Chef's PSA Podcast

Leslie Brenner is the founder of Leslie Brenner Concepts, a restaurant PR and creative direction firm in Dallas, and the former restaurant critic and dining editor of The Dallas Morning News. She also writes the Substack Leslie Brenner on Restaurants.
A four-star review made André Natera one of the hottest chefs in Dallas. A later two-star review was, in his words, the worst day of his life. Years later, Brenner and André sit down and discuss their shared history. The other half of the story happened in the kitchen. When she was in the dining room, André’s team cooked two portions of everything she ordered, kept a Leslie Brenner portion of the best fish and steak, and planted someone at the next table to listen. She was booking under fake names on burner phones.
Why a publicist cannot fix a struggling restaurant, and how the best ones build a story out of what the kitchen is already doing
Why Leslie never recommends influencers for a restaurant, and what she would spend that effort on instead
What a publicist can and cannot do for a James Beard entry or Michelin, and the sign it is time to replace yours
André Natera and Leslie Brenner cover what it was like to cook for a critic, how Leslie’s reviews looked from the dining room and from the kitchen, why she left the critic’s chair for restaurants, her first week in Dallas, the golden years of the Dallas scene, why a city loses something without a critic at its newspaper of record, how modern Texas cuisine took shape, influencers versus critics, what PR really does for a new restaurant, and when a chef should fire a publicist.
It closes with Leslie’s plan for her new Substack, Leslie Brenner on Restaurants, on how restaurants can earn press without a publicist, and her last word to André: she is glad she got to say sorry.
Recorded in September, before The Dallas Morning News named Sarah Blaskovich its new restaurant critic.
GuestLeslie Brenner Concepts: https://www.lesliebrennerconcepts.com/Leslie Brenner on Restaurants: https://lesliebrenner.substack.com/

More Chef's PSA
Lead Like a Chef App → https://studio.com/apps/andre/leadlikeachef
Get the Books → https://chefspsa.com/books
Shop Chef’s PSA Merch → https://shop.chefspsa.com/
Get Episodes Early on Substack → https://chefspsa.substack.com/Follow Chef’s PSA on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/chefspsa/

Jules Wiringa is the Dutch chef behind Jules Cooking, which publishes fine dining recipes and technique videos made for chefs. He came up in Michelin-starred kitchens, became a sous chef at a two-Michelin-star restaurant, and has been making cooking videos for 16 years, starting with a pasta dough made with a whisk at age 15.
Jules says kitchens still gatekeep knowledge, and he saw it firsthand when a chef threw away a chef de partie’s recipe book after the cook had given two and a half years. He went the other way. Every recipe on Jules Cooking is tested, photographed, filmed, and written out in full, and last year he rewrote roughly 2,500 of them by hand.
How he runs about 150 dishes a year off roughly 100 foundation recipes, and fixes the written recipe instead of re-filming when a dish needs ten more grams of vinegar
Why culinary school never teaches you to cook 50 steaks at once, and why you open the oven between rounds to stop the gray edge
Why chefs should eat at their own restaurant as a guest, and why he caps a tasting menu at two and a half hours
André Natera and Jules Wiringa cover recipe gatekeeping, how Jules develops dishes in his head before he cooks them, why he makes recipes for chefs and not foodies, why fine dining starts to look the same, why you should zest down, his start at 15 and a trial day in a three-Michelin-star kitchen, how he spots a good cook in the first second, the tools he will not work without, the flavor lifts he reaches for, Josh Niland, and his advice for young cooks.
It closes with a rapid-fire round: Robuchon or Ducasse, Ferran or René, Keller or Achatz, Marco Pierre White or Gordon Ramsay.
Guest
Jules Cooking Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julescooking/
Jules Cooking website: https://www.julescooking.com
Links
Lead Like a Chef App → https://studio.com/apps/andre/leadlikeachef
Get the Books → https://chefspsa.com/books
Shop Chef’s PSA Merch → https://shop.chefspsa.com/
Get Episodes Early on Substack → https://chefspsa.substack.com/
Follow Chef’s PSA on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/chefspsa/

Jess Pryles returns with more meat science. She is a live fire cook, the founder of Hardcore Carnivore, and the author of Prime Cuts, a 288 page guide to choosing, understanding, and cooking meat with more than 100 recipes built cut by cut. She holds a Graduate Certificate in Meat Science from Iowa State University and judged Food Network’s Pitmasters. This time she gets into the parts chefs argue about: what to call a cut, how to salt it, and how far to cook it.
Her case starts with the menu. London broil is a preparation, not a cut, and Delmonico has no standard definition, which is how a kitchen can invent a name and get away with it. Then she explains why picanha, duck, and lamb eat poorly when served too rare, and why a chef should cook a duck breast properly instead of asking the guest.
How an equilibrium brine works, why her recipe adds sugar for balance, and why red meat is harder to brine than pork or chicken
Dry brine versus cure: why she says salting a steak overnight is a dry brine, and the parts per million math behind her bacon calculator
Why she likes tri-tip around 138 degrees, and why she believes resting a steak is mostly carryover cooking
André Natera and Jess Pryles cover who Prime Cuts was written for, the steakhouse menu she wants to see with more breeds, grass-fed beef, picanha, flat iron, and hanger, who should decide how a steak is cooked, why curing salt is pink and what happens if the math is wrong, and what to do when a guest says safe chicken is raw because it is pink near the bone.
Guest
Jess Pryles Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jesspryles/
Hardcore Carnivore Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hardcorecarnivore
Prime Cuts and signed copies: https://www.hardcorecarnivore.com
Links
Lead Like a Chef App → https://studio.com/apps/andre/leadlikeachef
Get the Books → https://chefspsa.com/books
Shop Chef’s PSA Merch → https://shop.chefspsa.com/
Get Episodes Early on Substack → https://chefspsa.substack.com/
Follow Chef’s PSA on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/chefspsa/

Christophe De Lellis is chef and partner at Mamani in Dallas, a French restaurant with an Italian accent that earned a Michelin star in 2025, less than two months after opening, and kept it in the 2026 guide. Before Dallas he spent 13 years at Joël Robuchon Las Vegas. He arrived in 2010 as a cook who could barely speak English and was running the kitchen as executive chef by 27. He still asks what can come off a dish before he asks what can go on.
The Robuchon kitchen he walked into was nothing like the Paris bistros he came from. Asparagus peeled with a paring knife, micro arugula dressed by rubbing oil between the fingertips, a ruler for the brunoise, and a cook counting the dots on a plate. He says he was hooked right away. Then the executive chef left, his mentor asked if he was ready, and the answer he got was no, you are not ready, but you are going to have to be.
How a chicken jus built from 180 pounds of wings, water, and shallot, with no salt, becomes about 70 percent of the sauce on his meat dishes
Why he removes an ingredient before he adds one, and why he says better sourcing fixes half the problem
How a duck dry aged for 14 to 19 days becomes one dish that blends French and Persian cooking, with the breast in an orange sauce and the legs as kebab
André Natera and Christophe De Lellis cover why he walked out of a finance program on day one and went to cooking school in Paris, the visa call that came in the middle of a Tekken game, the year he left Robuchon to work for Shawn McClain at Sage at Aria, how a random message from Brandon Cohanim brought him to Dallas, why Mamani is à la carte with 100 seats instead of a tasting menu, how he balances a menu, why he does not want servers telling the chef’s story, and which station he says is the mark of a restaurant.
It ends where every episode ends, with the Mount Rushmore, plus the line he would build with Joël Robuchon on the pass.
Guest
Christophe De Lellis Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christophedelellis/
Mamani : https://www.instagram.com/mamanirestaurant/
Links
Lead Like a Chef App → https://studio.com/apps/andre/leadlikeachef
Get the Books → https://chefspsa.com/books
Shop Chef’s PSA Merch → https://shop.chefspsa.com/Get Episodes Early on Substack → https://chefspsa.substack.com/
Follow Chef’s PSA on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/chefspsa/

Paid partnership with Toast. This episode ends with a sponsored bonus segment on menu pricing, built on data from Toast's Menu Price Monitor and their free Menu Checker tool. Check your menu against the market → https://biz.toasttab.com/us1XN

Sarah McIntosh is the chef-owner of epicerie in Austin, open on Hancock Drive since 2012 and running 450 covers on a busy Saturday. She came out of Louisiana, cooked at Bouchon and Ad Hoc, and has spent 20 years in and out of the Austin industry. Last year she flew to Argentina to cook alongside Francis Mallmann. None of that is why this conversation matters. She is one of the only chefs in the country who has worked out how to own the dirt under the restaurant instead of renting it.

In 2008 she bought a house on the east side of Austin for around $219,000 at under four percent interest. Her payment was $600 a month, less than the apartment she had been renting. She still lives in it. It is paid off. During the pandemic it crossed a million dollars. That single piece of math is why she now structures deals where she owns the property and the business, and why when a developer offered her a percentage to recruit tenants for a project down the street from her restaurant, she turned it down and asked for ownership in the development instead.

- The ownership structure she learned from Sam Hellman-Mass: buy the property, borrow against it to build, and the investor's money is protected by an asset that outlives the restaurant
- What to actually look for in a lease, in her words: MEP, tenant improvement money, triple net, CAM, percentage rent, and why a landlord covering mechanical, electrical and plumbing is the signal that a deal is real
- How she writes a proforma on purpose at 60 to 70 percent of what she thinks she will do, in three versions, with someone hired to pick it apart

Andre Natera and Sarah McIntosh cover why most chefs put a million dollars into a building they will never own, the difference between leasing and buying when you have no backers, the brokerage math on a commercial deal and why she refuses to get a license, how a 20 year network produces deals that never hit the market, paying 100 percent of staff health insurance instead of raising wages and the staff revolt that followed, being quick to fire before a one person problem becomes a five person problem, and why her empathy has grown to the point that she now hands the firing decision to her team.

It ends with the only award she says she needs. Butts in the seats, 450 of them on a Saturday, and a restaurant that is making money

Sarah McIntosh on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/sarahmcgrams/
epicerie on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/epicerie_austin/
epicerie → https://epicerieaustin.com
Follow Chef's PSA on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/chefspsa/

Bonus content sponsored by Toast.