YouSaid · the spoken record

Daniel Humm

lines on the record: 78
first: 2021-05-03
most recent: 2021-05-03
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, he sort of twisted my arm because the place I was at actually in the winter would snow so much that people actually couldn't drive up there. So it was closed for two months. And in those two months, he offered me to fly to San Francisco and visit him. And I arrived and he was there at the airport, him personally, the GM of the hotel. I remember driving from the airport to downtown San Francisco. Everything felt so foreign. Everything, the way the buildings were built, the way the climate was, the smells, it just felt like such a foreign place. And then he's like, we're going to go up to Napa Valley. I want you to meet Alice Waters and we're going to eat at the French laundry.”
2021-05-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eleven Madison Park: Daniel Humm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, so you're working at this restaurant in Switzerland. You're getting a lot of attention. And I mean, clearly you're like this sort of hot young chef. And you got poached. You got recruited by what the manager of a restaurant in San Francisco at the Campton Place Hotel reached out to convince you to come and work in the U.S.”
2021-05-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eleven Madison Park: Daniel Humm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I always feel that when a chef is loud and yelling, it means that he's overwhelmed and it's a weakness, absolute weakness. And in my early days, I definitely felt myself in that position where I just was too overwhelmed. Everything was too much. I definitely have yelled a few times at someone. I'm not proud of it, but.”
2021-05-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eleven Madison Park: Daniel Humm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And did you transmit some of that stress and pressure to the team? Would you get angry? I mean, because you came up in kitchens where people were like, right, throwing things and shouting around. I mean, I'm assuming you had to have maybe assimilated some of that behavior.”
2021-05-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eleven Madison Park: Daniel Humm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I wasn't prepared at all. And looking back, it was like, I had no repertoire of my own dishes. Now all of a sudden there was this bright light on me and there were a lot of expectations. It was busy. Now we did like 35 guests a night. Journalists wanted to speak to me. Guests wanted to meet me and talk about the food and I didn't really have much to say because I didn't really think about it that much yet. And I was overthinking everything and the dishes were complicated. It's a lot of pressure.”
2021-05-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eleven Madison Park: Daniel Humm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was hard to get to. We had like 12 to 20 guests. But then the owner was a lover of gastronomy and food. And so he would bring his friends. And then I started to cook a little bit more special dinners, things that weren't on the menu. And then people started really loving some of the stuff. It all happened kind of quickly, so quickly that after six months I was named Discovery of the Year and received a Michelin star.”
2021-05-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eleven Madison Park: Daniel Humm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think we definitely had venison in the game season. We had Suckling Pig and I mean, they even had tripe on the menu and like, you know, veal, liver, and things like that.”
2021-05-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eleven Madison Park: Daniel Humm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was kind of random. I saw this thing in a newspaper advertising, small farm, looking for a chef. And I applied and they called me back and it was a beautiful little inn on top of the mountain overlooking the Alps. And it was a very humble restaurant cooking Swiss traditional food. At first I just talked with the owner and he offered me the job and I took it. I was just happy to be there. And I was cooking the dishes without changing the menu. It was sort of an honest, simple restaurant with ingredients from the farms around.”
2021-05-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eleven Madison Park: Daniel Humm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, there's a Miles Davis quote and he says you have to learn the rules before you can break them. And I totally agree with that. And I think you need to sort of learn it from Ground Up before you can really start to branch out.”
2021-05-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eleven Madison Park: Daniel Humm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just to memorize what we did. Then what naturally happened was I would start drawing imaginary dishes. Like I would say, oh, what if we take the fish this way and then we put this tomato with it and this caper sauce? And so in my head, I started to create these dishes. And I was living with this elderly couple and on the weekend I would cook for them, but it was really an important process for me to start, you know, creating.”
2021-05-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eleven Madison Park: Daniel Humm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Actually, had this single pages with a round circle on it that resembled a plate. And I would, you know, just say, okay, this is this fish cooked this and this way, this long, and we made the sauce this way. And so, I mean, I have thousands of these still today. It's actually, I still work like this.”
2021-05-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eleven Madison Park: Daniel Humm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know if I thought that at that point in the beginning it was all about really learning the craft. I definitely felt that I had a gift to do the knife cuts, to make the sauces, to butcher the fish. But at that time, I just wanted to be the best at the craft. I want it to be the quickest. I want it to be the cleanest. And during work, there wasn't really the time to write down much. So every night I would go to the room and I had my color pencils and I would draw out the dishes we cooked on that given day”
2021-05-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eleven Madison Park: Daniel Humm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, there was definitely a lot of that, and it was pretty an intense environment. People didn't really work together. People didn't really want each other to succeed. And it was this really, really old school way. Like, for example, the chef always would go to the farm every morning by himself at like seven in the morning. We would arrive at eight. And one time I was carrying garden peas and one fell down. And on the way back, I stepped on it. And he saw that. I think in the three years that I was there, I think he never forgot that. He was so upset because he went every morning to get this garden peas. And every single piece from the tiniest morale to the tiniest piece. Was just so precious to the point where we counted them It was extreme, it was a pretty extreme environment”
2021-05-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eleven Madison Park: Daniel Humm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was hard. And so at that time, we were together for 10 years. It was just, you know, a very powerful relationship and have a really great relationship today, but also I think we were also great parents. I think we just grow apart. And I think part of that also led me to eventually move to the US. It was just too painful to be around all the memories we have built in Zurich.”
2021-05-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eleven Madison Park: Daniel Humm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I also realized that I started to have this deep love for cooking. And I think there was one meal I had two years prior. It was at a restaurant called Freddie Gerde, also three stores. And they were probably about 25 chefs all like in perfectly starched and pressed uniforms with big hats. They were working so precisely and so calmly and so beautifully. And I think that kind of planted the seat and I was in the hospital. I sort of was thinking, well, if I can't rise to the top in cycling, maybe I could in cooking. And right after that, I found my way to first the two mishna stories. Restaurant and then a three michael restaurant, and it became my new sport.”
2021-05-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eleven Madison Park: Daniel Humm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I had a bad accident when I was 22 years old. Bad fall in a mountain bike race. I was in the hospital for a few weeks and then when I was in the hospital, I realized that I wasn't good enough to be one of the way, very world's best. A few people can actually make a real living just by cycling.”
2021-05-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eleven Madison Park: Daniel Humm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's right. It sounds so, you know, stressful and tough. Was just such a beautiful time. We were so in love and we had a baby and it felt like we were doing exactly what we wanted to do. And in a way, so many things were not very complicated. It was very simple but beautiful existence, but we were very happy.”
2021-05-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eleven Madison Park: Daniel Humm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I definitely felt right at home in the kitchen, but I really didn't think of it as making it as a career, but I felt very fortunate. The chef almost became a little bit of a father figure at that time. And I made great friends as well. And so I felt very at home there.”
2021-05-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eleven Madison Park: Daniel Humm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it was purely money at first. There is a well-known hotel in Zurich called the Hotel Boralak. And, you know, I knocked at the door and I was 16 years old and I asked if I could come and work. And the chef was a big cycling fan. And so he had a soft spot for me. You know, I was there just to get a paycheck, but the chef really took me under his wing and taught me how to make a consume and how to make a chicken stock or butcher a chicken. That was really such a gift.”
2021-05-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eleven Madison Park: Daniel Humm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, after I made the decision to be racing, I definitely didn't feel welcome at home anymore. I started having a girlfriend when I was 15. She was or is three years older than me and she had a place of her own. And so then we moved in or I moved in with her And I moved away from home.”
2021-05-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eleven Madison Park: Daniel Humm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, it's the best decision for me. Of course, it's now being a parent thinking about my kids leaving school at 14, I would really be scared. And I understand what my parents were thinking at that time.”
2021-05-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eleven Madison Park: Daniel Humm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's right. So after running cross country, eventually I discovered the bike and I would, well, first I would just go and take my bike and I would some days I would get up at 4 a.m. and I would ride the bike around like into the French part of Switzerland and then back and I would come back home at like seven at night. So I was like gone for like hours and hours and hours. And so the sport actually, it was almost an escape from home. I started racing local races and I was, you know, winning local races. I went from the road to mountain biking. It became more and more serious. And when I was 14 years old, I had the opportunity to join a team and actually to really pursue it as a professional career and sort of leave school behind.”
2021-05-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eleven Madison Park: Daniel Humm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, definitely a more difficult relationship. Growing up, it seemed like nothing was ever quite good enough. You know, I wasn't good enough in school. I wasn't doing enough homework. I wasn't doing enough work at home to help my mom. You know, early on, I started running cross country. I was really good. I was competing in the nationals and I even won the Nationals twice. But it was always not quite good enough. If I won, then maybe the best other ones weren't, maybe they were injured and they weren't racing that day.”
2021-05-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eleven Madison Park: Daniel Humm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, she was fantastic. My mom was half French and half Italian. She absolutely loved to be in the kitchen and to go to the markets. And I didn't learn so much about the cooking part. But I learned a lot about the importance of the best ingredients, like going to a farm and picking up the lettuces and then going home and washing these lettuces. I grew up very humble. You know, we would eat meat only on the weekends. So there was this real respect for the ingredients and for the meat as well. And then of course, we would use every part, make a soup from the bones and so forth. That was a really great lesson just to use every part of it.”
2021-05-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eleven Madison Park: Daniel Humm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Whom was honing his craft in San Francisco and Europe, learning how to be one of the world's great chefs? He grew up in Zurich, Switzerland, and had no real interest in food as a kid, even though he says his mom was a great home cook.”
2021-05-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eleven Madison Park: Daniel Humm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To create their celebrated dishes. But something happened to Daniel Hume over the past year. The pandemic changed his life. It changed the way he thinks about food, and most importantly, the planet. When his restaurant closed its doors in March of twenty twenty, Daniel quickly converted eleven Madison into a commissary kitchen that prepared hundreds of thousands of free meals for people struggling to make ends meet in New York. This past year, he faced the prospect of personal bankruptcy, the death of friends, and the furloughing of his entire team, even contracted COVID himself. And he decided there's no going back to the way things were before the pandemic. But before any of this happened, Daniel”
2021-05-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eleven Madison Park: Daniel Humm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For us, it hit us really hard. We tried to operate at a four star level like we had so many meetings where we said, hey, we lost money like huge amounts. I mean, we had nights where we had four guests in the restaurant.”
2021-05-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eleven Madison Park: Daniel Humm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, one of my favorite parts of traveling is getting a feel for a neighborhood, the way locals do. A few summers ago, I was in Rome and stayed in an apartment I booked on Airbnb. It was tucked in a quiet neighborhood just outside the Roman forum. Every morning I'd walk to the corner cafe, grab an espresso, and just watch the world go by outside. I even managed to chat with the owner about the neighborhood he lived in for nearly forty years. And he got me thinking about my own neighborhood. There are incredible hiking trails and great restaurants and, of course, the beach. And when I'm traveling this summer, listing my own place on Airbnb could be a really smart way to let someone else experience the area the way I do, like a local. Listing your home on Airbnb while you're traveling is a great way to make some extra money. You could put the money toward your next trip. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much”
2021-05-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eleven Madison Park: Daniel Humm · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT