Episode 93: Alon Shaya of Saba, Safta and Miss River Restaurants

The CHEF Radio Podcast

What happens when your passion meets purpose? Saba is what happens. Saba is Chef Alon Shaya’s flagship restaurant, which was his answer to that question and is the result of his passion for cooking helping him to find his purpose and his voice in food. After spending nearly an entire lifetime suppressing his heritage so that he could feel more acclimated to the American life that his family immigrated to, he discovered his roots in Israel and began cooking with his heart rather than his head. In this episode, Eli and Alon speak very frankly about the importance of creating a story, narrative, or purpose for your food and how it can be incredibly impactful for your guests.

Here’s what else you’ll hear:

• Alon’s immigration story from Israel
• How being poor in a wealthy suburb made him build a strong work ethic
• How his home economics teacher saved his life and put him on the right path
• His love for watching Emeril Lagasse
• Nearly getting kicked out of the CIA
• How Hurricane Katrina reshaped his entire perspective on food
• His time working with Chef Marc Vetri and spending time in Italy
• How he discovered Israeli food for the first time
• The number of seeds in a pomegranate and why he named his company after it
• How his nonprofit is improving the lives of New Orleans school kids
• The complexity of New Orleans food and how history, good and bad, has shaped it
• When life is no longer normal, humans crave normalcy
• The influence of all the different Middle Eastern countries on his food as well as his father’s Romanian heritage
• How has his departure from his former company helped shape his leadership style today
• Eli learns what a “second line” is in New Orleans
• Opening up his Denver restaurant and why they chose there for the second location
• Alon shares some of his favorite restaurants in New Orleans
• His companies day of service

A huge shout out to our sponsors, Maxwell McKenney and Singer Equipment, for their unwavering support, which allows us to be able to bring these conversations to you. Check out their websites for all the amazing equipment they can supply your restaurant with to make your team more efficient and successful.

Welcome to our newest sponsor, Meez, which is one of the most powerful tools you can have as a cook and chef that allows you to have a free repository for all of your recipes, techniques and methods so that you never lose them. Besides that, it does way more, so check them out and make sure you use the discount code that you’ll here in the podcast to upload 25 free recipes to the platform.

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Email Eli with any comments, concerns, criticisms, guest requests or any other ideas or thoughts you might have about the show. [e-mail]