Jeffrey Saad: Spice Smuggler and Entrepreneur
Jeffrey Saad (www.JeffreySaad.com) was the first runner up on season five of The Next Food Network Star. How he came to arrive in New York and compete, virtually out of touch with his beloved family for seven weeks, makes more sense after spending an hour with Jeffrey. After all, this is a man who worked 20 hour days to learn his craft, wrote his business plan on one transatlantic flight, came to own over 50 restaurants, moved to Los Angeles to change careers when he didn’t know a soul, knocked on neighborhood doors until he built a wildly successful real estate career, then shook up his life to return to his one main passion: cooking. After spending some time getting to know Jeffrey, sipping on his intensely flavorful SpicyMargarita and enjoying his scrumptious Five Spice Shrimp Sliders, Jeffrey gets my first place vote. He talks about food like he’s describing an important journey, and not a morsel of his adventure is to be missed. Jeffrey clearly brings his enthusiasm and positive nature to everything he does, and if he told me he was going to give flying a try, I’d put my money on Jeffrey sprouting wings and becoming airborne.
eMinutes: So Jeffrey, did you train as a chef?
Jeffrey Saad: Oh yeah. First I went to hotel restaurant school at little old Iowa State. Then I finished and I went to the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. Cooking on the Hudson was the most amazing experience ever. I mean it was camp culinary. We’d wake up at five in the morning, go to classes, finish at five at night, and then go to the student kitchen and just cook ALL NIGHT. Everyone there was so passionate about food. It was up in Poughkeepsie so there was nothing else to do anyway. We’d actually go to Long Island on the weekend – Glen Cove. There was this Harrison Conference Center and they’d pay all of us culinary students to come down for a weekend to work and make a few bucks.
Then I went to California Culinary Academy (CCA) in San Francisco. I transferred and graduated from there. And that was a cool experience because all day long, I’d work in restaurants, Fisherman’s Wharf, bread places – and then I’d go to school. And then the schedule flipped and it was daytime classes and I would work in the restaurants at night. So the whole time I was in school, I was learning from the greatest chefs in the restaurants. It was the best combo of practical and theoretical put together.
eMinutes: Why did you go out to San Francisco?
Jeffrey Saad: Well the truth is I ran out of money in New York. I went back to Chicago and I was waiting tables at the top of the Sears tower and partying and having a blast. But I said, “Okay, I gotta get my act together and transfer my credits.” I went to the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco– it was perfect. It was a beautiful, old historic building in San Francisco that they turned into a cooking school. It’s a great school. And I ended up staying there for 13 years, met Nadia [Jeff’s wife], got married, the whole thing.
After I graduated from the CCA, I went to London, and worked 20-hour days for free as a stage [intern] with Anton Mosimann.
eMinutes: You were really working 20-hour days?
Jeffrey Saad: Yup, literally. They expected me at 10 in the morning but I would come in at 5:30 a.m., because I wanted to work with the pastry chef. And I learned how to make Tiramisu and breads. And then I would go straight into service. We did a catering event for the Prince and Lady Di – this was back in 1992. It was brilliant.
And I was always front-of-the-house. See, I wanted to open my own restaurant, so I was always about the food. But I never really planned to be the big chef, because I wanted to open restaurants.
eMinutes: You wanted to be in the business of restaurants?
Jeffrey Saad: Exactly. I love the passion of hospitality. But I’ve always loved to cook and to me, how can you open a restaurant if you don’t know how to create the menu and cook.? It’s always a disconnect, you know what I mean?
eMinutes: So that’s why you studied cooking for all those years?
Jeffrey Saad: Yeah, exactly.
eMinutes: But it wasn’t that you were ever going to actually cook?
Jeffrey Saad: No. I was never planning on being a chef, I just wanted to know and understand it all. So I graduated and went to that stage, had an amazing five weeks in London, and then I had this epiphany and was like, “I just want to go back and open my own place.”
I got on a plane, wrote a business plan, went to the guy I worked for when I was in culinary school, Billy Russel Shapiro. Billy always said, “When you open a place, I want half.” I worked for his restaurant in San Francisco when I was in culinary school. So I was doing 80-hour weeks. Literally when I wasn’t in school, I was there. Forty hours in school, 40 for him. I think I did a lot of good things for him, which is why he said he said when I was ready just to let him know. I called Billy up and said, “You ready?” He wrote me the check.
Everyone said, “You can’t just do that. You can’t just open a restaurant. You need more experience first.” And I thought I would rather just learn and go for it.
eMinutes: But how did you write a business plan? Who taught you that?
Jeffrey Saad: I literally did it on the plane. It was a joke. It was the ten-hour business plan. I said what I want the concept to be, what I want to achieve. I like the hospitality part of it, so I was like, “I want to see people three times a week. I want to see that smile on your face like when you ate that [sandwich], and I want to say, “Leyna, good to se you. I know what you’re drinking.” And you don’t get that when it’s 100 dollars a person. So I knew I wanted it casual.
I said, “Okay, I’m not the master of anything, so what do I do?” Ironically, 20 years later, Without Borders really evolved from how I lived my whole life and had my career. So I went to Mexico and started travelling around. I began cooking with this woman down there and became passionate about Mexican food. But I didn’t want to pretend to know authentic Mexican. So I called it, “Sweet Heat” and it was healthy Mexican food. The first one opened in the Marina District of San Francisco in 1993. And I got lucky. It was right when the marina got yuppified. It went from a bunch of old Italians after the earthquake to them fleeing [and yuppies coming.] We had a tequila garden and we were just rockin’. Rockin’!
And I opened a second one in 1994, and a third in ’95. I had three of them. It was all going great and lasted for six years. And then a guy walked in the door and said, “I want to buy it.” And I had these bottled chutneys called “Soul Man Green Chile Chutney” and “Red Chile Chutney.” It was a popular condiment on the scallop taco that I sold. And William Sonoma was selling it. And I was selling it out of the restaurant. And he said, “I want to buy the whole thing,” and I said, “Sold!” [laughing]
eMinutes: Were you ready to get out of it?
Jeffrey Saad: No, I was loving it wasn’t looking to get rid of it, but this doesn’t happen in the restaurant business. I mean, I could buy my first house, and that’s what we did. We sold it and we bought our first place in San Francisco. Nadia and I were married at that point. [The buyer] was a guy who had a few other places in San Francisco that were really popular. But to be honest in retrospect, he was kinda lucky. He bought these A+ locations that were already running. And they just ran themselves. And he thought he was going to do that with mine, because they were running themselves. I mean, we were able to take Isabella (his daughter) when she was one year old to Paris and rent an apartment for five weeks. And we were able to hang out on the streets of Paris while the restaurants were just running. Because I worked so hard when I was there. I was always very passionate about the food. I mean I created the whole menu and I taught everybody how to cook it. But I was also very much about the numbers. I thought you gotta have computers, gotta have food costs, gotta have targets, what gets measured gets done. Everyone had to have goals. This was so I could go and enjoy life. And he [the buyer] saw that. And he would go in and ask, “Where’s Jeff?” and they’d say, “He’s on vacation.”
eMinutes: So you must have had great management?
Jeffrey Saad: Great management. It’s always about the people.
eMinutes: You’re only as good as your operator.
Jeffrey Saad: Truly. Those guys were amazing, like family. And to this day, I still get emails and stay in touch with these managers. And I sold in ’98 and now it’s 2009, and still hear about their lives. So he bought it, but unfortunately with months, they started going downhill. And within a year he was done and sold them off individually to restaurateurs. So that was kinda sad. But I joined my partner Adriano who had opened this chain called Pasta Pomodoro. He had six locations and they were rockin’. So I became an owner and joined him. And we opened 20 of them. And now there’s 40. There were almost 50 but now it’s starting to go back down again, unfortunately. It was a great run, but they’re not doing as well now. They were up to 50 at one point. But when it was at its peak of greatness, I left. Because I had my ownership and I missed my kids. They were like one and four at the time and I wanted to put them to bed at night. I wanted to be there. I mean, this 24/7 stuff — let’s do something different. So eight years ago, we moved down here [Los Angeles] with no plan. We said, “What’s next? What are we going to do?” So I got my real estate license and I thought, “I could like this.” It’s people, it’s service. I thought, “let’s try it.” And of course, we got lucky and the timing was perfect. It was an insane seven years of real estate sales. But was really funny – the pinnacle for me – the moment of change, was when we sold this celebrity house. Big sale – and we got this insane check. And I wasn’t feeling it. I looked at my wife and I’m like, “How am I looking at a check this big and not feeling it?” I was really missing the food thing. I mean, the joke is – I was talking to clients more about, “what are you having for dinner?” than about which house they liked. I would be like, “Nah, you’ll get the house later but you GOTTA SEAR THAT! You have to!!” They would look at me weird, too. I mean I hate to say it but a lot of people in real estate don’t have good reputations. They’d be like, “Yeah whatever. You’re a cook, restaurant guy – sure whatever.” But it wasn’t like they really bought into it because I was selling real estate. So here we are eight years later doing real estate after really being in a restaurant since I was 13 years old. I mean never really being out of a restaurant. We had a seven, eight-year chapter in real estate and then we watched “The Next Food Network Star” season four. And I looked at my wife and I said, “I can do this.” Then we had a friend sitting right where you are here from San Francisco. She used to come into my restaurants. And I’m cooking and I’m running back and forth like, “Taste this. Look at the way the Halibut is flaking after just simmering in hat sauce for five minutes.” She’s like, “You need to be on the Food Network. That’s it. That’s what you’re meant to do.” And it was like this epiphany like, “Oh my God, you’re so right.” See, I always thought do a restaurant and don’t see your family, or do nothing.
eMinutes: There was no option to become anything like a celebrity chef?!
Jeffrey Saad: Yeah!
eMinutes: So your friend said that, okay. But how did that translate into a tangible plan? What then?
Jeffrey Saad: Then we started watching The Next Food Network Star (http://www.foodnetwork.com/chefs/jeffrey-saad/index.html), season four, and I looked at my wife, said I could do it, and that was it. I was going to be on the Food Network. So I hired this guy and we put together this whole tape of me in here cooking stuff. I sent it to them and they said, “Okay that’s great but whatever.” His actual words to me were, “You’re not a woman and you’re not famous.” And I only got that tape in front of somebody because I knew somebody else. Otherwise they don’t even look at things unless you have a production that’s authorized. So, okay – since when is “No” the end? “No” is the beginning. I’m just going to forge ahead. And then Nadia got crazy on the internet watching for the auditions for season five. And it was a year ago right now, October 2008, and it was an open call. I was like, “Okay I can cook, I can smile—I’m going!” But then, of course…
eMinutes: There were a lot of other people smiling?
Jeffrey Saad: Yeah! Exactly. I was like “Wow.” There was a line of like 150 people that never ended the whole time I was there – just churning them through, but the rest is history. I answered the questions. And she gave me the little slip; “This is your callback tomorrow.” And then they called me back and they were like, “Show up tomorrow at noon with a signature dish of yours and be ready to teach something to camera.”
eMinutes: What did you bring?
Jeffrey Saad: Seared scallop tacos with green chili chutney, which to me, that dish to this days encapsulates everything I will ever love about food. It’s sweet but it’s hot. There’s perfect balance. The acidity from the vinegar, but the richness of the chilies, you know scallops to me are magical – their texture, their taste. I just love everything about them. So that dish has always been my dish. So I presented that. And my wife who has been everything – I’d be nothing without her. The truest story is that behind every “X” is “X” – you know, it’s so true. I was going to teach something really fancy. And she’s like, “I don’t know how to cut a tomato. Just show them out to cut a tomato.” So I was like, “Okay, I’ll show them how to cut a tomato for a salad versus a pasta sauce. And how cutting it thin is different from chunky. You know how a tomato should feel. That’s what I did. Then I made it past that round and the next round and the next round. And then finally I got the call and it was on Nadia’s birthday – December 10th.
They were like, “Here’s the plane ticket. You will be picked up at the airport.” They don’t tell you a thing. All of a sudden, next thing I know I’m out of the car into the Food Network Studio. Lights, camera, action – go! They set down a basket and you have 30 minutes to cook something out of what’s in this basket. And the whole time I’m cooking , I’m like, “Okay, you want to take the skin off the pork loin and you want to pound it down” and they’re like, “Where’d ya meet your wife?” and they’re just trying to mess with you. “I was just waking down the street in san Francisco.” And then, “How many kids you have?” I’m like, “Two. And then you want to put it in about 350 after you sear it.” And they’re like, “What’s your favorite color?” and all this stuff!! I walked out of there – I’ll never forget – it was pouring rain. And I just walked through the rain in a daze getting soaked. I walked from the studios in Chelsea Market to the meatpacking district. And then that was it. They called me and said, “You made the final cut. And you’ll be out here January 15th and it’s seven weeks of filming.” And I would miss the family dearly. That was the most difficult part.
eMinutes: You didn’t see them the whole time?
Jeffrey Saad: Seven weeks, no contact. No email, no phone. Part of it is just the psychology of it. But it’s also kind of good too, because they don’t want any outside contact. They want you having only your head and the recipes in your head and how you cook. They don’t want any influence.
eMinutes: You didn’t speak to your wife for seven weeks?
Jeffrey Saad: Five minutes, once a week, speaker phone, video camera. I mean, again they didn’t want to take chance that you would be telling someone, “I got cut. I didn’t get cut”—whatever. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I mean there was a couple of nights I literally went to bed crying. I mean I missed my kids so much. It was surreal.
eMinutes: Did your kids get on the phone also?
Jeffrey Saad: Yeah. It was so painful. Check this out – I got the saddest story and the funniest story. The saddest story—my son goes, “Daddy, it doesn’t sound like the Daddy-You-Daddy.” You know, because he could sense that not only am I on speakerphone, but I am exhausted. Every time I’m talking to them I’m trying not to cry because you don’t want them to hear you cry in the five minutes you’re trying to talk. Not to mention you want to look cool in front of the camera. And then the funniest moment – I can’t believe they didn’t air this on TV because it was so natural and so real. We have five minutes – Go! Isabelle says, “Daddy, I gotta tell you something about Mommy – something Mommy did.” I’m like, “What??” Nadia says, “Don’t tell him!” And Isabella goes, “He needs to know. Daddy should know this!” and I’m like, “What’s going on?” They’re all looking at me like, “Jesus it’s been four weeks, what is she cheating on you already?” and Isabella goes, “MOMMY BOUGHT CANNED TOMATO SAUCE!! For her, that was criminal. Every Sunday I would make a batch of tomato sauce for he week and we’d use it for pasta or whatever. We had our ritual. But never has there been a jar or can of tomato sauce in our house. Not because I’m so above it. But because I like to make it. So it was really hilarious. We were all laughing out loud. It was priceless.
eMinutes: So I was reading that you decided when you were 13 that this was what you wanted to do. Can you tell me a little more about that story?
Jeffrey Saad: Right. Literally, it was a very odd thing. I was in junior high, and I was like, “I really like food.” I had this thing where I said, “This is not optional. You have to eat to live. I want this to be an amazing journey. Otherwise it’s just going to be sustenance.” I mean, what were you going to do? Just eat to eat? That’s depressing. So I walked down the alley behind the junior high school and I got a job at this little place called, “The Piccadilly.” And it was right out of Mel’s Diner – Alice. Remember that? It was that total diner. Like bang on the bell with the spatula and the grumpy guy in the kitchen. And the waitresses all chewing gum. I just fell in love with it. From that moment on, I was like, “This is what I’m going to do.” This was the coolest thing.
eMinutes: What did your parents say?
Jeffrey Saad: My mom cooked a lot. The joke is I thought she was a great cook and now I realize that she just cooked often. There’s a big difference. When I discovered green beans are actually green it was like the greatest day of my life. They were always like brown and limp. But I appreciate her because she cooked constantly. And I became food aware.
I would see bacon on the counter that she had crumbled and I knew she was going to make her spinach salad, her hot bacon dressing. I started to identify these things. And my sisters made fun of me. I don’t even remember half of these stories. My sisters reminded me that I used to play this game where I would go to the spice rack and I would shut my eyes and they could get me to guess which spice was which. And then from 13, I wasn’t out of the restaurants until I was 33 and we moved here to LA.
eMinutes: So all of your job have been in restaurants?
Jeffrey Saad: Always. I haven’t been out of a restaurant for more than like a week for a vacation or whatever since I was 13 until this real estate chapter.
eMinutes: And you would just wait tables? How did you get into the kitchen?
Jeffrey Saad: I started off always waiting tables. But I would be doing both. Every restaurant I ever worked in, the owner would laugh and tell you I insisted that I would cook a few shifts and wait tables there a few shifts.
eMinutes: And they would let you just cook?
Jeffrey Saad: Yeah. I had an in because my Godfather — you know classic traditional Godfather — helped me. So I learned to cook in the kitchen with the guys. And that was back in the Cajun days – all blackened, it was disgusting. But at the time I thought it was cool. But then quickly I had enough credentials so when I went off to school, I was able to get jobs. My greatest cooking experience was the North Western Steakhouse in Ames, Iowa. This crazy Greek Guy owned it. I went to undergrad near there – hotel restaurant school at Iowa State. This guy would walk in and turn the garbage cans over in the middle of the service and he would find pats of butter and he was like, “This is my money! What are you doing?” then he would start pulling money out of his pockets and throw it on the floor and yell, “Take all my money then!” and then he would walk out. And that was his idea of being a great leader. We would all look at each other like, “What was that scene?” But he was that classic-didn’t-know-anything-owner, and he felt like he had to make some kind of stink to make everyone aware of costs. But the chef got arrested for his third DUI, and they took him straight to prison. And the owner looked at me and was like, “Who can run this kitchen?” and I was like, “I can.”
eMinutes: How old were you?
Jeffrey Saad: I was a sophomore in college in hotel restaurant school. And I said, “I’ll do it.” So I went to my teachers and I said, “You want me to learn about restaurants? I have a chance to really learn, so be flexible with me on some classes because I’m not gonna be here.” And I ran the kitchen — I ordered everything and cooked everything.
eMinutes: So you were 21 and you were running the kitchen? Did you have problems with people respecting you because you were so young?
Jeffrey Saad: I probably didn’t even know the difference whether they were or not. I probably thought I was in charge and everyone was just laughing but I was into it and I loved it, you know. The classical restaurant stories, too. Right out of Anthony Bourdain’s books – the front of house manager was a total alcoholic. I don’t think I ever saw him sober. At ten in the morning, he’d be hammered! He was a functioning alcoholic. He ran that restaurant. And the waitresses were cute and fun and it was like a big happy family.
eMinutes: Anyone in your life that you found really inspiration that you looked up to?
Jeffrey Saad: My dad died when I was very young, at six, just like my wife’s dad. So my uncle, his brother, became kind of a role model for me. He was really good to me. He was an example of what success looks like. He had money and all of those things, but he also had a good family. And its amazing when you’re young like that, you really [notice it.] One of my favorite quotes is, “I can’t hear what you say because who you are speaks so loudly.” You know what I mean? I think about this with my kids. Because they’re going to watch what I do. I could preach all day long, but it’s what they see and what goes on that they’re going to take in. And that’s how it was for my uncle. He was a good example for me. He was someone who was inspirational. And then I just grabbed inspiration from everybody I ever met. I always felt that way. I’ll walk away with something from you tonight. Everybody has something, if you’re open to it. All my chef instructors, every one of them gave me something special. A lot of the restaurateurs I worked with, even the ones that were really bad, I got a lot out of them because I realized what not to do.
eMinutes: So since you started your restaurants, it sounds like you were just continually moving up. Have you have any major setbacks? Aside from not speaking to your wife for seven weeks?
Jeffrey Saad: It’s really weird – I gotta tell you my life is too perfect. I get up every single morning and I go out and look at the view and I just thank the air. I’m so grateful for my life. I wake up every morning so grateful, and I also wake up ready for more. I want more, you know? But I am wiling to do whatever it takes. But so far, I decided to open a restaurant, I did. Sold ‘em, it went great. The real estate thing was amazing. Now this Food Network thing is happening. I mean I still don’t have a show or anything so there’s still a long way to go before I get where I really want.
eMinutes: But you are the spokesperson for the American Egg Board?
Jeffrey Saad: Yes, yes I am. And that’s been amazing. The Farmers of America. It’s really a cool experience. I love cooking with eggs so it’s really a natural fit. Lots of good stuff happening.
[note from eMinutes: It was about this time I sheepishly slurped my margarita in a successful attempt for a second. The spicy, hot libation went down too smoothly, and the fresh lime juice was too good to only have one. Jeffrey happily mixed another.]
eMinutes: What would you say are the common misconceptions about your career and your life?
Jeffrey Saad: You know I have this little thing right now where I hate being identified as a realtor. Because that’s how everyone knows me in LA. And it was a very strong chapter. And I’m not NOT proud of it. It was an amazing chapter and I will always be grateful and I enjoyed it. But I feel like I’m so back to where I belong which is in food. Whether I become the biggest Food Network star that ever was, or I just open another restaurant, or whether I just cook for my wife every night, I just feel like I’m where I belong again. So people will call me up and say, “Hey what do you know about the house down the street?” and I’m like, “No, I’d rather talk about food.” You know, it’s this funny thing now. People are like, “You wouldn’t believe what happened to Jeff Saad.” And someone else will say, “You mean the real estate guy?” because, of course, that’s how everyone knows me. I’m proud of it. I met so many amazing people and I took care of amazing people. I just also want to be known as a food guy.
eMinutes: Was the real estate a distraction from the food?
Jeffrey Saad: No, because it was really what I thought I wanted at the time. I thought I was done with restaurants. Even though I got to sell my first restaurant it’s not like we got rich or anything. It was successful in the sense that I made a few bucks. And then the next restaurants after killing myself for several years – my partner who is in San Francisco and is also my best friend – was killing himself for another 12 years, and you walk away with nothing. So restaurants are the hardest way to make money on the planet.
eMinutes: But you did get to take trips with your family like Paris, which is wonderful.
Jeffrey Saad: Yeah but my philosophy has always been if you can’t leave your business, they you might as well just work for somebody else. Because what’s the point? Even with real estate, I did that. I’d turn my phone off on Saturdays. I’d turn it off on six o’clock Friday night, and turn it back on Sunday morning. And my message said, “Thanks for calling. This is Jeffrey Saad. I’m off until Sunday at nine and I’ll be checking messages then. Have a great weekend.” I don’t care. Because then, my battery is always at 100 percent and I’m ready to rock because I take care of myself. My daughter said to me one time, “You really love yourself, Daddy, don’t you?” I took that as a compliment because she sees me thriving on life and enjoying myself, which allows me to be a good dad and a great husband. So we’ve always taken the vacations. I mean, we’d have like eight deals going on and I would say, “It’s just money.” I’d give 25 percent of everything to some realtor. I’d say, “We’re off to Spain.” Every year my wife and I would take a trip alone and a trip with the kids. And it’s that balance that makes it all worth it to me. Because otherwise, what’s the point? I respect everybody’s view on that, but for me I had to do that. But I started to feel a lack of balance with the restaurants, so the real estate chapter was great. For me, it felt part time! What, 50, 60 hours a week? Holidays, nobody wants to do real estate. I was like, “Wow, I have holidays now!” So it was a welcome chapter and it was a great chapter. And it really wasn’t until the last three or six months that I started to feel… you know. And then of course the market changed on top of it, which made it even easier to look inside yourself. Actually we had a really good year right up through the Food Network stuff, ironically. But it was still a good reason to move on, too. Because it was dying anyway.
eMinutes: What’s a typical day for you now?
Jeffrey Saad: A typical day is I get up at five, five thirty every morning. I’ve always believed that that time is power. Even when I was in real estate. I’d go to Beverly Hills at five thirty in the morning and I had three hours before anybody got there and another two hours before most of them got there, if they got there at all. But it’s before the phone rings. I love watching the sun come up. The day is off to a good start. I read something inspiring, and I am ready for the day. Even when the kids get up, I wake them up with, “Let’s go! Who wants pancakes?” because I’ve done my thing. You know when you wake up late, you’re always two steps behind and I hate that feeling — all day you are just shy of what you wanted to have done. By getting up early, I get it all done. So now by 10 a.m., the rest of the day is bonus. I get up five, five thirty, work out, read something, make breakfast for the kids, they get off to school. And then I always have my little post-it of the things I got to get done. Work on the cookbook proposal, which is what I am doing now.
eMinutes: You’re writing a cook book?
Jeffrey Saad: Yup. And I have a publisher who is interested in New York, hopefully, so we’ll see how it goes. They haven’t seen the proposal yet but I’m expecting them to like it. And then I have a business plan. It’s going to change, obviously, because I’m making it up. But I gotta do at least three new recipes a week and document them. Because I’m used to cooking from the hip. I have to do this in a way so somebody else can do it per my instructions and have them like it. And then my list is I gotta make at least X amount of industry contacts a month because I’m trying to keep myself out there and meet people. It’s funny how you start connecting the dots. It started with my asking circle of friends, “Okay, who knows who?” and then somebody knows somebody that leads to somebody else. Anyway, so I get that stuff done, and I have lunch with my wife. We always have a nice little lunch. Then in the afternoon, I’ll run errands. And then back to my list of things to do. But I usually finish everything I have to get done by noon… the must-do’s. Then I feel good about the rest of the day. Now that I’m doing this, I home with the kids more, which is great. I’ll take my son to soccer practice. I cook dinner five nights a week, I cook lunch three to four days a week. We go out alone one night a week, and we take the kids out one night as a family. And that’s the general pattern. My kids are everything to me. I refuse to ever take a chance that I’m going to look back one day and say “should’ve, would’ve, could’ve.” I want to just sweep my wife off to Europe and be retired, knowing are kids are doing well and we did the best we could do. And not have any regrets or issues and whatever I did wrong, it won’t be for lack of effort.
eMinutes: And no real estate now?
Jeffrey Saad: Yeah, real estate is done. I’m referring it all out. I’m getting calls all the time. Because I knocked on I don’t know how many tens of thousands of doors when I was in real estate. See, I had a plan. I would get up every single morning and knock on doors. When we moved up to this area from San Franciso, we knew nobody. We moved to be in a business where you’re supposed to know people, which is kind of stupid. So I knew I had to meet the people.
eMinutes: Wait, you knocked on doors and talked to strangers?
Jeffrey Saad: Yup. I would knock and say, “Hi, you have any interest in selling your home? I’m the local realtor. ” I would say I was the local realtor even though I just moved here. They would say, “No, get out of here.” But I would come back three months later and knock and they’d say, “What is your deal? But you know, funny enough we’ve been talking about it…” and boom, I sold their house. And they would tell a friend who told a friend.
eMinutes: What happened when you said, “Hi I’m the local realtor,” and they said, “Yeah as a matter of fact we’d like to sell”?
Jeffrey Saad: I was like, “What am I supposed to say now?” I was so used to rejection I didn’t know what “yes” sounds like. It was a joke. Because I was really into the scripted dialogue. People try to make business so complicated. Make contacts, convert the contacts by getting to know what they need, and then get it done. The rest of it is all – you send out your postcards and pretend you’re doing so much more with all of these fancy things that nobody else will read. But you just have to meet people and see what they need. So then I had to get ready for the “Yes” and I was like, “Okay great when do you need to move by?” And they would say, “Actually, we don’t need to move.” And then I realized okay, maybe this is just somebody I will keep in touch with. You know you find out quickly. But I just feel so peaceful starting the next chapter.
eMinutes: How do you put yourself out there now? You want everyone to recognize you as a chef and know who you are. You have a Facebook fan page, but what else?
Jeffrey Saad: Facebook fan page. I have Twitter. And I have my blog, which has been huge. I get over 7,000 hits a month consistently on my blog.
eMinutes: How did you start that?
Jeffrey Saad: yYou know, I said, okay blogs are big and I should get one going. It was also a need. I wanted to talk. The joke was I would wake up at five o’clock in the morning and say to my wife, “What do you want for dinner?” and she was like, “Oh my freaking God. Let’s have coffee first, please?” So I’ll sit down and talk about what I want to have for dinner in the blog. I knew this company called “Motherhood Inc” (www.Motherhoodinc.com). This woman started this company and they’re amazing. It’s all these really smart women who were CEO’s, CFO’s, all creative people. They have babies and families and didn’t want to just give up their profession but they coudn’t do it full time. So if you need something done, she pieces it out to the right moms. They do it from home. They each do a piece of it. It’s very organized. I’ll get an email from Robyn on the east coast that did this part of it. And she’ll hand it off to Sandra. And they just set this whole blog up for me. They asked me what I wanted it to look like, and I told them. So now all I have to do is my typing, upload the picture, and hit “done.” And they have the functions of it all set up. So whenever I post, it gets tied right into Facebook and Twitter. It’s automatic. They’re so good. I stay away from just recipes because I don’t want to just be the recipe guy. So I’ll post the way I cook. To me, I want you to think about the way you cook. You know, read a cookbook like a story. What characters go together? Is it pomegranate and rosemary? “Mindtaste” the flavors and starting learning to cook with flavor combinations, techniques. So one of the things I do in the blog now is put, “Key Flavor Factors.” So this morning’s blog was a fall risotto. It was roasted butternut squash and brussel sprouts. But I used a little bit of Allspice so one bite is like eating Thanksgiving dinner. So I talk about how it tastes and the flavor combinations. So I hope when you’re done reading my blog, you’re like, “Oh my God, I want to try those two flavors together.” And you don’t even need to recreate the exact recipe. But this morning I posted the risotto recipe because I was so excited about the way it came out. But I’ll post things that I have going on when I’m out and about. I was in San Francisco last week on a consulting job so I took a picture of this Scotch Egg. It was amazing. Uploaded it to Flickr, hit it to Twitter.
eMinutes: What are you doing to promote your blog?
Jeffrey Saad: Not much now. But that’s the beauty of the Food Network. Being on the show, I was up to 900 hits a day over the summer because the show was airing and people Googled my name. I answered every single email. It was a full time job over the summer.
eMinutes: Are you going to sell advertising on there?
Jeffrey Saad: Well that’s one of the things I’m hearing about from Motherhood Inc They’re like a machine. They’re like, “Okay write down the cook books that you’re reading right now. Anyone that buys it, Amazon gives you a percentage of it.”
eMinutes: Are they expensive?
Jeffrey Saad: They’re really reasonable. It’s amazing. They’re doing so much stuff for me. I’m just trying to keep myself out there. Also I was the emcee for the Malibu From the Vine Food Festival. They had a huge tent set up at Saddle Rock Ranch. And all the great chefs were there. But I’m watching them and thinking, “Why aren’t they telling these people that the key is this?” People need to know why you’re doing it this way and what it tastes like.
eMinutes: You’ve always been this way? No one ever told you how to do this and adjusted your way of delivering the info, even as you became well known?
Jeffrey Saad: No. I probably should, but no.
eMinutes: It’s working for you. It’s just how you are.
Jeffrey Saad: I just love it. I’m a people pleaser. All of the people in this business have some kind of disorder where we need constant affirmation. Because I like to just see you enjoy that right now. That’s just so good for me. I did a cook off against the top chef runner up of season four – Marcel [Vigneron]. He’s the sous chef over at Bazaar. It was so much fun. I’ll be doing Disneyland. It’s a 40-day festival and each day they feature a different celebrity chef and they gave me a weekend. Guy Fietti – you know him on the Food Network with the white spiky hair? Wildly successful and he’s been so good to me. He had me down at the Anaheim food festival this summer just to say hello and keep my name out there. And then somebody else just saw me on TV and wanted me to do the Charleston Food and Wine festival which is kind of a big deal. And I’ll be emceeing that. December 17th, I’m opening for Guy Fietti at the Gibson Theatre at Universal– 5,500 people. And he’s doing a 20-city food road show. This guy’s gonna change food entertainment forever. He’s worth seeing. He’s amazing. I’ll come out, “Hi, I’m the Spice Smuggler,” and I’ll do my thing. I get a 20 minute block.
eMinutes: Do you rehearse?
Jeffrey Saad: Bobby Flay asked me that on the show. He was like, “What is your plan?” And I took it as a compliment because he seemed intrigued by the flow. I said, “You know, I never rehearse too much because I want it to be authentic. All I do is have the bullet points. The open idea, the points and meat of it, and I want the rest to flow.