Celebrity Chef Jeff Mauro: 5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Became a Chef
An Interview With Vicky Colas
Do not expand too fast. If you find success early on, the offers will come rolling in. Choose wisely and make sure you hone the model before expanding too quickly.
As part of our series about the lessons from influential ‘TasteMakers’, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Chef Jeff Mauro.
Emmy-nominated Celebrity Chef Jeff Mauro was born and raised in Chicago where he was determined from an early age to become the funniest chef in the world. After years spent cooking in restaurants, graduating with honors from culinary school and performing on stage, he landed himself on Season 7 of the hit show Food Network Star. He ultimately won the competition by combining his passions for cooking with comedy and landed his own series, the Emmy-nominated Sandwich King. After five successful seasons to date, he was tapped by the Food Network to also co-host the hit daytime show and 4-time Emmy-nominated The Kitchen, now in its 29th season. Jeff is also the host of the new primetime game show Kitchen Crash as well as the author of the best-selling cookbook Come on Over.
Jeff is also the proud creator of Mauro Provisions, a new brand providing the world with all the foods Jeff and his family grew up loving, eating and cooking. He has been a guest co-host of The Today Show and featured on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Steve Harvey, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, Chopped and Beat Bobby Flay, among many others. He also hosts the hit weekly podcast Come on Over with his little sister Emily.
He still lives “in the same damn neighborhood he grew up in” with his wife Sarah, his son Lorenzo, and their two dogs JoJo & Pinot G. His favorite color is Pastrami and his favorite smell is meat smoke.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to ‘get to know’ you a bit. Can you share with our readers a story about what inspired you to become a restauranteur or chef?
I was born and raised in Chicago and was determined at an early age to become the funniest chef in the world. After years of cooking in restaurants and graduating from culinary school, I ended up on Season 7 of the show Food Network Star, which led to my own show Sandwich King.
Today, I co-host The Kitchen and host the new game show Kitchen Crash, and recently came out with a cookbook Come on Over. I live in a suburb of Chicago with my wife Sarah, son Lorenzo, and our two dogs JoJo & Pinot G.
Do you have a specific type of food that you focus on? What was it that first drew you to cooking that type of food? Can you share a story about that with us?
I’m a huge sandwich guy, hence my show Sandwich King, and I believe that any sandwich can be turned into a meal, and any meal can easily become a sandwich. My favorite sandwich is a pastrami on rye with mustard.
I’ve been perfecting my sandwich game since grade school when I would pack the ingredients — turkey, cheese, lettuce and tomato — in separate bags for ultimate freshness.
Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that happened to you since you became a chef or restauranteur? What was the lesson or take away you took out of that story?
During my first take of the first full season of Sandwich King, I cut myself pretty badly for the first and ONLY time on air. The first thing I was doing in the first episode was chopping parsley — I swiped it off my knife and with the parsley came a good chunk of my thumb.
Not only did that happen at 6:30am on the first shot, but Bob Tuschman had flown in to watch and oversee my first episode. It was a fail beyond failure. But he reassured me that Rachael Ray did the same thing on the first take of her first season of her first show, and that only led to good things.
Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey? How did you overcome this obstacle?
When I was about 6 weeks into the 10-week Food Network Star journey, I was beyond homesick, missing my wife Sarah and then 2-year-old son Lorenzo. It was brutal. No distractions like movies, TV, books or music. Just the roommates, the house and the intense competition. I knew I owed it to myself and family to persevere and keep pushing through. At that point, I was a front runner and I needed to not only make it the distance, but WIN. Glad I did….
In your experience, what is the key to creating a dish that customers are crazy about?
I believe to create a delicious dish, or sandwich, starts with ratios. There must be a proper meat-to-cheese-to-bread ratio. One element should not outshine the other. They must all work in harmony to showcase each unique flavor and texture. Also, don’t overdo it; keep it simple. Three to four ingredients, max.
Personally, what is the ‘perfect meal for you’?
We don’t eat sandwiches every night. I don’t think anybody can. I love one-pot meals in a Dutch over, like a braised meat. We love stews, like hearty soups. And we eat a lot of salads, too, because it’s the yang to my sandwich yin. Life’s about balance.
Where does your inspiration for creating come from? Is there something that you turn to for a daily creativity boost?
My inspiration comes from three magnificent matriarchs of the Mauro/Berni/Speziale family. From a very young age, my mother Pam and her two sisters, Aunt Phil and Aunt Jae, have showed me the power and importance of food, family and saying the wonderful phrase, ‘Come on Over!’
Are you working on any new or exciting projects now? What impact do you think this will have?
I’m working on a lot of things right now, mainly my popular podcast Come on Over that I host with my lil’ sister Emily, as well as my new best-selling cookbook, titled Come On Over, but most recently I helped the CESAR brand launch a new dining experience, Bestie Bowls, to help pets and their humans enjoy more moments of shared joy.
For me, there’s no better way to create shared memories than over a good meal, and this “pup-up” restaurant via the CESAR brand and Postmates allowed pet parents and their dogs to partake in the joy of shared mealtime. Offering “yours” and “theirs” meal duos on demand, Bestie Bowls featured new CESAR WHOLESOME BOWLS Canine Cuisine for dogs (a new culinary-inspired wet dog food crafted with real meat and fresh vegetables) and a tasty and balanced human bowl inspired by those WHOLESOME BOWL recipes for pet parents, made by yours truly.
What advice would you give to other chefs or restauranteurs to thrive and avoid burnout?
Realize that the restaurant business is not for everyone. The staff, the margins, the hours, the physicality of it all….so, so brutal. If you feel yourself burning out, find another angle, another facet of the food industry such as catering, private cheffing, retail, meal kit delivery, etc. to apply those passions and skills. There are so many ways besides a brick-and-mortar restaurant to create food and feed the masses these days, and the pandemic made this blazingly clear.
Thank you for all that. Now we are ready for the main question of the interview. What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started as a Restauranteur or Chef” and why? Please share a story or an example for each.
- Don’t hire family. They are easy to hire, impossible to fire.
- Sign every check. Don’t let nobody else sign those checks, especially if your name is on them!
- Use other people’s money!
- Do not expand too fast. If you find success early on, the offers will come rolling in. Choose wisely and make sure you hone the model before expanding too quickly.
- Listen to your significant other, and sometimes, trust their instincts as much as yours. Sometimes chefs and creatives are clouded in a lot of BS….it often takes a great partner to help you see clearly so you can make clear decisions. My wife is my Tom Hagen, my tried and true consigliere.
What’s the one dish people have to try if they visit your establishment?
Our Mauro Provisions Prime Italian Beef Kit with our Craft Giardiniera. It’s the best, ready to eat, heat and serve Italian Beef on the planet. It comes with authentic Turano Rolls, our wildly popular Hot Giardiniera, the luxurious gravy, and of course, our shaved Prime Italian Beef. You heat the gravy, dunk the beef for a minute and build one of the world’s greatest sandwiches.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
I would make sure all kids, from every neighborhood and background, have access to instruments and music education. Music is constant and necessary, and with a total decimation of public and private school music programs, there is a giant void. Not all children have access to instruments or funds to begin the journey of music discovery. I am actually organizing a benefit concert for my best friend Tom Zimmerman, who passed away last year during Covid, and we haven’t had a chance to properly memorialize him. Tom was a brilliant songwriter and musician who was very well known in the Chicago Indie scene, so me and all his past members are throwing him a proper send off at the legendary Fitzgerald’s in Berwyn where all the proceeds benefit several year-long music scholarships for underserved children at the School of Rock Oak Park (one of Tom’s final wishes was to teach children music). To donate and for tickets to this all-you-can-drink and BBQ event, head to tomfest.org. I actually play in TWO different bands there, among many others, so it should be a blast.
Thank you so much for these insights. This was very inspirational!
