Chef Darren Smith: Mastering the Restaurant Business

Join us as we dive deep into the world of culinary excellence with Chef Darren Smith, a renowned restaurateur and culinary maestro. In this episode, Darren shares his inspiring journey from his early days in the kitchen to becoming a successful restaurant owner. Discover the secrets behind running a thriving restaurant, including the importance of hiring great talent and fostering a positive work environment.

Darren reveals the core values that guide his restaurant's success: creating an inviting atmosphere, serving exceptional food promptly, and maintaining menu integrity. Aspiring chefs will gain valuable insights as Darren offers advice on learning from seasoned professionals, exploring cookbooks, and embracing family food traditions.

We also explore Darren's personal life, from cherished memories of his grandparents' frugal yet delicious meals to his own tradition of cooking for family and friends. Learn about his passion for local ingredients and the strong relationships he's built with farmers and fishmongers.

Darren takes us behind the scenes of his experience on ChefSwap and the thrill of competing on a cooking show. Plus, get insider tips on hidden culinary gems in Conway and the surrounding area.

Don't miss this captivating episode filled with culinary wisdom, personal anecdotes, and invaluable advice for food enthusiasts and aspiring chefs alike.

Rivertown Bistro
Bonfire- A Smokin' Taqueria

Special Thanks:
Visit Myrtle Beach

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Everyone has a story to tell. We connect and relate to one another when we share our stories. My name is Amelia Old and I am your host of Voices of Inspiration. Join me as I share stories of friends, family and strangers from my everyday life and travels. You will laugh, possibly cry or walk away, feeling connected more than ever to those around you and ready to be the change our world needs. Everyone has a story to tell. What's yours?

Speaker 2: 0:38

So thank you so much for joining me today and taking time out of your crazy busy schedule and just to tell me a little bit about your story in the culinary world. I really appreciate you being with me today.

Speaker 3: 0:51

I'm happy to be here. As usual, both restaurants are just full tilt. I've got great crews at both those, so they're handling things, which allows me to spend some time chatting with you things, which allows me to spend some time chatting with you.

Speaker 2: 1:10

Now. Let's start with that, because you told me when I met you you have employees that have been with you a really long time, and I thought that was so impressive.

Speaker 3: 1:16

Yeah, I've been real fortunate. I don't know what all the circumstances were that brought it together, but I've been real lucky to hire very good people. Of course, I like to think I treat them well, pay them as much as I can and make sure they get paid and give them a good working environment and therefore in this industry, which is known for really high turnover, I've had people working with me over two decades. At Rivertown Bistro. My general manager has been with me roughly 18 years, my chef roughly 20 years. Wow, he started off as a dishwasher and a prep cook and just moved up through the ranks, you know, and I'm fortunate to have solid people that were willing to learn, adapt and grow with me as I've grown on my culinary journey.

Speaker 2: 2:19

I think that's really amazing. They must love what they do, and I think that's great to find people like that as well.

Speaker 3: 2:26

Yeah, there's a true passion for them. My general manager, lee, is outstanding, service-oriented. It helps that she's a good cook, a foodie, she knows wines, she's just stellar. She gets along really well with my wife. My wife has backed off of the day-to-day operations. It used to be she and I daily at Rivertown when we opened 30 years ago. She did all the front of the house and the wine ordering and she's still integral in all that. My wife Cindy, and actually she's in the house on her computer. She's taking her Psalm course. So she's still got the passion too.

Speaker 3: 3:09

And then Terry, my chef, once again started off dishing, moved slowly up the ranks through garbage, desserts, grill, saute. He can do everything in the kitchen that I can do. And he's younger and so that's a plus, because cooking is a young man's sport. I can still hang with the guys, I show them technique and new things all the time for eight hours, day in and day out. It's kind of grueling. So I let the young guys kind of do that on the daily, but I'm still around. I'm usually at either of the restaurants anywhere from 10 to 12 hours a day.

Speaker 2: 3:55

What inspired you to pursue a career in the culinary world?

Speaker 3: 4:00

That's funny. I attended Winthrop University, which is right outside of Charlotte, purely to play soccer. It's Um, I I really didn't know. But then reality started to set in, like what if I can't play? Or what if something happened to my legs or something? And my brother at the time, uh, had graduated uh, culinary school up in Rhode Island.

Speaker 3: 4:43

We're both from the Southeast, he was born in Tennessee, I was born in Charleston, but he sung the praises of cooking. And this is back before. It was cool to be a cook. There were no cooking shows. I mean, there was like the Galloping Gourmet which I started to get hooked on and it was this chef, uh, I forget what country it was from, but pasquale, I think it was italian, but I would watch both of them, um, and some other various shows.

Speaker 3: 5:12

But he sung the praises of you know just cooking and how it makes you feel, and the camaraderie. And you know, if you surround yourself with good cooks and you're sending out good food, you're making people happy, the immediacy of a meal course after course, in the span of a couple of hours, people will come back into the kitchen oftentimes and say, hey, that was one of the best dishes I've ever had, or we're celebrating our anniversary and we're here because the food's so good. Um, and once I started cooking in that frame of mind, um, it just takes over all your senses. Uh, it gives you a good purpose. Um, pleasing other people, it's an honest trade. You'll always eat, I mean, there's just so many pluses about it.

Speaker 3: 5:59

So, um, I love it as much as I did the first day I started doing it and it clicked with me, and I like to spread that out to all of my employees, just that you know, working in the kitchen or working serving tables isn't anything to be. I don't know. I think some people look at it as a stepping stone to get to a career. I think this is a career, and an important one, because I think not enough people gather around a dinner table and eat good, delicious, fresh food. Enough. Everyone's too frantic, everyone. Oh, let's just pick up, carry out.

Speaker 3: 6:42

You know, don't get me wrong wrong I like carry out occasionally, but I just really enjoy the the meal aspect.

Speaker 2: 6:50

I love that. Can you share a memorable experience from maybe your early days in the kitchen that sort of shaped your approach to cooking?

Speaker 3: 7:02

um, I had, uh. I moved from Rock Hill, where Winthrop was, down to Mount Pleasant to live with my dad and my goal was to work at Johnson and Wales. So I toured the school and subsequently I had enough credits that would attribute to an associate's degree on an accelerated program. But I had to get some practical experience, which I'm very thankful for. I didn't just start culinary school, they wanted me in the field learning sort of the school of hard knocks and I worked at a few sort of dive restaurants. And then I walked into this restaurant that was on Shem Creek, coleman Boulevard, right beside Shem Creek. It was called Locklear's and everyone in the kitchen got along really well and there were some true Southern Geechee guys that had that thick Geechee accent and their grandmothers had taught them how to cook. My grandmothers had taught them how to cook. So these guys were my age to mid-20s and knew how to cook grits and okra and all this delicious stuff. But they could also saute snapper and make bernets restaurant, where we're making everything from scratch, and the mother sauces. And if you had an idea, the chef was very stubborn but he would come around and accept that you did want to learn. We would always have to do things his way, but it was such an important thing for me to see why butter, when it's clarified clarified emulsifies into egg yolks, because every day we're doing it and I just always wanted to know why and how much lemon juice and a little bit of salt and some tarragon reduction, and how it transforms this hollandaise into this delicious sauce. That's probably my first memory of me making something. And then we draped it over, how it was, on a filet. We also did it on a spiced chicken breast, with these roasted potatoes, with this delicate buttery sauce, and it just I remember we cooked it and we all ate it and I was just thrilled that I had prepared this dish.

Speaker 3: 9:25

Um, that's probably my earliest memory of working in a professional kitchen and making something the first time. But then the repetitive aspect of making that dish as close as you can so that if three people at a six top get it, each plate looks the same, tastes the same. I found the importance in that as well. So there are a lot of things that you absorb, especially as a younger person. When you come into a professional environment like that. Some people are like, oh, 12 hours and it's hot and I could cut myself and there's flames and no, this isn't for me. I've seen it day in and day out. But some people like myself go bring it on. I love it. Let's get busy. Let's do 20 more people than we did last night, and last night we did 20 more than the previous night. It's that adrenaline rush.

Speaker 2: 10:22

Now you've. Now you've run several successful restaurants and you have a couple of successful restaurants. Now, what values or principles guide your approach to running a successful restaurant?

Speaker 3: 10:37

I think the nuts and bolts have to be from the ground up. You want a good atmosphere. You want good food served in a timely fashion. You want enough variety that people a mixed group of people can all find something that they like. You have to get the food to the table.

Speaker 3: 11:00

When I moved to Conway I realized it's the county seat, so a lot of attorneys on schedules. We weren't on the coast with this four hour lunch that people could enjoy. They come in every now and then. You might sell a glass of wine, but people are wanting a sweet tea. Their lunch in about 15 minutes after being seated and then they're on their way. And once you could do that, we could pack the house.

Speaker 3: 11:29

So we learned to um, cook really good food really quickly. Um, and prepare ourselves and do as much as we could to make it easier on ourselves. You know you can. You certainly can't boil pasta to order or make risottos, so you learn to part these things off. Go ahead and have your vegetables cut, or maybe the longer cooking root vegetables pre-roasted, doing all these touches that some people might consider sandbagging, but I consider it being smart. Um, lining your pantry with infused oils and spice blends and different garnishes, um, compound butters in your freezer, um, all of a sudden you can make these world-class dishes and people are like wow, and you just used your arsenal of stuff. Sudden, you can make these world-class dishes and people are like, wow, and you just used your arsenal of stuff that you've prepared.

Speaker 3: 12:25

Yeah, I think it's important a good environment, good food and truth in menu. Um, you know, I've eaten in plenty of places where you read something on the menu and when it comes out it's like this is not grouper or they say these are local, whatever, and it doesn't appear to be that way. So I don't know why people would do that. It's so much easier to say what you're going to do and do what you're going to say, I guess.

Speaker 3: 12:55

But I'm a big fan of you know, I was changing the menu very frequently, but I learned that I kind of need to keep a core menu in place and two or three times a year we change, because now I don't really want root vegetables and that kind of stuff, and asparagus is popping up, you know, and there's some hyper seasonal foods that I thoroughly enjoy, thoroughly enjoy, but I can't do fiddlehead ferns and ramps and these ingredients that I really enjoy getting um all throughout the summer. So I get a bunch in and I'll make the ramp uh, the green part of the ramp into tubs and tubs of pesto and stick them in the freezer and then pickle the whites and, um, you know, pickle morel mushrooms or whatever, just to elongate the season for myself and to let others enjoy it that way.

Speaker 2: 13:47

You know, I think that that is really important to keep the menu, you know, somewhat the same, because it can be frustrating as someone dining in a restaurant and you're going there for a specific dish and then the menu has been changed and people like what they like, right, and so they're coming to you oftentimes because there's something specific on that menu that they just have a craving for, that they really want. So I do think that that is important. You know, as a diner that seeing a restaurant kind of stick to you know that core group of dishes.

Speaker 3: 14:24

Well, and yeah, for sure, and I purposely rotate dishes from 30 years ago, um, and it's funny for me to do that, and I think to myself how is it that you know I wrote a menu 30 years ago we opened June in 1994, and I had some pretty fun things on the menu and I'll describe a few of them. But I had just learned about tapenade and I loved to smear it on a meaty fish and roast it in the oven with panko breadcrumbs mixed with pine nuts as the crust and simply serve that over caramelized onions. It was simple, it was delicious, it was packed full of flavor and it was something that I could do, because I was basically the only cook and I could do that well and I could serve that and people really, really liked it. And at the same time, on the same menu, I had a black, a lightly blackened dolphin and I still black and stuff to this day. Um, one of the previous chefs that I worked with uh got Paul Prudhomme's cookbook and, um, we, we just devoured that book. Every recipe how to make rue, uh, gumbos, etouffees, you name it.

Speaker 3: 15:47

Um, I got engrossed in that too, and that you know that was uh, early mid eighties. Uh, um, and that's when I started to get intrigued in that, probably about 87, 88. Um, I started to get intrigued in that probably about 87, 88. Um, I could be wrong, but I think so. But anyway, I would blacken this dolphin and I put it on a jalapeno grit cake. So there was a restaurant in Charleston that had just opened and I want to say they did the grit cake or maybe I saw it, I forget where I saw it. Um, but I thought I'll make it my own and I'll put diced up, pickled jalapenos in it to add to that heat and I'm going to blacken it and then I'm going to cool it all with a blue crab cream poured over the top and then I'll just do some seasonal vegetables or maybe zucchini and squash on the side.

Speaker 3: 16:36

So those are two dishes. You know, I could flat top, I could drop the great cake, I would pre-make the sauce, the crab cream, and keep it up high. I could roast the fish in the oven. So I had these two dishes and then I had a steak, I had a couple of pastas and I just kind of learned to do these things that were fresh and good and very flavorful but not locked in. You know this was kind of low country, this is kind of Mediterranean, and I was pulling from all these different areas and foods that I had eaten at and liked and I took great joy in that.

Speaker 3: 17:10

So I don't like to be pigeonholed. I call my restaurant Rivertown Bistro, not that it's a Brasserie or a French Bistro, even though I love Razzare's and bistros and that's one of my go-tos when I eat out of town. But I do want mussels with good crusty bread or French fries, and I have French onion soup on my menu. But we also have references to Jamaica. We have Jamaican jerk sauce on my menu, I've got risotto.

Speaker 3: 17:40

I've got through and through low country and I think it's important to use local stuff. I'm so tired of the moniker farm to table, because if you're not doing that, what exactly are you doing? But I think people say that way too much. It's just like of course you should use local because it's local, and why wouldn't you? But that also doesn't stop me from getting salmon flown in, because people really like salmon and I can't get salmon here and I don't know. I just think submerging yourself into doing things, or at least try to do things the right way your hiring practices, the way you prep, the way you treat your ingredients, all the way down to recycling. I think it's important to try your best. Sometimes you don't make it all the way, sometimes it's maybe at the end of the day I'm like man, I feel like I only did 85%, you know. Well, that's okay. Sometimes, you know, you just pick yourself up, dust yourself off and the next day you attempt it again.

Speaker 3: 18:52

One of my favorite cookbook authors, charlie Trotter, you know he recently passed. I was lucky enough to eat at his restaurant, but he had wonderful quotes through his restaurant, through his cookbooks, and one of them was from another chef. But it basically said and I'll just paraphrase that unlike most other occupations, the chef starts new every single day. I mean, you're going into a hopefully a clean stove, empty pans, and here comes your product and you break down the fish and you chop your vegetables and you do that. You get a clean slate every day and you can say, okay, gosh, this is a lot of work. Or you can say I'm going to make this stuff delicious and I'm going to have fun prepping it and we're going to have a good night's service and before we know it, we're going to be mopping our stations down, and then we'll have a glass of wine and toast the night, and then we're going to do it all over again tomorrow.

Speaker 2: 19:45

I love that. What has been, you think, one of the biggest challenges that you faced through your journey, and how did you overcome it?

Speaker 3: 19:56

Even in a really good economy, with low food prices and abundant labor, what else? When everything's like hitting on all cylinders, a restaurant is very difficult to run profitably. So my wife and I have always tried to put everything under the magnifying glass, holding all of our purveyors to the task of yes, I want the best, I will pay top dollar for the best, but I don't want you to then think I want to pay top dollar for flour and salt and stuff that you can gouge me in other areas. So I think it's really important to build relationships, not only with my workers and we're a family there but my purveyors. When they come in and they bring people in reps, I want to buy their lunch. I'm not looking for freebies for them, I want to see their products and I want the purveyor and my local guy to know that they can come eat with me and I like them. I don't look at them as like. I've been in situations where I've seen other restaurant owners and chefs treat their salesmen and yell at them like they're underlings, like my fish didn't come in and it's your fault, you're going to have to do this. I mean, we're all trying to do the right thing. So, um, I think you know, keeping things in perspective, putting everything under the magnifying glass and holding yourself and everyone else to task is important. Sure, people look at me and go man, that guy has two restaurants and you know he can, you know, probably makes a lot of money. The profit margin is so small in what we do. Um, I do take advantage of eating really, really good food and drinking delicious wines and going on trips to food destinations, wine destinations, where the people that I purchased from take care of us and let us stay for free and give us private tours. Those aspects are invaluable to me. That's where I'm wealthy Monetarily.

Speaker 3: 22:14

I think Mondavi said and I'll liken it to a restaurant, but he said you want to know how to make a small fortune in the wine industry, start with a large fortune. And that's probably my favorite quote, because at the end of it all, you have a small fortune but look what fun you've had and you've sold your stuff and you've made other people happy. You know, of course I want to save money and I have a daughter that's the light of my life and she's in college now. So putting her through school and I grew up, uh, not as fortunate as a lot of my contemporaries.

Speaker 3: 22:53

Um, my, my family didn't make a lot of money, so I appreciated the smaller things in life and the fact that we would go out to dinner maybe every other month. My dad would save his money and we would go out to a nice place to get a steak and maybe learn the value of it. My parents never gave me a car or anything. I would work my butt off to have some of the nicer things in life and do good enough to buy my daughter a car and pay her way through school and not spoil her to the extent where she expects it, but teach her the value of life and what to do and take nothing for granted.

Speaker 2: 23:41

I can relate to you in a lot of ways with that. You know I also didn't grow up, you know, wealthy I didn't. You know my family didn't have a lot. But one thing that is important to me, like yourself, are the experiences that we have along the way and growing from those and experiencing those with our loved ones, and even with our children two are who adults now and we still have one at home. One of our favorite things to do with the holidays is give them a gift of an experience, whether that's a trip with us, you know, one-on-one time, concert tickets, you know, an activity they really wanted to do but an experience where that they can create these memories and it's not something that they're just going to toss to the side in six months. So I think that those things are really incredible and important.

Speaker 3: 24:33

I think that's just fantastic. That gave me goosebumps. I think that's so important. You know, like you say, around the holidays, you know what is the reason for the season. You know we all, we always uh, pause for the true reason. But then of course we want to rip into some fun gifts. But then we do the same thing too. We want to um plan a trip and um, sometimes we'll even skip the whole tradition. I will say we kind of miss the traditions when we do it, but we do. We'll book a trip to New York over the Christmas holiday and get a nice hotel room and bring a little Charlie Brown tree and candles that smell like pine, so we have that feeling like we're at home. But then we're walking the city and it's snowing and we're eating at Jean Georges or Per Se or a hot dog from the street cart, and man talk about some fun memories. So yeah, we're very similar in those respects. I think that's awesome, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 25:44

So what advice would you give to aspiring chefs who want to build a career in the culinary industry?

Speaker 3: 25:57

Read, collect cookbooks when you get out of culinary school. You are not a chef school. You are not a chef. Work under several good chefs, but spend time. Don't work for two months and think you've learned somebody's technique, work ethic. Work for somebody for a year, work for another place for a year or two and then start developing your situation, what you think you want to do. I just think I'm a mentor.

Speaker 3: 26:39

I sit on the culinary board for the culinary school and I'm very good friends with all the chefs out there, and when they get an up and comer, that's really good. We're one of the places that they'll send, and that's my first thing to tell them is to just, you know, go in to my restaurant and be clean, be organized, listen and then slowly develop. I think that's the biggest thing, is to just take it all in, take every aspect in, watch how the service is, watch how um people move, um, when you're walking behind somebody and you say behind you and you know all the little, there's so many little jargon, whatever you want to call it, in the, the restaurant business, in the kitchen, um, that that's its whole language in itself. Um. So if you mesh, maybe um, a stage or a you or a cooking experience or some cooking with some good chefs, and you get some cookbooks and you look at them and you read them and you look at them. I get them more for the pictures. I collect cookbooks. I have hundreds. I don't get them to get somebody's recipe so that I can make their scone or something, even though maybe you know I would. But I get it because I want to see the chef's mentality, I want to read who the person was that wrote the foreword and I want to know that the grandma did this way and then I switched it up to make it this way. You know, there's always a good story in them. So young chefs should do that and look at your family and how your family ate.

Speaker 3: 28:31

Like I said, I grew up with fish sticks and jarred applesauce and I had never had fresh fish. I didn't know. I thought barbecue came in a can. I'm not kidding Castleberry's barbecue. I'll eat it to this day. Chef Boyardee pizza that's what I thought pizza was. Um.

Speaker 2: 28:53

I've got a box.

Speaker 3: 28:55

Exactly, Exactly. And um, if I make the Chef Boyardee pizza with that stinky Pecorino Romano canned cheese that I love and it's baking in the oven Romano canned cheese that I love and it's baking in the oven I go all the way back to eighth grade watching six million dollar man and Logan's run. And I'm in the den and my mom and dad are in the kitchen and my brother's on the couch. I'm laying on the floor and that's the smell. That's like aromatherapy to me. Just things like that, like jarred ragu sauce. Do I serve that at my restaurants? No, but do I?

Speaker 3: 29:33

eat that at home often it's just a childhood thing. I think I think it's just good to uh, I look at how each of my grandparents treated mealtime. My dad's mom very, very frugal, grew up through the depression, didn't have a lot of money, and then her, my dad's dad, was a fireman and ironically gotten a wreck with another fire truck and passed away when my dad was like 14. And subsequently his mom remarried about 10 years later to a guy that did have money, but that didn't stop them from being frugal. They would tear a bounty paper towel in half and that would be our dinner napkin, and when we would eat over there.

Speaker 3: 30:23

She didn't necessarily cook, she would get the leftover stovetop stuffing from two nights ago and maybe one piece of personal pan pizza from five or six days ago and she would have the cooler clean out is what we would call it on our way over there to eat, and we loved it. My mom's parents had a garden and they didn't have a whole lot of money, but we would eat fresh silver queen corn and pick watermelon and we would always eat chicken, never any fish. But still I take away from those instances and I cherish them and I cherish them and.

Speaker 3: 31:06

I like to do those kind of things for my wife, of course, my daughter and my daughter's friends. We've even started a tradition. Sophia has nine suite mates and when I met them on moving in day I said I think it'd be cool for me to cook for you girls. Of course I want you to come to the restaurants, but I would love to open up my home. We have a big dining table and I would like to cook for you girls. You know, of course I want you to come to the restaurants, but I would love to open up my home. We have a a a big dining table and I would like to cook for y'all and give you a home cooked meal. And they said can you do it tonight? And I did. And subsequently we do it once a month. They come over. If it's nice, they swim in the pool. If it's cold, we light a fire and I've cooked anything that. There's favorite dishes from their childhood. I'll recreate whether it's. They call it pasta with gravy.

Speaker 3: 31:57

All these girls are from new england, like new hampshire, boston, none of them are from around here, so that's been cool too to hear where they come from lobster bakes and all this other stuff. So I learned a little bit from them. So it's like full circle.

Speaker 2: 32:14

To go back to. You were talking about some of the meals that make you think of home and bring back these memories. It's funny how that works, I mean, even for me the same. There are times where, you know we grew up, a bowl of pinto beans would have been dinner. Or you know, my mother would make the have these little dinner rolls and put a slice of ham in it and that was dinner, you know. And so now sometimes I do find comfort in great Northern beans or pinto beans and okra and things like that.

Speaker 2: 32:46

You know, I'm definitely very southern, but one of the treats and my kids always thought this was funny because you know, you couldn't just buy like whatever you wanted at the grocery store, and something as simple as a bag of ruffle potato chips and the French onion dip was only you had that for birthdays and that was it. And so I would still, when my kids were even little, we I would still buy that, and I'm, you know, of course I can buy it. You know what I want. Now I'm like this is a, this is a treat, this was like a special thing, and even now I find myself when I want like that treat or that snack, that's one of my go-tos, which is so funny, you know, looking back on that, and the same with my kids.

Speaker 2: 33:36

They come home to visit Well, what would you like me to make for when you were younger? Or they just come home with their request. You know they're ready. They want this Monday, this Tuesday, this Wednesday, right, yeah, yeah. So how has Conway influenced your culinary style and the atmosphere of your restaurants?

Speaker 3: 34:01

That's a good question. I came here from Charleston. When Charleston was just going through its sort of renaissance, I spoke to you about a restaurant that opened. It was Magnolia's Donald Barrackman. He ended up being not like a best friend, but I knew him. Some of his line cooks I became friends with just because they would like date the server of the kitchen that I was working at. But he he opened up and then um, peninsula grill. So now it's like blown up, it's, it's crazy. So when I came up here, I had a backbone of being a good cook. I knew I was a good cook. A backbone of being a good cook. I knew I was a good cook. I wanted to be a good chef.

Speaker 3: 34:50

Oh, back to that and this is parallel for the questions about being a chef To me, if you're going to be a chef, or call yourself a chef, you better know how to answer any question in your kitchen. Oh, this vinaigrette has shattered, why? How do I re-emulsify? All right, this snapper, or is this yellowtail or triple tail or golden tile? What is this fish? Here's four fish in the walk-in. You should be able to know where the pin bones are. You should be able to break down whatever it is on your menu, whatever it is you're serving. You know Thomas Keller has the Bible of cookbooks.

Speaker 3: 35:36

A lot of chefs think, and he goes through the importance of trusting a chicken. He went to one of his first restaurant jobs, thinking he was a chef, and the French chef said, here, trust these chickens. And he flipped it over and he looked at it and he took some twine and he tied the legs together. He said that chef got so mad at him he threw a knife at him. I don't know if he's like over embellishing, but it was a life lesson for him that you don't go around boasting I'm a chef. If you're not a chef you should be able to saute, grill, cook to temperature, um, just every aspect of it. That that's very important. And then back to your question about Conway. I've really grown since I've lived here. I guess the Conway aspect would be getting to know. I was very fortunate that my landlord when I first moved to town I assumed the lease of an existing restaurant and the landlord, uh, was George Jenkins, one of my best customers and ended up being a dear friend, but he was a gardener.

Speaker 3: 36:47

His family had a lot of property, to the point that he owned a lot of property on 501, the main drag in Conway and he sold that property to Chick-fil-A and a bunch of these big companies. So George Jenkins the farmer really had a lot of money and you wouldn't really know it. I dressed nicely and drove a pickup truck, ate at my restaurant a whole lot with his wife and family. But as far as a farmer, I remember one of the first days after I was in there kind of renovating and doing stuff, he came to the back door with banana, peppers and asparagus and I'm like, oh my goodness, what is all this? Some tomatoes and some squash? He said, uh, out, six mile is my farm and, um, I'd like to supply you stuff when it's in season. And I'm like, oh my God. He said I brought you this just to say welcome. I want you to do your best, but I want you to know that you can come out there.

Speaker 3: 37:50

And you know I I had seen a little bit of gardening growing up at my grandfather's but I didn't know it. Well, I would spend hours out there with George learning and picking and bringing stuff back. Um, that's probably where I've learned the most, and then subsequently that's probably where I've learned the most. And then subsequently, um other farmers caught wind that I might like local stuff. Beekeepers started bringing me honey. Uh, people that had chickens are bringing me eggs. And, um, now we have a farmer's market on Saturday mornings and I go through there and it's like there's probably 10 of them, that I'm close to little booths and we just talk. You know, how's your kids? How's Sophia? Okay, I'll take, you know, a loaf of bread. And then the next one oh, these strawberries are beautiful. Um, I kept building those relationships.

Speaker 3: 38:42

And the fishmongers over at the beach I got some really good guys that know. You know, if triggerfish hits the dock I'll buy every piece that they have. It's one of my favorite fish. I used to love it because I thought it was better than grouper and one-eighth of the price. Now everything's 24 a pound, so you just got to get it. But you know, softshell crabs, uh, those guys just know that I'll pay whatever the fair price is. And you know, reading books and then traveling and seeing other really good restaurants and how they plate food and almost the vibe of the restaurant is what I'm looking for when I travel and eat out. And my daughter. You know she's 19. She loves Chick-fil-A nuggets and waffle fries, but she also likes a tasting menu at a Michelin starred restaurant, and so we thrive on that.

Speaker 2: 39:38

Can you talk about some hidden gems or local favorites in Conway or the surrounding area that you would recommend visitors explore?

Speaker 3: 40:11

Oh, delicious. The salsa verdes, the salsas, their queso fresca cotija. You know I buy a lot of that stuff because my one restaurant is a barbecue place and I do tacos, but for some reason their stuff tastes a little better to me, I don't know. So those are two really, really good ones.

Speaker 3: 40:35

My fishmonger right now I'm using Mr Fish and he had a restaurant beside his cut shop. He subsequently sold that, but in his cut shop they have everything available, right Snapper, barramundi. They have a lobster tank scallops anything you want and I get a lot of my stuff from him. But you can also go in therei. They have a lobster tank scallops, anything you want, you know, and I get a lot of my stuff from him. But you can also go in there and they have a menu. You get a fish sandwich or whatever, or you can just go hey, I want those four of those u10 scallops blackened. I'm going to start with that and they'll inadvertently be like we just made this killer crab bisque. I'm like, all right, we'll get a cup of that, we'll eat that, and then we'll have a glass of wine and then I'll go okay, we want a steamed lobster and whatever, and we'll order a bottle of wine and it'll come out in an oyster bucket with ice. An oyster bucket is a plastic bucket that we get select oysters in to fry. Anyway, they reuse them. And the first time I ate there it's been years. But I just love that and it's inexpensive. And I tell everyone I know to go there. Don't go to the places like down in Merle's Inlet where it's a two hour wait and you're eating fish from China. Go to Mr Fish and it's right there raw in front of you and eat that delicious stuff. So that's one of my go-tos.

Speaker 3: 41:59

And then I have really good culinary friends that have restaurants that I think my restaurant is as good as theirs or maybe theirs is as good as mine. I don't know how to say that. We all strive creatively to do our best. So there's Tyler at Fire and Smoke. It's sort of this high end gastropub. I don't even know what he calls himself, but he and I have a big affinity for tequilas and we have a lot of fun together behind the scenes, cooking together after dinner, behind the scenes, cooking together after dinner. If I have a wine dinner, he's first on the list If he has a wine dinner, whether it's, you know, raymond or Lytton Springs Ridge or whatever. I'm the first, it is so Fire and Smoke.

Speaker 3: 42:47

And then down south in Pawleys, which is further than Merle's Inlet from Conway. Polly's is a well-heeled sort of resort community with some stellar restaurants. My two favorites are probably Chive Blossom. Pk is a great friend of mine. He's the chef and owner, and he was actually the chef of Frank's, which is another good one down there. When I moved to town he and I are about the same age, um, very similar cooking styles, um, so that's a delight down in the Pauley's area. And then Adam Kirby is another great buddy of mine. He has Bistro 217 and Rustic Table. Rustic Table is one of my daughter's favorites. We actually had a daddy-daughter date last week and went down there shopping and knocking around and had some good grub.

Speaker 2: 43:42

There's a lot of options in the area. It sounds like.

Speaker 3: 43:46

Yeah, yeah, and I mean well, there's. I think somebody said like 2,000 restaurants now.

Speaker 2: 43:52

Can you talk about your experience on Chef Swap?

Speaker 3: 43:58

Yeah, amanda Freytag was the host. They came to the area and headhunted 10 or 16 restaurants and I ended up lucky enough to be one of them. I was a little confused because they called to say that they were interested for me, for a cooking, about me, and we had had some really good press and sand lapper magazine and the local newspaper, um. But I couldn't leave, I couldn't go. That was one of those things. Can you come compete in something? And I'm like there's no way. So, anyway, this sounded intriguing. So we started talking. I'm like, yeah, I'm very interested, I'll do it. Um. But then she said, yeah, we want you to represent Bonfire. You know that's my smokehouse. It's a smoking taqueria. I'm very proud of it. I made up all the recipes. I taught my smokehouse dude and my pit master how to smoke. I think our food's wonderful. But I thought, you know, I've been for 30 years cultivating Rivertown Bistro into what I think is a stellar restaurant. It's not crazy off the chain food even though sometimes I am, but it's solid food and I am creative, like when I do a wine dinner. It's off the charts. But she said, no, it's Bonfire. And I'm like, well, okay, I'll do Bonfire. So I went up against another restaurant, tidal Creek Brew Pub, that I actually buy beer from, and really nice people. And also for 30 years I've been smoking tomatoes and pureeing them and putting them into a ranch dressing for a salad. So I thought I'm going to bring smoked tomatoes Now. If I get a dessert, that'll be interesting, but I'll be able to do something. But anything savory, adding smoked tomato, whether it's a sauce, a beurre blanc into like a chiron, like a hollandaise, with tomato or ranch, I figured I could do something.

Speaker 3: 46:23

Well, you show up at his kitchen. You've never been in there. You got about 20 minutes to map out the kitchen, look at the plates, ask. You get a sous chef in there and you know you're asking what are the hotspots of the grill, where's your coldest fridge, where's the pantry? And then Amanda comes in and she's like all right, your competition is burger. And you're like okay, and you have an hour and you're immediately the walls are closing in. It's 20 degrees hotter than it was when you walked in there, or at least it was for me. I'm sweating and you know I'm like burger, okay. So I'm opening drawers and I'm looking.

Speaker 3: 47:03

I looked at the menu and they've got shrimp and they've got scallops and they've got pork belly, they've got ground beef. My, I'm gonna do a surf and turf burger. I'll make like a chunky seafood, almost like mousse shrimp and scallops and I'll use the pork belly and burger and I ground it and I'll use this ranch and then I'll make us with the smoked tomatoes and I'm gonna put smoked tomato into a hot sauce as a sidecar. And they had quinoa and fruit. I'm like I'll do my surf and surf burger but instead of doing fries, I'll do a quinoa and fruit salad. I'll put the smoked tomato in it. So I'm rolling, but I'm a hot mess. I want to do a quick pickle. So I'm pickling onions with some of the smoked tomato liquid in it and I, you know, I got pans going, food processors going, I'm sweating.

Speaker 3: 47:59

And Amanda comes back and she's like okay, chef, you're 15 minutes in and I can see the look on her face. She's just like oh, maybe we picked the wrong guy is what I think she was feeling. And she's like can you use it? Is there anything else you need? I'm like I could really use a shot of tequila. And we laughed, you know, and she walked out of the kitchen when the next 10 minutes or so. I got my shit together. You know, my onions were done, I done my salad, I've made my both of my patties, I'm picking my bread. And she comes in and she's like, oh, you've got some stuff. So she tried an onion and she tried the ranch and she's like this is good, I'll be right back. And she went and she got me a shot of tequila. It wasn't chilled but it was a shot. So I ripped that and that really helped me and it got my creative juices flowing a little more, because I was done, completely done.

Speaker 3: 48:54

I had like five minutes left and I'm thinking what else can I do? You know, I've got this surf and turf burger. I've got the. I'm using some of their product but I made it my own and all these different ways. I've made a pickle, I made this sauce. You know what else can I do? I've been here an hour. I'm like this is a brew pub and I don't drink them, but I've seen these Mexican guys pour tomato juice in a beer. I'm going to take the rest of my smoked tomato puree and put it into one of their lagers. So I did that and I was like one minute left and I finished and, um, you don't know how you're going to do and nobody. And um, you don't know how you're gonna do and nobody tells you. They eat it. And then they tell you to leave and it's, you know, he does in my kitchen. So I'm like asking my well, it was one of my sous chefs will helped him. He's like, yeah, the guy did pretty good, his stuff was pretty good, darren, I ain't going to lie. And I'm like man, it's competition burger.

Speaker 3: 49:56

So we go to the award ceremony and it's chef swapped at the beach. We're at the culinary school and the table in between us is a surfboard and we're holding the surfboard. You know, we're six, it's about a six foot long board and he's at one end, I'm at the other and there's Amanda and the judges with her and we don't know who's going to win. And I'm on national TV and I'm gripping that surfboard so hard I thought I was going to like break the foam with my thumbs. She gave the accolades to me first and then she was talking to him. How I felt like even better than she was talking to me. I'm like this dude is going to beat me.

Speaker 3: 50:41

And then she looked back at me and she's like there can only be one winner. And she, as she's saying that, she's looking at me, and then she looks at him, and then she picks up the knife and she says, darren Smith, and I'm like, I about faint, I'm about collapse. I mean, you know big deal If I would have lost you know whatever. But I didn't. And I'm like, and then Sophia comes running over to me and I'm like crying and I'm hugging Amanda and she's whispering you know, your food was, it was that good, it was like incredible. But I don't want to say anything more. I want to talk to you about that later. So that's exactly what we did. So it was Hollywood. Um, you know, there's all the big cameras that come into bonfire. Um, I didn't, you know, I was such tunnel vision in his kitchen. I I didn't realize because I'd never been in his kitchen before.

Speaker 3: 51:39

but at Bonfire they allowed me to stay as they set up, but then I had to be off the premises, but there's like 20 people, you know, putting up all these booms and lights and screens, and they got all these cameras and guys with backpacks and cameras chasing you around and for some reason I felt like there was one guy videotaping me, like on his cell phone. For my thing, I don't know, obviously it wasn't that way, but it was incredible. Subsequently, I became pretty good friends with all those people ron um hanks no relation to tom hanks. Um was a producer and, uh, he's done some shows that I've been a part of too, on um pbs. Uh, joseph rezendo stepping out, um, there. There's another thing that is in the mix.

Speaker 3: 52:38

This past year, chef Swap came back and they wanted Rivertown Bistro. Finally, bad news, darren, we don't want you, you're already on TV. We want your sous chef. So here again, terry steps in. We're going against fire and smoke. And I said there's no way.

Speaker 3: 52:55

Tyler is my contemporary. He and I are chefs. Terry is a wonderful chef, but he's not going to go against Tyler. Tyler has too many tricks up his sleeve. Well, tyler didn't want to do it. So we pitted sous chefs against each other and Terry won. Pitted sous chefs against each other and Terry won.

Speaker 3: 53:15

And it was like watching my little brother, best buddy son. I couldn't be at the competition. But I was at the award ceremony and me and my daughter are sitting with his daughter, Quinn, and uh, we're just talking and Terry's up there and we didn't know who was going to win. And they announced it was Terry and we were all jumping and Terry's up there and we didn't know who was going to win and they announced it was Terry and we were all jumping up and down and crying and his daughter runs over, just like my daughter had done the previous year, and that's an experience you know. You just can't take that away. So now we have two chef swap knives, this national show, and Ron says they're coming back next year and I'm like, are we going to be a part of it? He's like I can't tell you, so we'll see.

Speaker 2: 54:00

So we'll see. Well, I'm excited to stay tuned. I really appreciate you taking time to chat with me today. It's been so great Just learning more about your journey, of your career, and I can't wait to come back and eat at your restaurant again, because it was so good.