Joe Longo, Chef, Frenchman's Reserve

 

Joe Longo

Executive Chef, Frenchman's Reserve

Contact Information:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chefjoelongo/

Instagram:  @chefjoelongo

Transcript

This is a transcript from The Floridaville podcast.  This transcript was created using artificial intelligence so it may not be an accurate account of what was recorded.

Rosanna Catalano  00:08

This is The Floridaville get to know the people behind the Florida names you know, I'm your host Rosanna Catalano. On this episode we get to know executive chef Joe Longo with the Frenchmans Reserve Country Club, a prestigious and private golf course community situated in Palm Beach Gardens. We're recording remotely. Today I'm in my home in Tallahassee. And chef Joe is speaking to us from South Florida. Welcome to the show.

Chef Joseph Longo  00:34

So nice to be with you. Thank you.

Rosanna Catalano  00:36

So fans of this show often asked me how I find my guests. And most of the time, my guests, come recommended to me, in your case, I found you on LinkedIn, you post the most amazing food pictures. How does an executive chef like you stay inspired?

Chef Joseph Longo  00:52

Well, I just have food on my mind at all times. Rosanna I, there's no trick to it. I think it's just was my calling. And it never gets turned off. So I can't even tell you exactly how anymore. It's this part of my DNA. Everything just reminds me of food or serving people. And it's just something that I'm very fortunate. I guess it's a blessing and a curse. But it's a tap that never shuts off.

Rosanna Catalano  01:21

Are we related. At breakfast I'm thinking about lunch. At lunch, I'm thinking about dinner. And I grew up with a family that when we get together, we discuss food. I call my sister every day, and we always discuss what we ate that day.

Chef Joseph Longo  01:39

Exactly. Very similar experiences growing up. The conversation around our dinner was like 10 minutes on whether the pasta was al dente enough. And all those sorts of good things. So yeah, food is a major part of our lives of my life. It's just always on my mind, just like you said,

Rosanna Catalano  02:02

Well, you've been working in restaurants for decades. Where did you begin your career in the restaurant industry,

Chef Joseph Longo  02:08

I was at a small place called Pastabilities, which is a great name. We love that one. Pastabilities. It was a small place at the Short Hills Mall, in Short Hills, New Jersey. And I started as a dishwasher. And I remember the pasta cook called in sick. And I got my big chance to go on the line. And then that was it. That was that was the epiphany I got right there. And I've really never done any other job. I've been in the kitchen ever since I'm 16 years old. And once I got a taste for it, you know, there's an old saying that the kitchen chooses you, you don't choose the kitchen. And in my case, that's exactly what happened. The kitchen sort of chose me and here I am.

Rosanna Catalano  02:50

What were some lessons you learned at that job

Chef Joseph Longo  02:54

that have stayed with you? I think the top one was the collaboration, the connections and the collaboration. It was this almost like a ballet, you know, just watching all these men and women working together with a lot of passion and this fast paced environment. And I just saw all the communication that needed to take place. And this this collaborative sort of environment, and I just got me.

Rosanna Catalano  03:23

So after you worked at possibilities, I still absolutely. Where did you Where did you work next?

Chef Joseph Longo  03:30

Well, at that point, I got the Florida bug. I never was much for the winters up there even as a kid. So when I had the opportunity, which is basically a phone call from my best friend saying you got to get down here. And that was about the extent that I came down. And with that little bit of cooking experience, I just parlayed it into a job down here in Florida. I was at a small place called Alberto's la terrazza, where whenever of my mentors, an Italian gentleman with a extensive background and all kinds of cuisines out of Europe, kind of took me under his wing saw something in me and kind of just imparted every single thing he knew, and I just ate it up. And you know, that really kind of gave me the experience I needed to keep on going.

Rosanna Catalano  04:20

So after you work there, tell us Let's go through your resume a little bit and tell me about some of the restaurants that you worked in some of the positions that you had and how you worked your way up

04:31

in the door. Sure. Well, I

Chef Joseph Longo  04:33

started in sort of the New Jersey mom and pop Italian restaurants. So that was my kind of, you know, where I felt safe, so to speak. So I kept on parlaying that into jobs in Italian restaurants. I went to a place in Coral Springs called flavors of Italy where I was there for many years. And I loved it and I love doing the Italian food. But then I knew at some point I had to expand my my repertoire, so to speak. What really gave me the kind of polyphony moment it was when I got hired at Max's grill at Meisner park in Boca Raton, I had never seen this kind of food, I had been sort of locked into the Italian cuisine for a decade already, even as a young guy. And all of a sudden, I saw this kind of new American and Asian fusion, and a different style of service and a different style of food and beverage. And it just that just, that really just took it to a whole different level that just clicked. And I knew right that in there that I needed to learn as much as humanly possible. And I wanted to be a chef to really, really be the executive chef. So that kind of turned on. Turn on the light bulb for me at Max's grill.

Rosanna Catalano  05:45

What does an executive chef do for those of us that haven't worked in a professional kitchen? What does that cover?

Chef Joseph Longo  05:53

It's it's very multifaceted. It's not just cooking the food obviously. it's it's it's developing all the menus. It's developing all the banquets. It's it's inspiring a team of chefs every single day to do their best job. It's profit and loss. It's ordering and receiving. It's It's It's so many different things that when you get a chance to cook, you're actually feel like that's your happy place. So it's kind of all the other stuff. It's scheduling. It's all those other things that you know, you're really a businessman at this point, you know, you're really running the day to day operations of the kitchen. Not only that, but you're you're you're inspiring every day, which is a different, different element to a lot of managers jobs, you really have to come in there pumped up and inspired.

Rosanna Catalano  06:48

Now, I do know you spent some time in California in your career briefly, can you tell us a little bit about that?

Chef Joseph Longo  06:55

Sure. Another really pivotal experience for me was out in California where I got to be the banquet chef at the Ritz Carlton at Marina Del Rey. That just brought a different level of commitment and a different kind of mindset into how to treat the the guest, you know, I now I got a different level of expertise. As far as service goes, not just the cooking now, it's how we greet people how we anticipate and exceed the unexpressed wishes and needs of the guests, which was always one of my favorite Ritz Carlton lines. And that's stuck with me for my whole career. You know, I use the example of a hot dog to my staff when I talk about this. And when you order a hot dog, well, you order a hot dog, but we're going to give you the relish the sauerkraut, the mustard, the ketchup we've anticipated and exceeded your unexpressed wishes and needs. So that's the biggest thing I got from the Ritz Carlton to really just sort of anticipate the needs of the guests and always be one step ahead with our service.

Rosanna Catalano  07:59

I love that. I absolutely love that. So let's take a quick commercial break. And when we come back, I'm going to ask you about your childhood and learn how you develop your love of cooking. 

Rosanna Catalano  08:09

This episode of the Floridaville  is brought to you by Rocket Ship Consultants. Let us help you launch your career, your business, your podcast or your live stream. Follow us on Facebook and on Instagram and visit our website at www.rocketshipconsultants.com

Rosanna Catalano  08:29

Welcome back.

Rosanna Catalano  08:30

My guest today is executive chef Joe Longo of the Frenchmans Reserve a private club in Palm Beach Gardens. Before the break we discussed all the fabulous places he has worked from Max's grill in Fort Lauderdale to the Ritz Carlton in California. For those of us you know, we talked earlier you know that have never worked in a professional kitchen. How in the world do you get all the orders out on time and hot I mean I'm I pride myself on being a chef in my own house, a cook a short order cook. But that's something that I struggle with. And I think a lot of people that are cooking struggle with and I'm always amazed how you all do it on such a large scale.

Chef Joseph Longo  09:17

Well, it is it is quite something to behold at times. I don't think we know how we do it sometimes. But it starts with with the right menu. It starts with the with the the schematics, which is the way the line is set up. And really it's a lot of kind of trial and error. You know, at this point, we know what type of menus to write, we know how to have balance on the line you don't want the grill to be more heavier than the pantry and the saute. So if all the stations are kind of hitting on all cylinders that's going to make for a better service and a quicker service where everything's going to come up together. Now one particular area is getting killed and the other ones aren't doing anything, that's when you start getting backed up on tickets and that type of stuff. It's important for a chef, especially a young chef to get into a place that is going to allow you to make a couple mistakes. And not not huge ones, you know, we have a saying you can drop the ball, but keep it so low to the ground that nobody knows. And it's really one of those jobs where you're not going to be able to come in there and just sort of figure it out, you're going to have to go through some bad services, you're going to have to go through re editing some of your menu choices or how you execute certain things. And then after all that experience comes together, and you've attracted a lineup of cooks with the same type of experience. Everything sort of just sort of hits together. And there's really no secret to it. It's really hard work. It's really, you know, just doing that balancing act of having really good cooks, a good game plan. And the focus that's that's required.

Rosanna Catalano  10:58

We are coming up on the holidays, and many of us will be in the kitchen cooking up big holiday meals for our families. Do you have some advice for us home cooks on how to improve our cooking game?

Chef Joseph Longo  11:12

Sure. I always when I do cooking classes, especially I always preach one phrase a French phrase called me simplus, which means having everything in its place prior to cooking. And I can still remember my mom, not that she wasn't a great cook. And she still is, but running for that one bay leaf in the middle of the recipe or back to the refrigerator for a piece of bazel that type of thing. So really getting the recipes organized. Doing all the prep work required for each dish. Having the right tools especially is very important for Thanksgiving, you got to have the pans that are big enough. You got to have all the little, the little doodads to do your peeling of the potatoes and the all those things. So it's invested a good chef's knife, you know, the tools are extremely important. But I think the plan is really where it comes down to writing everything down, writing the amounts, and just kind of prepping everything prior to starting the cooking process. That would be my biggest advice.

Rosanna Catalano  12:14

What are some of your favorite dishes that you cook for your favorite people?

Chef Joseph Longo  12:20

Oh my gosh, uh, well, I I have four kids. Two of them are vegetarian. Two of them are picky.

Rosanna Catalano  12:29

So I'm gonna play

Chef Joseph Longo  12:31

at home. Yeah. So I'm all over the place. Now we I love cooking the food that I grew up on. I love doing the Sunday sauce with the meatballs and the sausage and the pasta. I definitely have one foot in nostalgia when I cook at home. I really do. I love all the old dishes. We love comfort food, whether it's a really good meatloaf, my wife's really great in the kitchen as well with the Brazilian food, especially some really nice cuisine that she does. So we keep it very kind of simple but tasty. And with four kids, you know, we're shopping for bargains too. So we're pretty adaptable to what we're going to make. We'll do some homemade pizza kids love that. We love doing the chicken parm and the the vegetarian, my two girls, they love the ramen. And they love the various Asian things that we do. We do dumpling night and we do a bunch of cool stuff, man. So we just love all the comfort food, ethnic food. There's nothing that really we don't like.

Rosanna Catalano  13:31

That sounds delicious.

13:34

You got it?

Rosanna Catalano  13:35

Yeah, we've been talking about family and you told us about your four kids and your wife. What was your home life like growing up?

Chef Joseph Longo  13:43

Everything was about food. Even the Italian house. Yeah, everything was food. It was you know, whether it was a birthday, a funeral, or a wedding. Everything was surrounded by food. And I understand I think that's what what really drew me to it as well because I I know the importance of food. You know, it's there when you need it. It's It's It's celebration, it's it's it's happiness, you know, for the most part and you know, I know in the Italian house It wasn't just about cooking the food It was about nurturing each other is about imparting What else could you do more for somebody then cook them a meal, you know, it's just it just hits you right, you know, right in the heart. So I don't think at least in our family, there was nothing more that you could show love for them cooking someone a really nice meal. And I just fell in love with the food. My dad loved going to restaurants so we always went to restaurants, which I always loved as well. I never would order off the kids meal. I had to have like a huge veal parm at like seven years old. But everything's food and it still is to this day.

Rosanna Catalano  15:00

Did you have a favorite cook growing up? Was it your mom, your dad, a grandparent? Was there somebody that you were like, Oh, so and so's making the whatever like, yeah, yeah. They're

Chef Joseph Longo  15:13

mostly mom, but I'm gonna give dad one credit the few times where mom had to go out. And you know, she wasn't cooking at night, he had his go to pasta dish. He called it the special. And it was basically like this crazy big CD that he would come up with. But we loved it. It was I grew up with two brothers. So it was three boys. And it would it would irritate my mom to know to know Wang because it was such a thrown together easy dish. And she's doing all this incredible food. And we're sitting here raving about the pasta, the special the specials, because Oh, really the special. The special definitely sticks out as as one of those dishes, I'll always remember.

Rosanna Catalano  15:58

I love that. If people came to see you at the frenchmans reserve, what could they expect from the menu and the service?

Chef Joseph Longo  16:08

Well, we do, we do everything, we have various outlets. So if you came to our restaurant, you would get this beautiful kind of full service comfort menu. If you came to one of our fine dining events, or one of our our wine dinners, you would get a a five course, you know, more elaborate kind of more technically advanced Type menu. But I think the biggest thing there is you would you would be happy. You know, that's really we decided that our our kind of mantra, and our motto is we're in the happiness business. And it's not about the food, it's not about the service. Yeah, those are all super important. But we just want people to be happy, we want you to be able to come to your restaurant, or come to any part of the club, and just have a great day, you know, have a have a happy day. And whether that involves good food and beverage or, you know, the service, whatever it may be, that's what we're gonna do. You know, so we're really in the happiness business, and we just happen to do food.

Rosanna Catalano  17:14

Do you find that your backup and running to 100% now that we're, you know, the pandemic? I mean, we're still in the middle of it. But I'm, your industry has taken a huge hit from that. How have you all been doing? And, you know, like I said, Are you all back? up the way you want to be?

Chef Joseph Longo  17:35

No, unfortunately, no. We are doing everything we can do with the sort of think outside the box of how to how to serve people in a safe, you know, responsible way. And right now, where we were lucky that we have a large outdoor serving area where we're doing most of our service that people are coming. The biggest thing that happened was this huge to go service that we do now. I mean, we we reinvented ourselves, so we're doing upwards of 150 deliveries a night, you know, so we're, we're, we're still there for you. I do. I do videos every day of the specials was sort of keeps people connected to the club into the kitchen. We're just going off the lead of our board as well. So everything's, it's very rare at this club that the board is asks if the employees are okay with the decisions. It's really really nice. It's really refreshing. It's not like okay, you're gonna do this, that and the other thing. Say, Chef, is your team okay with being open? On this particular night? Are they are we okay? with doing a small event upstairs? How do you guys feel about it? Yeah, we feel good about it. No problem. Okay, let's proceed. So that's really it. We're really being cautious. So far, we've been pretty lucky. You know, no employees have gotten anything. A few few of the members but uh, you know, we're still not doing banquets, we're still not doing buffets. We got a ways to go.

Rosanna Catalano  19:11

Well, I'm glad to hear that you all are doing as well as you can. Yes, yes, we are in stances. And I think it's lovely to hear that you all are being supported by your board. Very much. So come to work and feel that support it is so we'd like to end our show with a little fun by asking all of our guests the same seven questions. What would people be surprised to know about you?

Chef Joseph Longo  19:36

Oh, man, that uh, what would they be surprised to know about me? That I like 50s Music 1950s Okay, a lot of people would be surprised about that.

Rosanna Catalano  19:52

I would do that. But Okay.

19:54

Hey, there you go.

Rosanna Catalano  19:56

Who's your favorite artist?

Chef Joseph Longo  19:58

Oh my gosh, well, I like Dion and the belmonts because my dad grew up in North New Jersey. And he always had these stories of like, seeing these guys on the corner and all this other stuff. So I got the I got the style job, but put it that way.

Rosanna Catalano  20:13

I love it. Yeah. When you have guests in town, where's your favorite place to take them?

Chef Joseph Longo  20:19

We always take them to this little Brazilian buffet restaurant called the Picanha Brazil. And yeah, we take them to all the finer restaurants as well but everyone wants to come back to the Brazilian restaurant where they carve the steak you know table side and and it's a whole huge buffet and they just love it man, especially the people that come from New Jersey every time I take them. They're there. They can't wait. That's the first stop is the Brazilian buffet.

Rosanna Catalano  20:46

And where's Well, it's

Chef Joseph Longo  20:48

in Boca the one we go to is in Boca. But I we love going to Louie boss ease. I guess I'm just like my parents. I know a place where you go for here for the pizza, then you got to go to this place for a bagel. So I'm like all over the place, depending on what you want to eat.

Rosanna Catalano  21:04

And I returned home to South Florida. I'm gonna have you make me a map.

21:07

Yeah, definitely.

Rosanna Catalano  21:08

What is the name of a book you recently read that you could not put down or the name of a show? You enjoy binge watching.

Chef Joseph Longo  21:17

It's funny because I had never read kitchen confidential. And I finally picked that one up and read it. And I was like, it just it pretty much depicted my whole early career basically. So that was one I couldn't put down. I just I don't know why I never picked it up. After all these years. I finally took a look at it. Yeah. And that was great.

Rosanna Catalano  21:41

I love it. Your close family and friends. What are you best known for?

Chef Joseph Longo  21:47

I think just just a solid hard worker. Hopefully a great dad. I've been told family man, you know that that's really it. That's all I ever wanted to be anyway. Be a decent chef treat everybody great, but I just wanted to be a family man. And thank goodness, I got a beautiful wife a great, great support system. It's not easy and married to a chef, you know is a lot of lonely hours on your own. And I could not make do any of this without her man. She's She's though she's the star. And that's my story.

22:23

I love it.

Rosanna Catalano  22:23

If you have a nickname Who gave it to you,

Chef Joseph Longo  22:28

man. Well, it was kind of I was always known as zap. Right so and he had come in Italian neighborhood. Giuseppe just started the zap but I don't know who to give credit or smack them for it. But that became that one stuck bad so it was this short for Giuseppe I grew up in an Italian neighborhood and everybody had some type of Italian nickname and and that was mine.

Rosanna Catalano  22:56

You knew you could not fail? What would you attempt?

Chef Joseph Longo  23:00

Oh, man. Well, not I'm going to be 55 I think it's a little late. But I probably would have tried to open up a restaurant. You know, I always in the back of my mind. I wanted to but I also like working at the club, you know, so it's just it was this a very hard choice. But I knew I couldn't fail. I would I would give it a try. It's never too late. I know.

Rosanna Catalano  23:24

What are the top three things you love about living in Florida?

Chef Joseph Longo  23:29

Oh, man. Well, one is the beach because we love surfing. We love paddleboarding. We love that. I love the it's it's it's easy down here. I don't know how to explain it in a good way. I just always felt that it had an add an ease to the life. You know, coming from New Jersey and even living out in California. There was a different level of stress to everything I know. I don't know, I just feel I feel at ease down here. I feel less, less stressful. I also love the diversity of the people. You know, I love the melting pot. my beautiful wife from Brazil here. So I mean, it's I couldn't happen in any other state.

Rosanna Catalano  24:11

I grew up in South Florida, so I miss it. Yeah.

24:16

It's really nice. Well,

Rosanna Catalano  24:18

Thank you for joining us today. I hope I can refer to now as my paisano. 

Chef Joseph Longo  24:24

Oh you got it. 1,000% Thank you so much.

Rosanna Catalano  24:28

Yes, be sure to subscribe to our podcast on all your favorite podcasting listening platforms. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. Visit our website to see some extras regarding this episode. Our audio editor for this podcast episode is Joy Tootle with Rocket Ship Consultants. If you're interested in sponsoring our podcast or would like to suggest the future guests, please email me at feedback  @TheFloridaville.com

24:59

Thank you for tuning in.