to judge it just by like with a buy the book ranking, there's got to be some subjectivity that comes into it. Oh, there has to be. Absolutely. And they need to visit a few times.

You know, everyone can have a bad service or a bad day. They need to see, you know, the averages of other coming through. But you know, again, a company like Michelin, this year alone, they've spread it up in so many different cities across the world. But like, who's to say that the judges that are hiring now are even competent?

Like, how can you hire that many people to do these many restaurants across the world? Like to work for Michelin, you don't know what you're talking about. You would think. Yeah.

So I mean, I think there's a lot of negative in a lot of classes to Michelin a lot. But I think it's great for the industry. I think it's amazing for Toronto to have them here. I think it's going to bring in business and it's going to bring in culinary talent from across the country.

It's good for Toronto. It's good for Vancouver. It's not so good for the other provinces that don't have it because it will suck talent and and hospitality staff from those problems. All right.

Yeah. You know what I ever thought about that. But that's obviously that's what it's going to do. Yeah.

Yeah. And I will say it's better to have at least like, you know, if like a Michelin reviewer or whatever they call themselves coming to your restaurant, then you like ideally or probably they are a qualified person as opposed to the fucking keyboard warriors who just come to your restaurant and then don't complain about anything and then go home and write a shitty review online. Yeah. They are the worst.

Yeah. No, of course. I mean, there's going to be some level of, you know, due diligence behind what they're doing and how they're rating. I'm not trying to.

And of course, like I said, we didn't get one. So I just sound like a bitter fucker over here. But we're pushing this drive and we want to get one and we want one. And but if we don't get one, like I said, we're still going to keep doing what we do and we're proud of what we do every day.

Anyways, but you look at the smaller restaurants and they have a better chance of, you know, we're busy, man. We do 150, 200 covers a night. You have a like a smaller, you know, 40, 50 seat restaurant, the consistency and the day and day out of, you know, excellence that you can achieve with those smaller numbers is definitely more realistic. For sure.

Yeah. Yeah. And at the end of the day, like speaking as someone who's in the ownership side, I'd rather have the busyness than the star. So of course, yeah, of course, I mean, I mean, I mean, I want one so I can, you know, I can hang it on my CV and achieve achieving it.

But at the end of the day, we're busy every single day. And that's all I'm talking about. It's not going to change. It's not going to change our business.

We can't get any because you're well, you get pretty soon. We've kept you for a while. So thanks for that, Ron. But I do want to ask you a little bit about going back to Australia because there was one specific chef that you worked with you kind of followed around a little bit there.

So tell me what you learned from him. Yes, Scotty. Scotty, he's he is probably the most talented chef I ever worked for in many different ways. I worked for him for almost five years, I guess.

I mean, I've been most of the chefs that I worked for I worked for for a very long time, because I pick ones that I wanted to work for for a reason. And I can learn a lot from. Scotty or chef, who is we lovingly most people call him. Yeah, he was not like, he, he has a presence when he walks in the kitchen, you know, he's there.

He's full on and you either love him or you don't. Like he there's no there's no two ways about that with chef. Oh, I love them. Still do again.

You know, we even flew him out a few years ago and did like a mental shift in our here with him, Akanu, which was amazing and paled a little bit of respect to him that way. But yeah, he, I worked for him at his first restaurant that he owned. He was owner operator. And then I went on working my way up from there, helped him open his other restaurant and became the head chef there.

And like we talked about hats, we got two hats there. And now God, he is like, I'll probably lose time. I think he has like six or seven restaurants and I'll plus a restaurant in the airport. And like, he's on TV all the time.

And he's a, he's built for it. Like he's a character. You put a microphone in front of me, shut up. He's charismatic, incredibly talented.

You know, he's great for the industry. You need people like that to keep it kind of going. And yeah, you know, I'm really proud of the time I did with him. And I still think I still think very highly of him.

So, Scotty, okay, yeah, I think he's like the president or something for Bo-Kudor, Australia now as well. And he's just doing better and better and better. He's a bit of a weapon. That's awesome.

Yeah. And you're right. We do like the industry does need like, I know a lot of there's this whole era of the celebrity chef and then the celebrity bartender and it got a little bit out of control. But at the end of the day, it does, it does help the industry in a long time.

We do need people who want to talk about it and are charismatic, right? Yeah. I mean, you need people need to see that and want to aspire to be like that, right? Because if you're not positive about the industry that you're in, then you're going to talk badly about the industry.

And that's the last thing hospitality needs right now. Like we should be, you got to find people that are still excited about it and still trying to push it and make it better and having, having people like that around and that are in a position in their career where, you know, they're on TV and they're talking about it. And they are successful. I mean, it needs success stories.

And he's definitely one of them. So the industry needs that. It's very important. And like letting the younger generation, like you mentioned, know that these are cool jobs and creative and you can be like, you can make art in a kitchen or behind a bar.

If you're a creative person and you want to dedicate yourself to, we need those people preaching that for us. So it is good that they exist in the long run. Yeah, for sure. I mean, like, there's a lot of kids like me, like when I was in high school, it's in click, right?

You just got to find the right nation. And for a lot of us, it's hospitality because there are no rules you can, you can get through hospitality and kitchens front and back a house. You don't need to be book smart, but you just need common sense, which I should add is also lacking in the fucking industry at the moment. Yeah, but it goes such a long way.

You know what I mean? It's just simple things done well. And I think that's where we need to start. And but I think the industry in a whole is coming back after having a lot of shit happen to us.

I think it's coming back. It's gonna be stronger. And we just need to figure out ways to get the next generation in and use some of their know how to make it even better. I think that's the next thing to do.

Well, that's the perfect spot to leave it. Ron, tell us, tell our listeners where they can find you social media wise so they can follow what you're doing. Yeah, so I'm pretty active on Instagram there. My things are W McKinley at, there's no ad is there.

It's at our W McKinley. Can see I'm fucking going with the social media stuff. What does it up? You don't have to worry about it anymore.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll just tag it in the post. So yeah, I mean, I'm pretty active on their show and what we're doing at the restaurant and you know, like behind the scenes and techniques and this and that. So we have a bit of fun with that.

And that's kind of what it up and out. And I'm just I'm still working a lot on there all the time. Well, I can tell you I follow you and it's a good follow. There's lots of cool stuff on the Instagram.

So people should check it out. We always put the works in the show. Thanks for the day. Thanks for the work for us.

All right, Ron. Thanks so much, man. I appreciate you coming on. I know you're a busy motherfucker.

So, we'll get you to give this a little time. Awesome. And yeah, that's the luck with everything. Nice.

Thanks for all this great. Thanks, man. Thanks, buddy.