Tinfoil Swans Podcast

On this episode

Ti Martin — alongside together with her cousin and co-proprietor, Lally Brennan — is guaranteeing that the household’s 131-year-old New Orleans restaurant Commander’s Palace resides as much as its legacy and transferring into the long run. On the 2024 Meals & Wine Traditional in Aspen this previous June, Martin joined Tinfoil Swans for a spirited dialog about kicking down doorways, the reward and accountability that comes with working an iconic household enterprise, why hospitality and repair will not be the identical factor, and find out how to get individuals dancing within the eating room.

Meet our visitor

Ti Adelaide Martin is the board chair and co-founder of the New Orleans Culinary & Hospitality Institute (NOCHI); writer of Commander’s Kitchen, Within the Land of Cocktails: Recipes and Adventures from the Cocktail Chicks, Commander’s Wild Facet; and has been co-proprietor of the 131-year-old Commander’s Palace together with her cousin Lally Brennan since 1997. Martin opened Picnic Provisions & Whiskey in 2018, and in 2016, she produced a documentary about her mom, Commanding the Desk: The Ella Brennan Story with an accompanying guide, Miss Ella of Commander’s Palace.

Meet our host

Kat Kinsman is the manager options editor at Meals & Wine, writer of Hello, Nervousness: Life With a Dangerous Case of Nerves, host of Meals & Wine’s podcast, and founding father of Cooks With Points. Beforehand, she was the senior meals & drinks editor at Additional Crispy, editor-in-chief and editor at massive at Tasting Desk, and the founding editor of CNN Eatocracy. She gained a 2020 IACP Award for Private Essay/Memoir and has had work included within the 2020 and 2016 editions of The Finest American Meals Writing. She was nominated for a James Beard Broadcast Award in 2013, gained a 2011 EPPY Award for Finest Meals Web site with 1 million distinctive month-to-month guests, and was a finalist in 2012 and 2013. She is a sought-after worldwide keynote speaker and moderator on meals tradition and psychological well being within the hospitality trade, and is the previous vice chair of the James Beard Journalism Committee.

Highlights from the episode

On competitors and camaraderie in New Orleans

“We compete. I am watching what you are doing. You are watching what I am doing. However we love one another. Perhaps it is the hardships we have been by way of. However we do not steal one another’s staff. We’re a tight-knit group. We’re all actually good pals. To me, New Orleans is like one other member of the family in that you may kill your member of the family generally, however you’d do something for them. I feel all of us really feel so strongly about our metropolis, that that is what pulls us collectively.”

On sweating the small print

“We have to begin a hospitality revolution, and we’re going the improper approach. This nation has received to get extra critical about this. And the way in which you do that’s you’re employed at it. My cousin Lally Brennan and I actually stand in crew conferences and mannequin physique language. I imply, you may stand there, simply brush by friends, or you possibly can actually simply step out of the way in which just a little bit and allow them to know they’ve the fitting of approach. All these little issues add as much as that.”

On making each meal an event

“It issues virtually extra to me that the plumber comes on his anniversary, and they’re handled like a king and a queen. I do not care who you might be, or in the event you’re coming continuously, or for a special day or not. I really feel very democratic about it. For those who come within the restaurant, I am excited. I will do particular issues. However I do not need the desk subsequent to you to really feel any totally different, so we actually work onerous at that.”

On the enjoyment of jazz brunch in its birthplace

“For those who come to jazz brunch — that is the place it was created — and haven’t got an excellent time, there’s one thing improper with you. I imply, we blow it from time to time, I promise you, however after we’re doing it proper — most of the time — there’s second traces that get away. Individuals are dancing across the room.”

On find out how to get employed at Commander’s Palace

“I rent for 2 various things: If you do not have an innate need to please, you in all probability must be in one other trade. That issues most. In different methods, I am searching for mental curiosity. You do not have to be the world’s smartest individual, however you must be curious.”

On the distinction between hospitality and repair

“Coronary heart and feeling — and it’s about the way you make individuals really feel. I am sorry however plenty of locations I am going, I name that meals drop-off. That is not service. You simply occur to convey the meals to the place I occur to be sitting. Hospitality is each single factor that any enterprise group or individual does to have an effect on how their consumer, or buyer, or visitor feels — out of your web site to the goodnight on the finish of the night. It’s a onerous factor to go to your board and say, ‘Hey, hospitality is up 30%,’ however you must work at it. With what is going on on in our world, I really feel like that mission in my life is much more vital than ever.”

In regards to the podcast

Meals & Wine has led the dialog round meals, drinks, and hospitality in America and world wide since 1978. Tinfoil Swans continues that legacy with a brand new sequence of intimate, informative, shocking, and uplifting interviews with the most important names within the culinary trade, sharing never-before-heard tales concerning the successes, struggles, and fork-in-the-road moments that made these personalities who they’re in the present day.

This season, you will hear from icons and innovators like Daniel Boulud, Rodney Scott, Asma Khan, Emeril and E.J. Lagasse, Claudia Fleming, Dave Beran and Will Poulter, Dan Giusti, Priya Krishna, Lee Anne Wong, Cody Rigsby, Kevin Gillespie, Pete Wells, David Chang, Cheetie Kumar, Christine D’Ercole, Channing Frye, Nick Cho, Ti Martin, and different particular friends going deep with host Kat Kinsman on their formative experiences; the dishes and meals that made them; their joys, doubts and desires; and what’s on the menu sooner or later. Tune in for a feast that’ll feed your mind and soul — and loads of knowledge and quotable morsels to savor.

New episodes drop each Tuesday. Pay attention and observe on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you pay attention.

These interview excerpts have been edited for readability.

Editor’s Be aware: The transcript for obtain doesn’t undergo our commonplace editorial course of and will comprise inaccuracies and grammatical errors.