George Poll on Building Distinctive Dining Experiences from Long Island to Miami

George Poll has spent decades building some of Long Island’s most celebrated restaurants. Alongside his brother, he’s crafted iconic dining experiences from Bryant & Cooper Steakhouse to Toku Modern Asian, blending culinary creativity with sharp business acumen. Recently, George took his expertise to Miami, where the journey to open Toku wasn’t exactly smooth sailing—facing all the challenges that come with launching in a new city. 

This episode is a masterclass in the fine balance between tradition and innovation, the intense planning behind every design choice, and the hurdles that come with launching each new restaurant. Through stories of teamwork, resilience, and a relentless drive to improve, George offers listeners an unfiltered look inside the restaurant business.

George Poll is an alumnus of BU School of Hospitality Administration’s first graduating class and serves on the school’s Dean’s Advisory Board member. George also played on BU’s football team, which is no longer, but that story is for another podcast! 

The “Distinguished” podcast is produced by Boston University School of Hospitality Administration.

Host: Arun Upneja, Dean
Producer: Mara Littman, Director of Corporate and Public Relations
Sound Engineer and Editor: Andrew Hallock
Graphic Design: Rachel Hamlin, Marketing Manager

Music: “Airport Lounge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

Transcript

Arun: This is Arun Upneja, Dean of the BU School of Hospitality Administration and host of the Distinguished Podcast. I am excited to welcome George Poll, an entrepreneur who’s never been afraid to speak his mind. Winner of the alum of the year award from our school and a key member of our advisory board, George has spent decades building some of Long Island’s most celebrated restaurants. Alongside his brother, he’s crafted iconic dining experiences from Bryant & Cooper Steakhouse to Toku Modern Asian, blending culinary creativity with sharp business acumen. Recently, George took his expertise to Miami, where the journey to open Toku wasn’t exactly smooth sailing—facing regulatory delays and all the challenges that come with launching in a new city.  

George doesn’t sugarcoat his opinions. Whether it’s about the highs and lows of running a restaurant empire or the roadblocks put in place by local authorities, you can expect an honest, no-nonsense conversation today. We’ll dive into what it really takes to thrive in the restaurant industry, the hurdles he’s faced expanding into new markets, and how he’s managed to stay at the top in a business known for its high failure rate. Get ready for some candid insights, high-octane conversation, and maybe a few stories you weren’t expecting. Welcome George to the Distinguished Podcast.  

George: Thank you very much, Dean. 

Arun: It's amazing to have you here. We've been talking about this for quite some time, so it's. I'm so happy that you're finally here.  

George: Yeah, but you said that the bar pretty high for me. I don't know if I have as much insight and as much information as you want a bunch of stories I'm sure, but we'll see where you take me. I'm going to go on your journey. I'll let you lead the way. 

Arun: I think people are gonna love your story. So. OK, but let's start with the first thing is you have so many restaurants and most entrepreneurs struggle with maintaining quality while scaling up, creating new concepts. So how do you do that? How do you keep the quality in every single restaurant that you own so high? 

George: So my father always taught us quality, quality, quality, quality. And a lot of my restaurants are our restaurants. When you have quality, you don't have to do much to it. There's no hiding what it is. It's the best. So I remember one of my first classes here at BU. I had a Professor, Joe Curley, and he says, do you have to have good quality to be successful right away? I raised my hand. I have the answer to that one. And he says, you know. 

Yes, yes. He didn't know my name at the time. I guess it was like the first day and Professor Curley, US. You have to have good quality to be successful. That's what I was raised on. And he says no, you don't. And I was like, yeah, he's blowing my mind. He says for those that remember, I don't even know if you know there was a chain called Howard Johnsons and they were all over the highways across America, and they were known for their fried clams. Now in New England, fried clams includes the belly. But these were just strips of fried clams and they were lousy. But he said they were consistently lousy, consistent. And you're talking about this is 40 something years. 

And he said it was going to be on the test at the end of the year and it's still in my head now consistently to fill the expectations you've created. So if your expectations or a greasy spoon or is a lousier, it has to be consistently that way because if a customer comes in one day and it's great and one day it's not, you're going to fail, so I still believe in in consistently having good quality, but that was a great, great learning experience that I got here at Boston University. 

Arun: I can attest to it. I've eaten at many of your restaurants consistently high quality.  

George: Thank you.  

Arun: But I'm also again another question which is very confusing. When restaurant does create 1 concept and they're very successful. They want to just take it the easy way, replicate the hell out of those restaurant concepts and just keep making more and more of those. But you don't do that. 

George: No, no, no, don't say I don't do it. I didn't do it. I didn't do it. But sometimes. Especially if you wanna have investors or people wanna give you money. They wanna see that you've been successful in many different markets. My brother and I,  just had a restaurant and we had Brian Cooper Steakhouse and there is one of the top grossing shopping centers in the country called the Americana and it's one, it's one light away. It's one traffic light away, big, very high-end shopping center. 

And the the owner of that center had spaces. He was redoing it and putting in Gucci and Prada and all these heavy-duty stores. But there was no food service and he wanted to have a high end restaurant. 

And he put in a restaurant from New York. And there's so many things I can't give you 40 years of knowledge in one sitting. But we met the owner of the chef of this restaurant that he put there, very well known chef from New York. He says these people don't know what they want. They actually said these people don't know what they want, and my brother and I shook our heads like, oh boy, he's in trouble because we grew up in this area. I know. I knew my area. 

So it failed and the owner of the shopping center came to us. And what was what do you think we should put here? Well, I'm not going to put another steakhouse a block away. So we thought and we thought and we saw our concept somewhere else in the shopping area that did well. It was an Italian idea. So we decided to put an Italian restaurant there. And the restaurant that we took over had a kitchen in the basement. Well, we had ideas of doing hundreds of meals, and you can't be just putting in a heating place. So we took a larger part of the kitchen and we made the kitchen larger. 

Which left him a smaller space in the back, so he says, well, what can you do with this? Because I can't sell this. So we put A to go area there because the center didn't have a place to even get a cup of water. 

So we opened up an Italian restaurant. People said, well, what do you know about Italian food? Well, in the steakhouse, they serve meat. I serve fish. I serve chicken nice of pasta. I just have to serve chicken meat pasta just done differently, which is what Gillis and I do. We find the food that we like and we have a chef make that and we opened up an Italian restaurant. It was a big hit. So big a hit. 

That people don't usually go to shopping centers at night. The landlord was so thrilled that we were filling the parking lot at night, which is it leads people to look in the windows all night long. The stores are closed, but people aren't bringing hundreds of people there, and they're looking in the windows. And he loved it. So he had another restaurant in the center, in the same center. And all I wanted you guys to run it. I said we have Brian and Cooper and now we have an Italian. We're going the same well over and over we can't do another restaurant. My brother turns to me and says well, someone's going to go in there might as well be us. I said oh boy. So we thought what what are we going to do? What concept are we going to do, what's what's well at the time Asian was becoming popular, there was no boom in the city. 

Which was really it at at the time. Now there's numerous well known Asian restaurants, but we're going to Asia. People came to us. What do you guys know about Asian? 

Well, you're going to serve steak and you're going to serve fish, and you're going to serve chicken, and you're going to serve noodles. Have to figure out. So we went around and found things that we liked. And we've traveled and then we've traveled the world. My brother and I and traveled all over and we go out eating and trying the things that we like, you know, our restaurants aren't chef driven. If a chef leaves, the people get. Oh my God. You lost your chef. 

My brother and I, we say that we're chefs of taste. I know if it's right or wrong, I know what it's supposed to taste like. It's your job. I hire the chef. It's your job to make it the way I want it. I don't know how to do it, but you better know how to do it. So we opened up a Asian restaurant. Toku. 

And thank God it's a big success, but we had to. So now we're becoming multi concept guys but and we had to work at it. But it's a lot easier just to repeat your same concepts. You're taking a chance going into different areas. These are all at least my own customers and people that know us. So about two miles East is another shopping center that the that this landlord owns. And it was more of an 80, it was. It was built like in the late 70s, early 80s and he wanted to redo that center because the center that we're in, that I was telling you, the Americana, it was built in the 50s when I was a kid, there was a bowling alley and an ice cream store and a Tom McCanns. And it was just a regular shopping center. 

He's on who elevator. He had a supermarket there. Everything out? Gucci, Prada. Louis Vuitton. It's the Madison Ave. of of Long Island, and it's very. It's actually a Billy Joel song. The miracle mile. It's it's a famous area 2 miles east, there's this little shopping center has a a deli in it, and it had another supermarket and he was going to start changing that. So it comes to my brother and goes and I I want you put a restaurant here said no, where's land? It's not in an area that we know that's further east and it's not in Manhasset where where we have our three restaurants. No, no, no, no, no. I need. I want you guys there to start redoing it. I'll build you a basement. Oh, my God. What? We're gonna what are we going to put there? I'm not going to do another Asian. We're not going to do so. We decided we saw a restaurant in New York called Pastis. It's more of a Bistro and light fare, but all night long, kind of a thing. And we designed the beautiful all our restaurants was designed unbelievably and two there. 

The state our steakhouse was designed by a classic steakhouse designer that we knew from the did New York. The Asian is spectacularly won awards for architecture. The Italian restaurant is gorgeous, actually designed by the man that does most of our restaurants, Peter Nimitz right here in in Boston. So we go and we design A French Bistro, you know, French top bar top from custom made in France brought it over. Tile floors, the whole thing. 

People didn't take to the fair and it was taking time for to get the food out of the kitchen, so we had to work. We had to work on the kinks and this and that. And the chef left. Then we. But we stayed with it and we figured out we Americanized it a little bit. And thank God that was doing well. so we're doing pretty well. Plus we already had a casual steakhouse in the 90s in East Meadow.  

So then cause you wanna know about why we have so many different concepts. So now we're trying to redo this, this French Bistro and try to tweak it. And a catering hall between the French Bistro and Brandon Cooper in the town called Roslyn became available 500 seat catering hall. Different rooms are not one big hall, it was a 200 seat and 250 and 50 here. 

Big parking lot. There's no parking in that town. This had big parking. My brother says. Come on and we can own the property. That's what we're gonna do here. 

It was called George Washington Manor and George Washington was actually there as a part of the building. Talk about dealing with towns and bureaucracy. Oh my God. So let's talk about. Hendricks for 5 minutes. So we buy this catering hall, George Washington manner. 

Part of the buildings from 1740. George Washington actually had breakfast there for real. I don't know if he slept there, but I know that he had breakfast there. 

So it was called the and it was white with these different rooms and had a hearth and pictures of presidents on all the walls and very, very old style and and really my customer. A fruit cup out of out of a jar for dessert, I mean. 

So and when I grew up, catering halls, where? Where you got married? We knew the catering hall that we almost bought that did 4 weddings on a Friday. 4 weddings Saturday morning, four wedding. Sunday night. 4 weddings as a Saturday night. Four wedding Sunday morning. They were making money in the 60s and the 70s and then, but even myself, I got married in Greece now. Everyone gets married all over the world and catering halls. 

You know, they'll want you to take $5 off there and throw in this and do that. The band's OK. The band we're gonna spend money on. But the restaurant, the food, that we don't need that. It will cut down. So. my brother says let's. We're gonna make it a restaurant. 

It was also a chess move, cause other restaurants were seeing OK, these Poles are making money out there. People coming from New York. You know, there maybe another steakhouse is gonna come, or maybe someone's gonna come to our area. So it's like to stop. That's the only other place that really good steakhouse can go. 

Let’s down the street from Bryant & Cooper, OK? 

So my brother tells me that's that's open we we buy the property, we run this, this, this, this. We turned it into a restaurant. 

And now we want to renovate it, we have to renovate it. 

And it's in a historical town. 

Arun: George Washington ate breakfast here. 

George: He ate breakfast there, but it was a Mexican restaurant 30 years before that. In the 70s, it was a Mexican restaurant. But people don't know that. Yes, It's George Washington Manor. It was catering. So we had Peter Nimitz design it. We made we always brought New York out here. You know, when I grew up. When you want to go out, you went to New York City. We're about 30 minutes out from New York City. And our landlord from the Americana. He brought New York and and style out here. That's what my brother and I have done. 

We brought New York out to Long Island, you know the reason why we did the steakhouse and I think I'm jumping back and forth now. 

It’s because my brother used to live in the city, my brother Gillis, and he saw during highs and lows and recessions, the only restaurants are always busy with steakhouses because you went to steakhouse to celebrate, you went to steakhouses to have a good time. You went to Steakhouse, have a good drink. So that's why we built Bryant & Cooper. 

So the Hendricks, we're gonna we had our designer bring like there's restaurants downtown in the city that are dark and warm, and they had a fireplace and like, not down and dirty, but just places that seem they've been there a long time, even though it's George Washington Manor and it's George Washington. And the building's been there a long time. It didn't look that way. 

Arun: So you have to modernize it and then you have to make it look. 

George: Right cause modernize it. So now we have to go the design and get it, but meanwhile I'm still not making it at the the French Bistro bar free. So we're tweaking that as we're doing this new project and buying the property and borrowing money and now we have to go to these guys to build it. 

We opened up one wall where there was an office. We're going to put bathrooms and the foundation wasn't there anymore. It was, it was. It wasn't. There was nothing holding up the wall but the other two walls. So yeah, poor foundation. And another wall they opened up and these old wood beams are twisted. You had to get steel to hold up the roof. 

I mean on and on, we took out the OR someone took the around one of the fireplaces upstairs they took out the mantle because they were going to do some work. But when they took off the mantle, it was so old it disintegrated. 

The town wants to know where the mantle is. What do you mean? You want it disintegrated? We want it in case someone else bought it from us. 

I want to put wants to put it back. We had to keep it but there was nothing to keep. 

I mean, because everything we were doing, the color of the paint had to go to the town that has to be a historical color. OK? My designer dealt with that. He has to deal with that in Boston. So he knew his way around that. 

There is a door that faces the town. 

That if there was a fire and I have to run through that door in an emergency, I'd be decapitated. So we go to the town, we're gonna raise it to. Oh, no, you're not. 

No, you don't understand. It has to be handicapped and it has to be raised for a fire. Ohh no historical Trump's ADA and fireman. I mean, I've never heard of these things in my life, so they had to go through all these things. The windows have to be. We had to put it back the way it looked. 

They had a picture from the 1800s or 1900 of what that the building that's original the the original the building that was original, Now has parts that made it a restaurant. There's a long catering room. There's another long room, but the original building that's still there. We had it really not touched too much. The other buildings because it was all add-ons. 

We put in a bar and we put in event space and upstairs but. 

Arun: And now this is 500 seats still and no parking. 

George: No, plenty of parking. We have the only parking in. Ohh yeah. We have parking. We have seats. We we have an outside area now. It's beautiful. Oh I changed the name. 

I changed the name Hendricks Tavern. 

Hendrick Underdong is the man who owned it. He had a printing press there. He had a gristmill there. He supported the Revolutionary War, which is why George Washington came. Well, this woman's walking through town and I'm outside looking at the sign going up. Shame on you. Shame on us. And she shamed me. Shame that. 

He took down the president's name, the president of the United States said. It's Mr. Underdown's house. I'm honoring the village. I'm honored. Shame on you. Oh my God. So Long story short. Thank God that restaurant's doing well. We tweaked the bar frets. That's doing well.  

Arun: Fantastic. 

George: Ohh, but the Hendricks is literally like walking from here to the to the football stadium, to my other steakhouse, so we didn't call it a steakhouse, even though it's primarily steaks and other items and some things from our other restaurants that was called Hendricks Tavern, Hendrick, Honda, Bronx, Hendricks Tavern and it's very warm. Have you been there? 

Arun: I've been there, yes, but there's a BU event you hosted there. 

George: Ohh yeah, be in our VIP room downstairs that has its own parking lot. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was great.  

Arun: So George, I cannot even imagine anyone winning any argument against you. So does he ever win arguments? He's an older brother, right? 

George: He's an older brother. I think that's why. 

Arun: Do you let him win and then do what you want anyways? 

George: No. Well, no. No, no, no, no. And I don't want to make anyone sound bad, but we have another brother that we were in business with in another restaurant and he's done very well. He's successful. He owned the boathouse in Central Park. He now owns Gallaghers in New York. He owns Gallaghers down in Miami, but he was a middle brother. Gillis is the oldest and my brother Dean and then myself. 

And there would be discussions of how to get things done and some people want to do it their way and that's the only way. So we thought it'd be better that we all stick together cause we all have our strengths, but we ended up separating my brother Dean does his own thing. 

My brother Gillis and I stayed together when it was just Brian and Cooper and Majors, and he and I have my brother Dean has done well and we've done well, but as far as The Who wins and who loses, I think that's what really makes it a nice team. 

I think when one of us is really, really like, it's got to be this way. You know, I might not agree, but let's do that or if I really feel. But if we go back and forth and he really thinks this is this and I really think this is that, then we just leave it. However, it is because it's too much to fight unless I mean listen, it's so we listen to each other and we kind of do too much of the same thing. I mean, I handle, for instance, the wine. I let him handle liquor because I'm not really, I don't know anything about really. So he handles that, but everything else from real estate deals to regular deals to a pasta dish to what knife to use. We look at it all together and discuss it together. 

Arun: So let's talk about your recent expansion to Miami. So Toku, you're opening a second toku there. You opened a second toku you already opened it. How was it opening a restaurant in a new city? Different regulations. I mean in Long Island, you know, the people, You know the rule. How was it in opening it in Miami? 

George: You're very right, not even being in New York City, having 5 or 6 restaurants within two or three miles of each other. Yes, I know all the the people in the city. I know people in the town. Iknow how to get my liquor license? Yes, it is different, but you hire experts my brother found the a space down there that he really spoke to him and he showed it to me. That's in Aventura big. It was a grand Lux Cafe. 

He felt awe. There's a big toku, big, big, huge, big toku, our our toku is unbelievably, but the ceilings aren't like we have a small little Buddha in the back. This one he saw a big Buddha will have a big Buddha and we're gonna have a display on the Buddha. And we're gonna have a big bar. This is Grand Lux is big. 

So we go into the, we make a deal with the mall, it's not inside the mall, it's outside, it has its own entrance, but it's part of the Aventura mall, very, very large mall, one of the the better malls in the country, it has a lot of people go to that that mall and they've asked us before to be in in other sections. But this one spoke to my brother. 

So, OK, we're going to do it, and the landlord will give us a little bit of money to help but it, but it has a lot of it has a kitchen, already has a kitchen, so you don't have to put a new kitchen and it has a bar, but we're going to move some wall. We don't want to spend a lot of money. We spend a couple of $1,000,000, you know, facelift, make it look nice. You know, they have refrigerators. I have everything. I have the plumbing. 

Well, they give us the set of plans for Grand Lux with and they're called as builts. 

These are final, the place is built. This is what was OK by the town stamped everything. Everything's the code, of course. 20 years old. Yeah, We start doing a little bit of the construction that we want to do. 

Our people and our contractors, well, the pipes aren't where they say they are on the plans and certain waste pipes don't go to where they're supposed to. And then there's new laws and regulations. So then, so there's something in Florida called Durham that takes care of where your wastewater goes and your grease traps and you had to open up the parking lot for that. But that has to do with the town and not the mall. And you need an engineer to come in. Then we have to rip up the floors. The bathrooms were gonna redo anyway. 

And we have very a designer with it was a different designer. We tried someone different that does. We tried it, done the designer. And there was a beautiful design, but I'm like I want to leave the air conditioning where it is. You're moving walls and openings and then with the kitchen the refrigerators really weren't that good. And the lines not how we wanna do it. And the way the the air comes in and the units cause it's Florida and has salt in the air the units have to be changed. Well, I ended up usually, sometimes when you go into a shopping center, they give you a vanilla box. Well, we had to turn it in. We had to take everything that was in this grand luxe and got the. So I had to pay for the gut. I had to pay for putting things back. Then we're trying to evaluate engineer the design and here's the design what's gonna it's way over what we want to spend way. Alright, let's how we're gonna do this. And I'm coming up with ideas. Well, of course, as much for that As for the original idea. And you like the original. 

Our days figuring things out. Then we have mirror on the ceiling in, in the bar, and it has to be screwed in and the inspector comes and the screw he wants to know how is this screw and how it's going to lock and then and when the inspector comes. So you can't work until that Inspector comes. And that guy, if you're not working. 

And that guy is not working. Putting up the ceiling. Well, you can't lay the floor until the ceiling's up and you want to get open by a certain day. Cause your lease says you have to open by a certain day. And now they're holding. Oh my God. And then... 

Arun: How long did it take you to to open it? 

George: I don't I I don't remember. Listen. 

How? How long did it take? I'm gonna tell you how long it took. 

Another brilliant thing that my brother always tells me, and I say it back to him. 

We always say when we look at these projects that we do like Hendricks. Hendricks did that kitchen. The kitchen was so old we had to take all the equipment out. 

And put a new floor and waterproof it and make it brand new air system and vent. Everything's new, and then we're gonna clean the equipment and put it back. I have to save money and my brother turns to me. He says you're going to put that dirty old equipment in in our new kitchen. 

I said you're killing me here and he says well, not if he says when was successful, you going to close for a week to buy, put new. So we spent the money and bit the bullet and did that well. Same thing. Same thing here in the in the Toku. So same thing we're going through all these issues and all these problems. And my brother always turns to me, or when he's down, I always turn to him. One day there'll be people eating here.  

Arun: So I guess that's a very important concept of having people come and eat in this beautiful place you've designed and the experience that you're creating, I guess that's very important to you, right? 

George: Well, you know, when we were doing the Chipolini, the Italian restaurant. And we're going through the again, we know our design is great. We know Pete is great. Yeah, we know the designs right. And we know how to make we know how to make good food. Even our chefs always said, you know, has a big Gillis. And George Good has to be good enough that even when I'm full, I want to take another bite. That's not the hard part. So. But when the landlord wants us to move the wall, you know, 6 inches, to me, that's mind-blowing. Like my landlord, he was Mr. Castagna from Americana is no longer with us, but great great guy. To him, moving a wall is nothing. 

But restaurant? He asked us. We were about a month out from opening. Where's the menu? I want to see the menu. And I looked at him. I don't worry about the menu . I know what to do. I know how to make a menu. I know what people want. I know what I want and I think that's what people want. And it's worked out. But moving that we have to move this wall 6 inches. You're kidding me to me it's. 

So I don't know if that answers your question, but I think when we're always scared. It's there's no guarantee. But you try to put the most things you know. When? When we decide on a deal or we decide on what we're gonna do, we talk about we and we always talk about the downside. What's the downside? Well, if it doesn't work, how much money we're going to. Or if it doesn't work, is it going to change our lifestyle? 

Or if it doesn't wear well, it's can't not work at all, that you some money's gonna come in. And these are the do we have parking? Do we do we have can people come? Is it in the right area? I mean, we had a restaurant in the three of us at one point there was the majors we had in Florida. And the entrance to the to the center. We were a free standing restaurant in a business area where there were buildings. 

And You can see it from the highway. But when you're coming down the main road. By the time you saw the sign and you saw the restaurant, you turn in, you were turning onto the highway. There was no sign at the beginning of the business center and they wouldn't let us have a sign. And these are the things over the years you learned it was a big detriment. All they wanted to come to us, but they it was a pain. Once they're on the highway to come back. So they would just say oh, forget it. And there were other issues at that time and we were learning and growing. But there are things that you learn you want as many things on this side of that, there's no guarantee. We want as many things on this side of the Ledger to say, alright, this is a good, good chance this we should be OK. And if you do OK and then you do better hopefully you keep going. 

Arun: I was going to ask this question, George, what keeps you so passionate about the restaurant industry and the food? You are clearly highly motivated and passionate about food, and I've travelled with you a little bit and every place you want to go try out new things. How do you keep your passion level so high for so many years? 

George: what makes me, I'm just a passionate person, I can be. I'm just passionate. I'm passionate. If this water is really good, I'm gonna say I won't have you had this, this water. It's. I'm passionate about music. I'm passionate about life. I'm passionate about love. I'm passionate about my children. I'm passionate. I could be passionate about art. Or I may say that's the ugliest piece of you know what I've ever seen. But I just. That's the way I am. 

As far as how do I stay passionate in this business? This is what I know. You know, my friend made fun of me. You were saying how I we go out and you see I'm always looking. I'm always looking always. I'm always working. 

And my friend, my best friend Peter, we just talk about again in the 79. We would go to the diner and they burnt the water and they put the water down like this with their hands on the top of the glass. Big No, no, you don't put your fingers where people put their mouth. So I go like this to my friend. I said, ah, like I can't drink that water. And he like made fun of me. He says. You know, you're always you're always picking. You're always looking at what's going on. 

So one day comes to my restaurant and he's in the fur business and the lady was walking by and as she walked by, he just stuck his hand out and he just felt the first she walked by and he says, and I knew it was fake. I knew that was a fake. I said Ohh, that's what you do. It's OK. But what I do. So yeah, I'm always looking. I'm always trying to get new ideas. Every time I go away my phone I'm. I'm taking pictures. I steal menus. My brother says you could see it online. I said no, 

I wanna see I wanna feel I wanna smell I wanna, I wanna taste and then I wanna give it to you. Then I wanna give it to you. If I love it, I wanna give it to you. 

So maybe that answers it. Maybe, maybe just a little bit. 

Arun: It absolutely does. To wrap up, I have some few fun questions for you, George. You have so many concert restaurant concepts. If you could eat at only one of them for the rest of your life, which one would it be? 

George: Oh my God, that's not a fun question. My standard answer, which is my true feeling. I have with my brother built these babies. We had babies. These are our children. They are down to the grout. What? What color? Grout in the ground. I mean, they're all our favorites and obviously all my answers are very long to your questions. 

I had a customer one time at Tokyo asked me what's your favorite thing and the person next to him. Ohh. He likes everything cause you know he's the only. 

I do like everything because I put it on the menu. My brother and I, those are our favorite things, and that's why they're there. OK, so, so the answer the question fairly, they're all like I always tell people, how do you do how? Which is your favorite child? You can't pick your favorite child. 

Arun: That's what I was gonna say. I'll make it easy for you tell me who's your favorite child?  

George: I don't have a favorite child, but I am gonna answer the question that one. Why? 

Arun: OK.  

George: When I leave the country and my wife and I, we go traveling and we go somewhere, we're gonna go to Greece or London wherever we go in the world. When we land and we finally, we're on our way home. We have to get a port out. We got to have the steak and potato. It's American. We go to Brandon Cooper and we get steak and potatoes and the salad and mashed. And so I do miss that a lot when I don't have a nice big age steak. 

Just to make you happy. So just to make you happy, we are going to make sure that all the employees of all your restaurants get to see this segment at least. 

Where you've chosen one restaurant, OK. 

Arun: I know that since you make the menus for all your restaurants, so everywhere in the world you go, is there a dish that you've not yet replicated that you've really enjoyed somewhere and you want to come back and put it in one of your restaurants at some point. 

George: That's a fun question cause I see things all over all over. 

It's so funny. You asked me that question. I see things. Then I forget and I take pictures of it and I'll look at pictures from shockingly, 7 year. Ohh shoot. I didn't all I want to do. I've been and now I have an assistant. I send her the pictures and remind me that. But the one dish that comes to my mind. I was in South of France. I wanna put this in bar freeze, so someone remind me out there on the pocket. I sure muscles I we made great clams Reganada great clams Reganada and a few of our rest. 

But it was muscles airing and I just don't know how you would do that. You'd have to cook the muscle first because we were on the beach in central pay. But that dish I sticks in my mind is that's something I'd like to do in one of the restaurants. 

Arun: That's amazing.  

George: That was a good fun question. 

Arun: George, it was an absolute hoot to have you on the podcast and I look forward to having it is only tip of the iceberg. We're going to do many more. Really enjoyed having you. Thank you so much for coming and thank you for all the support to the school you're on. Advisory Board your picture graces our walls here. 

George: Thank you. Thanks for having me here. 

Arun: Thank you.