The Secret to Hospitality "Alchemy" with Eddy Buckingham

NYC’s coolest bars share one specific secret. I just sat down with Eddy Buckingham. The Aussie force behind Chinese Tuxedo and Old Mates.

In this episode you’ll learn

• Why “generosity” is actually a profit driver, not an expense.

• The difference between “Instagram famous” and actually making money.

• How to manufacture “alchemy” in a physical space.

We dive into the details later in the conversation.

If you like the episode, please subscribe.

Timestamps

00:00 Intro
05:25 The Alchemy of Hospitality Excellence
13:58 Lessons from the Closure of The Australian Pub
39:48 Viral Fame vs. Real Profit
55:19 Building a Community
1:05:35 Agency and Control in Life
1:13:03 The “Why Not?” Mindset

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Here’s the full transcript:

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (00:00.066)

New York’s coolest bars and clubs have one thing in common. They’re run by Aussies. What is it about the Australian culture that lends us to be world-class hospitality entrepreneurs? Hospitality has a lot of things at its core. We’ve all walked into that cafe and just gone, this has got that magic. Hospitality has an outsized impact in culture for how little revenue it actually brings in. There’s a bit of a perception corruption right now that virality or attention speaks to an inherent quality. I’m increasingly finding that’s not the case.

from Australia to New York in 2001. We opened Trum & Sarkseedow in 2016. We opened The Tiger, a space next door, South Soho Bar, so there were no Australian pubs left in New York. And so, with some friends and a new consortium, we developed and opened Old Mates. Old Mates has a very interesting cap table. NBA player, Paddy Mills, Pat Cummins, Hugh Jackman, Ash Barty, Mick Fanney, Hamish Blake and Andy Liam. How did that happen? Man, I’m just a bartender. What the f***?

What makes an environment of hospitality excellence? You need two things. Welcome to One Time with Adam Metwally, the podcast bridging the gap between health, hustle and happiness. We are at podcast for a while in Chelsea, New York City, and I am with Eddie Buckingham and a Australian hospitality entrepreneur behind New York venues such as Chinese, Tuxedo, The Tiger.

Old Mates Pub and many more. What’s up man? Hey mate, great to be here. Thank you. Thanks for coming on. So GQ Mag recently semi-jokingly said, New York’s coolest bars and clubs have one thing in common. They’re run by Aussies. What is it about the Australian culture that lends us to be world-class hospitality entrepreneurs? Look, I think that that particular story that, you know, it makes for a good headline. I need a pithy one-liner. It’s a game these days. That’s right. That’s right.

I think that’s, you know, there’s a bit more to it, a bit more complexity to that. But there’s no question Aussies are overrepresented in my industry, in my field, particularly here in New York City. But internationally, it’s been a sector where Aussies have made an impact and had a great deal of success, which is excellent. I’m a product and part of that. I think there’s a number of reasons that Australian hospitality has translated globally. I think we’re really lucky that in Australia,

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (02:26.541)

There are lot of venues and lot of groups executing at a very high standard. And also there’s a degree of cultural expression to it that I think people are responding well to the Australian style of service and the Australian proposition. So as mentioned, we execute in a high level there, back home, which means there’s very talented chefs, very talented front of house operators coming out who’ve come up in an environment of excellence. it’s coupled with a

social and cultural approach that think translates well to hospitality here in the States. So good hospitality in my mind is often executed with a sense of cultural, a culture of generosity, a sense of giving a profound but not obsequious sense of service, which I think an Aussie mindset and mentality lends itself to well. It’s hey, I approach your table.

as an equal with a deep sense of generosity, I want to ensure you leave this interaction satiated and happy and fulfilled. That’s kind of the way I think about a venue, think about an approach to a table, think about every interaction with the guest. And if you can execute that with a high standard of execution on what you’re putting on the plate or in the glass or what you’re offering to the guest, you’re going to enjoy success in that field. So in that regard, think Aussies are pretty well situated to...

to do good work here. How do you stay generous and profitable? That’s a good question. And it’s finding the balance where those two things go hand in hand. The profit imperative is the biggest challenge very often in hospitality and small business, the kind of hospitality I operate in, independent businesses. And particularly in a competitive market like New York.

where people have so many options. But I would say that the sense of generosity is actually inherent and necessary in a profitable proposition. this is an expensive town in every regard. It’s expensive for the consumer. It’s expensive for the operator. So whether it’s real estate, whether it’s produce, whatever it might be, we have a pretty high ticket price. And by virtue of that, it’s a high barrier to entry. And that is passed on to the consumer in many ways. It’s an expensive.

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (04:51.324)

category here in New York. But it’s finding around the margins, the edges, where you can make impact, where you can be generous, where you can over exceed people’s expectations. That’s where opportunity exists in making for memorable experiences and positive experiences for the guest. So it’s not necessarily across the board. It’s getting maximum impact on whether it’s gestural or substantial, know, ensuring best reception.

of the guest. Yeah. What’s an example of non-financial generosity that you’ve found has been useful? Well, in the most basic function, I can speak about specifics and little things and tricks you can do, but I think there’s such a thing as like an emotional generosity, which is treating people with dignity, with respect, saying, hey, I see you, I understand how this experience is important to you. We all, whether it’s in the hospitality environment,

or in other fields. We’ve all known consumer experience where you felt like a number, where you felt like just part of a process, where you’re not actually seen or being thought of. It happens in all kinds of fields. If you do something in healthcare or in the DMV, whatever it might be. But hospitality, it’s uniquely important to say, I see you, I see your humanity. I speak to the team members that very often what

we’re doing is actually not essential to the guests. It’s a choice on their part to spend their leisure time, which is super, super precious in New York City. People have so many options available to them. If they’re going to choose, my Thursday evening, I want to spend in this room, I want to spend with you guys. There’s an honor in that. We need to recognize that and recognize that in the guests. it’s maybe you don’t have a table yet available for the guests. Maybe they’ve made a reservation, but you’re running behind on your table turns.

It happens. We’re trying to keep the room as full as possible for as long as possible in New York, both for ambiance and utilizing our available inventory. So sometimes things will go wrong or you’re not quite on time. You’ve got two options in an instance like that. Somebody has made a reservation, which is making an appointment. So you’re going to show them, hey, how do I respect your time when we’re not meeting our end of the bargain necessarily? So it can be, hey,

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (07:16.708)

The table will be ready when it’s ready. You can wait outside in the cold. Or we’re going to do our utmost to find an alternate space to buy you over. Maybe it’s a complimentary glass while they wait. It doesn’t always have to be giving away the shop. A complimentary glass of bubbles goes a long way to ameliorating a guest in a tough situation. But it’s as much about the interaction. You don’t want it to feel too transactional. You want it to be thoughtful and sincere. And in that regard, I just think about how I experience things.

as a guest, not just in hospitality environments, but in any professional interaction. And there are those that are a pleasure and those that are a pain. And so as a service provider, as a vendor, we get to choose which, when that guest walks away from the experience, even if it’s the difficult things, even if it’s the hard things, how do want them to relate to it? And it’s so informed by our approach. Yeah, makes sense. So how do you build a culture of generosity in your team? Is it trainable or is it a...

ingrain feeling. is a complex thing and generosity is one element of a broader ecosystem that you need to have. And there’s two principal things I think in fostering culture. The first is actually at hiring, the kind of people that you’re going to have come into your team. There’s a lot of aptitudes that we can coach and train, but attitude is much harder.

So it’s identifying the right kind of people who share your ethos, share your mentality, and this is up and down the team. This is from a general manager to an overnight porter. know, the people are coming in, there’s a collective buy-in, shared sense of responsibility and mission. It’s hard to ascertain all of that in the course of job interview, but at the hiring phase and when you’re building the team, building like-minded people is a real fundamental. And if you can do that,

You’re halfway there. And then beyond that, culture, for it to be real, is bigger than any one individual. You can’t touch every interaction. You can’t touch every team member every day. So it needs to become self-affecting. And it’s very easy to speak to culture and just run a bullshit lip service and say, is what we’re about. You can sit on a podcast and speak to it. But it actually transpires and happens in countless interactions, countless moments every day.

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (09:43.521)

So in that regard, you’ve to be consistent in it. You’ve got to be do it with energy. You need to do it intentionally and explicitly. You can’t just be like, this is the culture that we subscribe to and it will work itself out. You need to really bang the drum on it. You need to really lean on your leaders and ensure that they are champions and live in those values and culture. And what happens, it’s unquantifiable, but the dream is you hit a tipping point.

where it becomes self-affecting, where people go, okay, this is what informs the kind of decisions we make. So what I was speaking to earlier about the guest interaction, you being thoughtful of how that guest will walk away from each interaction and it having been a pleasure and you’ve met them with a sense of generosity and they feel cared for and feel a sense of kindness. If that is work in every interaction that you’re having to do and not innate to people,

you’re not going to consistently meet that standard. But what you hope is there’s a moment where you hit the tipping point where the culture becomes self-affecting. It takes time. It takes work. It happens on different timelines. And you can’t take it for granted. Once it happens, it’s not eternal. Neglecting a team or a team with a bad leadership culture and whatnot, it can go south. It can also be corrected. So it’s kind of a constant. something that you need to be responsive to and thoughtful of on the daily.

Do you write down the ideal culture of the businesses you’re involved in or does it just naturally stem from you as a person? Mate, I don’t write down very much. Maybe you get into the audio format. There’s going to be a lot of principles today that, you know, I’ll say I’m unorthodox in some regards in my approaches. there’ll be much better professional agents who will have more firm and clear structures in these things.

I think for me and my approach, it stems from the interactions and the culture is not going to work if it’s a written down missive from up on high. You’re not going to build culture through memos and through emails. Some people might. Good luck to them. I can’t do that. I’m not a good enough writer to do that and I’m not inclined to. It’s really about the interactions that you turn up with.

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (12:04.989)

on the daily. there’s the HR handbook version of the culture, and that’s important. And we have those too. And they need to be thoughtful, and they need to be thorough documents that you can turn to and say, here’s the things in black and white. But that will not be the tool on which culture is built. What I was speaking about, the culture we tried to affect earlier, is a really respectful, thoughtful, kind one. You’ll get found out.

if your interactions with people are not respectful, thoughtful, and kind, it won’t emanate. And as I was saying, what you hope for, there’s that magic moment where a culture becomes self-affecting. there’s no silver bullet here. There’s no trick. There’s no hack. And look, maybe some people have a hack that’s smarter than me who can figure it out. But I’ve got no hack. It’s turning up on the daily. And living it. Being kind, being patient, listening.

being responsive, you know, there’s no trick to this. It’s the old fashioned way. Yeah. I had an experience with my old business in Australia where we set like four or five key things that we wanted to be about. And there was a financial struggle at one point. one of my key staff members, I was making a decision around a customer. One of my key staff members called me out and was like, Hey, this is actually misaligned with what you’ve said. I was like,

Good point. then I changed my decision based on that feedback. you know. Do you think you got a better outcome? outcome. Yeah, it was just a short term financial challenge leading to making more short term financial decisions that were less in line with what the goal of the business was to begin with. And the staff feedback checked me, which was great. That’s great. That’s an example of a tool working.

course correcting for you. I think it is really important to have a bunch of informing principles and explicitly, both explicit and implicit sometimes. I think that sounds like a good example where you have those structures built into your team, which is good. And you were course corrected by virtue of that. I think to also have your own personal informing principles. What will happen in time is, know, younger in my career, there were just fewer decisions that had to be made. Teams were smaller.

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (14:30.98)

projects were less ambitious. And what happens with the passage of time with any luck, know, projects grow, teams grow, more things come down the chute, more opportunities and whatnot, to where there’s a huge volume of decisions that you need to make. And if you don’t have the informing principles, you need to take each as a standalone judgment to make, which is just exhausting. And you’ll get to a point where you kind of maxed out where you lose bandwidth.

So I’ve both specific to individual venues and then even more broadly with how I operate, I do have some implicit informing principles that I try to return to. And every now and again when there’s a really difficult decision or a decision I’m having a hard time working through, going, okay, you know, what’s the North Star, what’s the informing principles and what does that inform around this decision? So if you can have them.

They’re not the kind of things I admire. The anecdote you just said, you know, younger age to have done that. For me, they’ve come into focus in large part over time. And they can evolve. You don’t want them to be too fungible. You don’t want them to change constantly because then they’re not actually informing principles. If you just change it with the weather, then they’re not for real. They have to be very thoughtful. They need to be thoughtful, but they can and should evolve because with the getting of experience and also just the passage of time.

your personal worldview and your mission can change and evolve a little bit. yeah, having them is a big asset necessary, I think, for real operational complexity. What makes an environment of hospitality excellence? That’s a great question. And there’s no single answer to that. A word I use or that I think of and that I return to in hospitality is actually one of alchemy. You can have a fine dining restaurant

with a objectively beautiful build out, talented kitchen team, highly capitalized, experienced team. And it’s just not very special. I’ve been in venues like that, which is not very special. At the same time, you can have a dive bar, one bartender behind the stick. The bathrooms haven’t been cleaned in a generation. And the place is absolutely magic. And there’s no formula. And if somebody then tried to replicate that,

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (16:55.638)

down the road or in another town or whatnot, it wouldn’t necessarily translate and transfer. So that’s where I speak of hospitality alchemy. In whatever the category is, it can be in food service, bed service, nightlife, cafes, days, and we all know them. You’ve all walked into that cafe and just gone, wow, this place is special. Whether it’s somewhere that you go on a regular basis, can be somewhere you go every day or somewhere you step foot in for the first time, you go, this has got that magic.

And you can have two venues on the same block. One has the magic, one doesn’t. You can have two venues by the same operator. One has the magic, one doesn’t. What do you think it is? So it’s a huge amount of actors and informing principles. the funny thing is, you can’t write it down on a piece of paper. I can’t give you the three bullet points for hospitality magic. It’s one of those, you know it when it’s there. And when I’m conceiving a venue,

or developing a venue, which is always done in concert. You have to do it. You know, it takes a lot of people to bring a venue to life. So you can have one version of it in your head, but then there’s the reality of it coming to market. And it will definitionally evolve from the initial conception. And if you try to be too prescriptive and to this cannot change from what I have in my head, look, some people more talented than me might be able to do it. But I think you’re ultimately setting yourself up for a protracted value because,

from conception to reality is a complex journey. So what is it that makes Restaurant Alchemy? Geez, mate, I wish I knew. I wish I could give you the four bullet points because I’d be better at my job if I could. Have you ever thought about it? Oh, mate, it’s all I ever think about. When I’m in other people’s venues, I’ve been pretty fortunate. small handful of times in my own venues, I’ve had moments where I’ve gone, OK, this has got the magic. This has got that special source.

It can’t happen by accident. It doesn’t happen by accident. needs to definitionally have real intentionality from someone in a really important role. Typically, I’d say a founder. It doesn’t have to be a founder. I know of some venues that in their first incarnation weren’t particularly remarkable. And then a team or an individual had taken over it, whether it’s taking over the culture or the actual operations of the venue, and it found a new lease of life. But it needs somebody, at least one, typically a team.

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (19:21.653)

for whom it’s very, very special, for whom it’s a labor of love. I don’t think you’re going to find the magic alchemy in a Chipotle or a Subway or whatnot. don’t mean to talk ill of those enterprises. Good luck to them. mean, their alchemy is in their scale now. Yeah. Yeah. But that’s a different beast. That’s a different line of work to what I do. But so somebody has to care deeply about it. You’re not going to have the magic happen unless somebody cares deeply.

You need to identify something in your consumer base that they’re coveting. So that could be a three Michelin star dining room. There’s people who want this very experiential thing. That’s a long way removed from my professional life and my interests. But those rooms can have it. Or it can be a dive bar where there’s a community of people who are responding to the culture and voice and story that you’re telling and the offering that’s there.

Ultimately, as the team or the operator, you’d like you have a strong sense of ownership over it, but the venue doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to you as long as you’re conceiving it and building it. But the day that you open, it belongs to the people who frequent it and patronize it. They will inform the soul of the venue. The venue exists because of the founders and developers and those who work it, but it exists for and because of the people who patronize it. So.

That alchemy is a complex thing. takes a lot of things need to happen simultaneously for that magic to happen. But when it does, I mean, that’s why people love the hospitality industry, whether it’s to work in it or patronize it. It’s those special venues. And I think all of us, whether it’s nostalgia, you think back to a venue in a younger time in your life or even a moment now where you go, that place is special. That speaks to me, my favorites.

That’s that alchemy in action. And I love that. That’s what I work for. It’s funny. Hospitality has an outsized impact in culture for how little revenue it actually brings in. Like, absolutely. Like a guy that owns a buzzy restaurant in the city, knows everybody who’s anybody, but it might only bring in a couple of million dollars a year versus a guy working in finance that does a hundred million dollars and no one knows or cares who he is. Look.

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (21:46.288)

They’re different missions. I think a sad thing about contemporary culture is so much value is put on bottom line economics, scale economics. The number of people I’ve had walk into Chinese Tuxedo have a very different mindset to me and go, fantastic restaurant you’ve got here, how are you gonna scale it? And I’m like, the scale is just right, mate. It’s a fantastic restaurant because the scale is right. And if I went and tried to push out and do 16 of these,

You know, for a lot of people, that’s the metric of success that they look to. I love returning to Chinatown every day and walking to that dining room and seeing it in action and seeing and experiencing that restaurant alchemy. hospitality, particularly in New York, but anywhere, it is an enterprise. It does have economic realities. has to, you the boat has to float. It has to be a profitable proposition and it’s hard in the industry. And there is a small handful of people who are very good at the

profit side of it. There’s a great many who are less so, which is why it’s a demanding industry. But it’s a creative endeavor inherently. And there’s special spaces. Done right, there’s special spaces. You speak, you compare it to a bank or whatnot. People have to be in that space because of an economic imperative. People choose to be in a restaurant because of a cultural and social desire. It’s a very, very different mission. So if you build it singularly from the start, thinking on ROI,

go into a different field. There’s easier ways to make a buck. If you’re doing it to make a statement, to build community, to...

to have fun. It is a very fun career. It can be. Yeah, can be. it can be. The fun declines over the years as the years transpire. What your fun is. I find it hugely rewarding to the point where I couldn’t do anything else now. I’ve been doing my whole adult life. But yeah, if somebody comes to you with a business plan on a restaurant, singularly as a business thing, pitching you the ROI,

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (23:54.689)

go into a different field, do something different. There’s easier ways to make a buck. But if the soul, the magic, the community, the style expression, the food expression, wherever it might be, really speaks to you, then it’s the right line of work. Nice. How do you give teams the space to care deeply about a project? That’s a good question. It’s not something that I intentionally think on.

You’re really trying to capture some buy-in. And you need two things. You need buy-in initially on the part of the team, and then an opportunity for them to make impact. Because if they buy-in and then everything they’re doing is very prescriptive from top down, the reward runs out very quickly. So it’s getting in people who you trust.

who can get that buy-in and then giving them an opportunity to make impact, which can be hard. The venues in their first incarnation can be so deeply personal. And actually, it’s something as I’ve gotten older and more experienced in, I’ve gotten better at. Like delegating was not something that came naturally to me. And you want to move off delegating in time where you don’t have to delegate on every decision, but rather trust the processes to happen organically, that people will make decisions and judgments that you can back.

So how do you capture buy-in in the first instance? It’s hard initially. I’m in the fortunate position now where having been involved with a couple of successful projects, people can look to a track record and say, OK, these are exciting projects. I’m willing to bet on the next one. The first one, Chinese Tuxedo, hugely difficult to find talented people who’d go, yeah, I want to work with Eddie and Jeff, these guys, without knowing, you know,

our track record and what we were capable of. so. So just for context, Jeff is Jeff Lamb, who is the business partner, right? Yeah, Jeff’s my co founder and principal partner in Tuxedo Hospitality, which is the restaurants that we operate. Jeff was a general contractor, worked with on a different project. So he builds restaurants. And I’ve been operating and managing restaurants and bars. And we went into business together, which best decision of my career and played out.

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (26:23.722)

very well. so, but so it’s kind of selling the dream to people and then backing it up and then giving them the opportunity to make impact. I want to take a moment because I mean, you’ve explored some specifics about the way you think, which is fascinating, but I’d like to understand the context of your earlier years to have a Singapore born Australian living in Melbourne.

not only get to New York, but then thrive in New York. Okay, so I’ll give you kind of quick version of the road to date. Sure. so my hometown is Melbourne, Australia. I migrated from Australia to New York in 2009 when I was 26. So as a young person, I started working in hospitality industry. There was no master plan. Like I’d love to pretend that this was the goal and the objective back then. I did not, I did not know.

that hospitality could give me an international career and a career that’s been this long and rewarding. But I, like a lot of young people, was studying as a tertiary student and needed an income. So hospitality is very popular industry for young people in Australia and a great many markets. Like a lot of young people, kind of would work at the local cafe or the local bar. My first jobs were in cafes in Melbourne.

I was not very good. I was not a good day life person. I’m very much more a night life person. So was a bad barista on Brunswick Street in Fitzroy. I then transferred over the years more into the nightlife space into bars. And there was a period where I was working at a big Alfresco bar in Melbourne’s city centre. And I was studying at the University of Melbourne and I wasn’t studying. I was doing an arts degree, media and communications at the University of Melbourne.

And I wasn’t really engaging with school life. I was not doing well, failing classes. Because I just, it hadn’t captured my imagination. I wasn’t leaning in in that environment. But I was loving the bar world. The venue was called Riverland. was about 1,100 head venue on the banks of the Yarra River. And we used have monster services, huge services. And I was looking around at the people, the people managing that venue, the people owning that venue.

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (28:46.053)

I really liked their world view. I liked their work-life balance. It was aspirational to me, really. That was it. So I’m in one environment, the school environment, and not feeling that rewarded by it. And then the bar and hospitality environment, I found really exciting, enjoying the people I was meeting and whatnot. So I took the judgment to drop out of university, but I spoke to my then bosses and said, I’m going to drop out of school, but I want to lean in on hospitality.

admire this and would like to do more in it. And so they made me a just a manager, low level service manager of two of their venues, Riverland, which is the big alfresco venue, and a pub and live music venue in Northcott called the Northcott Social Club just north of the city. So I was working six days a week, three days at Riverland, three days at Northcott, the kind of job that you know, it’s 23 maybe. That, you know, it was was really demanding. But I absolutely loved it. did I was

I was naive to the demands of the role, how physical it was, the hours, the late nights and everything, but perfect job for somebody in the middle 20s, loving the responsibility, loving the dynamism of those kind of roles, running a band room was so exciting, these big services down by the river as well. And it was just a real crash course, real learnings in those, working in those environments. And I had a bunch of different jobs in hospitality, a bouncer, porter.

glassy bartender, then into service management. So I’d done just about everything except for the kitchen. I’ve never been on the pans and that’s a good thing. I’d make a terrible, terrible chef. But that transition to management had me, gave me the opportunity to understand and execute at a higher level. And that was the inflection point that really set me on the path for the career. I moved from Melbourne to Sydney in when there was a big...

Australia’s premier hospitality group is a group called Maryvale. They operate out of Sydney. They’re the big dogs. Yeah, they’re the big dogs in Oz. And so they opened the Ivy Precinct, they opened New Year’s 08, which was their biggest project to date at that time. And so there was a huge level up in scale for them as a group. They’re very much bigger now. It’s a dollar business now, Pretty close. I don’t know the particulars, but they’re operating on a level, another level that I’m across.

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But so they needed leadership and they were really trying to grow and build a new generation of hospitality leaders in their enterprises. So I moved to Sydney to manage their cocktail bars at the Ivy and ran three cocktail bars for them, which at that time were amongst the most high-end bars in Australia. So that was a big category shift for me. I’ve gone from running a rock and roll band room, from running a Monster Alfresco boozer to running high-end, high-touch cocktail bars.

Was there a big learning curve? There was. There were a fundamental principles that were applicable, but certainly learning about service. In that era, my interest was hospitality, was nightlife, was booze. So yes, there was a big learning curve, but it wasn’t a difficult one. This was both my profession, my hobby, my interests. When I wasn’t in those cocktail bars working, I was in other cocktail bars drinking.

You know, nightlife was my life through that era, which is a great spot to be for your 20s, a few lessons learned. And then, so in summer of nine, I came, so I’d been working with the Maryvale Group for about a year and a half. At that stage, I was running their establishment, which was a big, you know, kind of iconic bar in Sydney on George Street. And I came to New York on a vacation. I’d never been to New York before. I had an older sister living here. It was summer of nine.

and immediately upon landing in New York. I knew was somewhere that I wanted to be, somewhere that I wanted to live. I know that feeling. A great many people who have migrated to this town know it. I liked my job in Sydney. I found it rewarding. It was an exciting chapter. It was a professional level up for me. But I just knew that I wanted to be in New York. It was less about career ambition and more just about the life I wanted to live and the spaces and places I wanted to be in.

So I returned after three weeks to Australia and just kind of ran every connection and network that I had to see what kind of opportunities might exist out here. And at the time there was a pub which is no longer around called The Australian, which was about, when did you migrate here? When did you arrive? Last year in May. Okay, so that would have been before your time. Yeah. Closed New Year’s Eve 2019 after a 13 year run. So it had opened in middle 2007.

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And they were looking for general manager. were ideally looking for a Australian with experience in the States. I didn’t have the experience in the States, but via a mutual friend of the then owner operator got put in touch with. And I was running the establishment, which was a very high profile, high status bar out of Sydney. So I think that aided my resume and my application. And they offered me the GM spot. And so that was, it was a pay cut, but it was a visa and an airfare to New York. And they were the two things that I wanted.

Yeah. And it was a wonderful entree into New York because it was a real hub for the Aussie community here. This is 16 years ago now. So the community was a bit different to now. It quite a bit smaller than it is now. And that was kind of the start of my US experience. I GM that for a couple of years and it was really a crash course in US hospitality and the points of difference from Australia. The start of building my network and community.

be they social, professional. And that gave me an opportunity to be a partner in my first bar, which was a venue. was a sweat equity silent partner in another bar in Midtown. It was while building that bar that I met Jeff Lan, my now business partner. And Jeff had migrated from Fuzhou, China 20 years before me and was a general contractor and built bars and restaurants around New York. So he built my first bar, The Liberty on 35th Street, which is still there.

I haven’t been involved in that since about 2014 though. 2014, yeah. And so I built that with my then business partner, operated it for a couple of years, left that partnership and went into partnership with Jeff. And that then started my real journey as an owner operator in the restaurant space. To kind of press fast forward button on it, we opened Chinese Tuxedo in 2016.

opened an associated cocktail bar called Peaches, which we just recently closed and reflipped into a new venue called the Opera House. That space, Chinese Tuxedo, was in the Chinatown Opera House, the first Chinese language theater on the East Coast of the USA. It’s a beautiful space, very special, historic space. We opened the Tiger, which was our second restaurant. We started working on that in late 2019. And then the whole city was shut down in 2020 with the COVID era. We were forced to close Tuxedo for a period, couldn’t reopen it.

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So we just cracked on an open Tiger in September, 2020. It’s been a little bit over five years. So that had a really wild journey, really iterative period. Its first two years as we were outdoor only, indoor limited occupancy rules constantly changing. The 90 seat restaurant we designed for a period had over 200 seats because we had 120 seats outside. There was a time when there were no new venues, heaps of closed venues. Tiger was the hottest spot in the city at a time when restaurants were kind of illegal. It was a bizarre time.

but a great learning curve, a time I look back on really, really fondly and very, proud of. I think I forget the stress of it and only remember the excitement and reward. It’s usually how it goes. Yeah, nostalgia can be romantic, but misleading. It’s like having children. So the Tiger, and then by virtue of the Tiger, we developed a space next door called South Soho Bar, which we subsequently expanded and turned into a full service restaurant called SoSos. They’re the tuxedo hospitality venues.

And I’ve done some other little venues across along the way, a little nightclub in Queens called Mansions. It like a wine bar slash nightclub. And at the start of this year, as I mentioned earlier, the Australian closed in December, 2019. So there were no Australian pubs left in New York after COVID. And so with some friends and a new consortium, we developed and opened Old Mates, which is an Aussie pub, which we opened in March of 2025. that’s a...

a bridged version of how we get to here. Yeah, great. Just quickly, though, I love doing this podcast. If it’s positively impacted you in some way and you would like to support us, please subscribe. By subscribing, it allows us to build a much bigger base of listeners, which results in better guests, better production and a better show overall. Alternatively, please take a look at the affiliate links of the products that I use and love in the comments below.

and consider purchasing using those links. They’ll give you a discount and they’ll also provide the podcast a small kickback. These are two very easy ways for you to support us as we continue to grow the podcast that we absolutely love doing. Thank you for your support and I’m back to the episode. What lessons did you take from the Australian closing that you’ve now taken on board to the next iteration of an Australian pub like Old Mates? The Olds was a fantastic, fantastic pub.

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It had a 13 year run, which in New York, I haven’t done anything for 13 years yet. Tuxedo is entering its 10th year. We’ll have our 10th anniversary in 2026. So I don’t really consider the Australian in the context of its closing. It had a long tenure, and it closed in large part because of shifting context on the part of the partners. Matt Astle, my former boss, was the founder and operating partner.

He opened it as a young man, was with his now wife Nicole at the time but they weren’t yet married. They’ve had two kids, they moved out of the city, you know, in the quotidian process of life they’re in a very different space and time. And so I look more at its 13-year tenure. I came in in its third year, so 2009, I’ve been operating for about two years and change, which was a fundamental and interesting time for a venue. As I mentioned before,

Being you, getting a place open is very demanding. It’s a huge project. And a lesson I learned earlier in my career that I now know more acutely, and I pass this on to others, is you will break your back to get a venue open. It’s so complex. You’ll have serious decision fatigue. There’s a mad scramble right at the finish to get There’s always a mad scramble. And then you get to opening day, and you’re like, wow, the finish line.

That’s the start line. It then engages different kind of muscles, different kind of work to take it from there. So there’s that major project, bringing it to market. the first period, it could be three months, it could be 12 months, there’s a kinetic energy around something new. You’ll have people just enthusiastic to come and have a look at it. Interest born of newness, but it’s how do you then evolve beyond that?

into your second and third chapters that will really be what sets you up for sustainability. So like Old Mates is an interesting case here. We opened in March, so we’re just on nine months now. I still consider it a brand new venue. We haven’t done a full cycle yet. We haven’t done a full year. So we don’t know what a holiday season looks like, what a New Year’s Eve looks like, what the January, February slowdown looks like for us. So we have a lot of ideas about the venues, a lot of preconceived notions.

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they will continue to be challenged until we’ve done one full lap. But then when we’ve done that, when we’ve done a year, we have a degree of data, a degree of intel to base our decision making off. They should be more informed decisions, because I need to make sure things like we get our staffing volumes right, we have adequate security, that the food proposition is the right kind of thing. We have a lot of ideas where we’re very prescriptive, but when we’re open, we need to then be adaptive.

based on what the consumer is telling us. You don’t want to do everything for the consumer because then the town would sell nothing but, I don’t know, cheeseburgers and margaritas. You you want to keep your voice and what makes you special and distinct, but you do need to be adaptive for longevity. it’s a really interesting time right now for old mates. Very proud of it. I’m really proud of the team that have come together in it. I’m really proud about the community reception because the Australian had been closed.

five years, yeah, five years and change by the time that we opened. When I arrived in 09, it was something of a golden era of Australian bars and pubs. The Australian cafe category hadn’t exploded the way that it is now. Back then, there was only two or three in town. And there was a lot more Aussie nightlife. I think the generation that had come prior to me were probably more in the bar and pub space. So Eight Mile Creek was a real favorite. That was on Mulberry Street. It’s now the Mulberry Bar.

It was vacant for many years. So it was small, petite, but it was a real mainstay of New York nightlife when I arrived. 4 a.m. license, very cool venue. It was most famous for, it was the venue where Russell Crowe had 16 Jack and Cokes before he threw the phone at the maitre d’etat at the Mercer Hotel. I don’t know if you’d be old enough to remember that. You didn’t know that? Damn. Look that one up. Yeah, and so there was, with all those venues,

disappearing for different reasons. That’s what made the opportunity for old mates to represent something of a new generation of Aussie hospitality and nightlife. Yeah, makes sense. What did you learn from your experience opening and inevitably closing the Goodsort Cafe? So the Goodsort, man, we’re in the archives now. That was short lived, a year and change in Chinatown on Duius Street. It’s a space that is now the private dining room at Chinese Tuxedo.

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So we opened that. It was a vegan cafe that we opened on Doya Street in February 2017. Our mate vegan was the hot category back then. And the Aussie cafe thing had really gotten a foothold and it was really doing well in New York. We had some Australian informing principles on the quality of the coffee and espresso extraction and whatnot.

But it wasn’t an acutely or distinctly Australian cafe. was a micro, I think it was about 240 square feet, so very petite with a coffee bar. And we did all these Chinese medicine superfoods in teas and the like. The signature item was a rainbow latte, which is fantastic. I think we’re definitely ahead of our time on that one. We used three different alt milks. And there was, what was it? It was a blue spirulina, a turmeric for the yellow, and a beetroot.

So it had this color gradient. was really aesthetic, really pretty. It was early phase of Instagram food scene. How were you so early on that, a concept like that? Mate, I don’t know. I don’t know. It kind of felt like a free swing. What happened was we took the lease for the whole Doyer Street space, but one small suite that fronted onto the street was on a different timeline. We didn’t have access to that space initially. So we started the build on the restaurant.

and we’d built out the restaurant but then didn’t get that last box until about six or seven months into the project. So we had this small space which was on the master lease. So it didn’t add to our real estate costs at all. It’s a good start. And so we had an opportunity to do something culturally interesting, culturally, but certainly different for Chinatown in that era. There were no other kind of third wave or new wave coffee shops in Chinatown in that neighborhood at that time.

And it was interesting, it was fun. I was probably more in keeping with my own lifestyle in that era. I wasn’t vegan, but it was something that was kind of of interest. Just a healthier lifestyle? Yeah, a healthier lifestyle that was very in vogue. It was the height of the millennials, the Gen Zs hadn’t made the cultural impact yet. So was the height of kind of millennial pink, that era. We weren’t pink, but you know what I mean when I’m to characterize that thusly. And so was a chance to something different.

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yin to the yang of the restaurant space. And was a lot of fun. It a lot of fun. What happened, it got huge press and online interest, which was not in keeping with the actual economic performance of the space. So I remember, you know, we had a whole page in the New York Post on our rainbow latte. Vogue ran a feature on it. All sorts of strange things. had, you know,

some pretty incredible celebrity guests would come through and whatnot. And so the thing caught fire on a media moment, but was operationally quite difficult because it opened at 7 a.m. So I had crew in there from 6 a.m. I had an overnight baker because we were making house-baked vegan treats. And then every night was then having to run this 120-seat restaurant, which was really catching fire, Chinese tuxedo, that era. So...

For what it was contributing economically, it was a great strain operationally. And I liked it. There’s another world where if it kind of had more oxygen, if it had more time, if I had more bandwidth and capacity to give it more, because Chinese tuxedo was my kind of first love and first function and interest, it could have performed better. But what happened at that era, we were using the seller of Chinese tuxedo as our private dining space.

And then when we opened Pichy’s, which was kind of our party bar down there, we lost that as a PDR. And so we took the judgment we could in one private dinner in the good sort space make equivalent margin to a whole week of cafe operation. we closed the frontage, re-orientated to enter off of our main dining room, and then turned it into a 30-seat private dining room.

Just didn’t make sense financially for the effort you were putting in. That’s right. It was less about the economics and more about the effort. Yeah, I understand. It was profitable, just. We liked it. And there was a lot of karmic reward from it and a lot of attention. But it was the demand of it. Too often, my phone rang at 6.30 in the morning.

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There was a problem when I’d gotten out of the restaurant at 1 a.m. the night before. It’s too much. And the garbage hadn’t been collected or something from the restaurant, meaning that the front of the cafe, you know, they were covered in garbage bags or something. so it was too ambitious a lift at that stage in my career. It meant that that building was really operating 24 hours a day, which we weren’t equipped to at that stage. So it didn’t work out, but it’s wonderful and funny to me now as I see.

the very aesthetic drinks and the era one smoothies and whatnot. Way ahead of your time. Back in 2017. Yeah, you’re way ahead of your time. So what does that say to the, I guess, lack of importance of press and noise to the realities of a hospitality business? It’s a fascinating question and one I find myself thinking about a lot. The food press and food media space, like all media, has changed so much over the course of the last 10 years.

that I think some principles people would have applied pre-COVID just don’t apply anymore. And it depends what you’re solving for. Something I concern about in contemporary hospitality or contemporary consumer culture is really line culture. The attention and noise is very good at making lines. Lines, think, are inherently not sustainable. There might be some better operators than me who are able to run places that have a line out the front for, you know,

years. And impressions and viral moments and stuff is something I think a lot of people are solving for. I think that speaks to people’s relationship with media, and particularly social media, that virality is credibility, which is often not the case. is not proof of quality. Repeat and referral patronage is proof of quality. So my mindset and ethos

has always been, I’ll worry about what happens in the dining room, and I’ll worry about what’s happening on people’s plates and people’s experience of the dining room. And then the online version will look after itself, I hope. That’s becoming an old-fashioned principle, I think. And I’m realizing more and more now that online discourse, online visibility,

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following sizes and stuff is having a major impact on people’s bottom line and their action. That’s not unique to hospitality. I think every industry in some fashion is confronting this reality. And how do we adjust and adapt in this new phase? I’m going to remain willfully old fashioned, which is not advice I would offer anybody. It’s probably a bad judgment. I’d be better served being a bit more

intentional on the online space. Looking at the way Old Mates operates the socials, I think you do a pretty good job. can’t really take credit for that. That’s team Andy Stone, one of the partners, Nico, our videographer, the team. The team generate a huge volume of great content. But we were intentional on some things with this little interview series, the Old Mates 8, which is just eight questions, same eight questions we ask. And it can be a prominent Australian, it can be a favorite.

of the pub or whoever it might be. And that was an intentional thing. Okay, let’s create an online product to present the venue. The other thing is that venue just creates great content because there’s exciting, interesting things happening. We have international recording artists coming through and performing in Promptu shows. That looks great. We have special fun events, whether they’re related to Australian culture or New York culture. They photograph great, they look great on film.

So yes, social has been fundamental to the early success of that venue, but it’s great events creating great social, not the other way around. I think that’s a really good point, which is just do interesting, cool things and then just document those interesting, cool things. But what that is, is relating to Old Mates, is having the intentionality of having, OK, we need talented people who can speak this visual language, who can translate.

the exciting fun things happening in the venue, the things that are happening in the old Nates universe, and capture them and clip them to be that really cool digestible 30 second one minute grab. So yes, in that regard, yes, my thinking has evolved in that regard to be more intentional with the capture. But there are some venues you look at and you go, shit man, this is an Instagram mood board come to life. And I don’t think that is a sustainable model. Yeah, especially with how.

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turnover of interest from people. right. And also you then live and die by the algorithm. Yeah. I’ve been around long enough now to have seen some people absolutely flying and I don’t know how these masters of the universe, how they run it. I don’t want to know. Like I’m very happy in my small businesses on Doya Street and John Street and whatnot. But, but you know, they, put their hand on the scale. Something falls in or out of favor. And also I think that there’s

there’s a bit of a perception corruption right now that virality or attention speaks to an inherent quality. I’m increasingly finding that’s not the case. So the things, the gimmickry, attention seeking moments that get action and traction online are antithetical to what makes a good venue. And that’s a lesson I think some people are learning. Yeah. I mean, that being said, you know,

expectation from a customer before they even experience something can improve their experience of the experience, you know, just by purely thinking it’s going to be good. They’ll give it a couple of extra points of goodwill. Look, it can, it can. The fact of the matter is there’s been a huge cultural shift like generation gap. The generation gap is pretty pronounced in the thinking now that I wish people would take

some more risks with their choices. now, in every service provision that you have, people check the Google ratings, the online ratings. The fact of matter is the people who make a Yelp rating probably have very, different values to me. I’ve never done a Yelp rating in my whole life. I don’t intend to start any time soon. People look at menus before going into venues. And I understand that, particularly when

dining out and hospitality has gotten so expensive, you don’t want to make a mistake. You know, have finite options. What it is, you have infinite options, finite opportunities as a consumer. So people are intentionally trying to be as informed as possible going in. And I get that. I do too as well. partner, Lizzie and I, know, when we are making choices, we’ll look online and too, you just do it. It’s just natural now. It’s a natural part of the experience. But I would like people to

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to be comfortable taking a bit more risk. But that horse is bolted, mate. The culture’s moved on. The tools available to us have meant that our behaviors have shifted. I can wish for it to come back. It’s just not going to. So you do need to represent yourself thoughtfully and well online. Yeah. You know what I found interesting? There was a moment in time, probably in 2018, where I was dating a girl that was probably five, six years younger than me at the time.

I would say, let’s go to this place for lunch. And I just wouldn’t think anything of it. But her first thing was to check Instagram as her main port of call to see what the dishes look like. And then she chose what she ate off the back of that. And that was not something I would ever do. I would just look at the menu and go, okay, we’re to do this. But she double checked just purely by the photos of the Instagram feed. that’s the new normal. think that right now in 2025, the behaviors you just characterize, you’d be the unusual one.

We are inherently visual people. Food FOMO or food envy is a horrible thing to feel, we’ve all felt it. You you’re looking at a menu with 30 items. You want what you think is the best thing or the thing most conducive to your tastes and values. And so people want to mitigate that risk. I get it. You could look at it go, OK, that is a smart judgment on her She’s mitigating the risk and she’s making the most informed decision possible. That being said.

Sometimes the magic happens in the unknown. And we’ve gotten so prescriptive, so informed, so over informed. You we used the term surprise and delight earlier. It’s pretty hard to surprise and delight when, you know, some dishes in this town are absolutely famous, visually famous. The carbon spicy rigatoni. I’m sure a great, but you know what it looks like, right? Give rigatoni? Okay.

We have a different algorithm clearly. But tell me. you know, but so I’m just saying that that dish doesn’t just exist on the palate. exists, dish exists as a media entity. You know, the burger at Four Charles, which is. That’s the one where they do the whole thing with the egg. So you know that. Have you eaten that? I haven’t. That one. Yeah, it’s a killer burger. It’s But it’s fun. But the dish becomes.

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The value proposition of the Four Charles Burger becomes bigger than what’s on the dish, becomes bigger than what you eat. It’s that visual expression. It is the egg drizzle. It’s the insta content that people get. Last time I was at Four Charles, I was there with my attorney, who’s a pal of mine, and we ordered the burger. And he said, and he went to serve it for us. He it in white gloves. It’s a bit of a put on, but it’s fun. It’s delicious, so I’m cool with it. And he goes, do you want to film it?

I don’t want to film it, don’t want fucking eat it. But we’re the outlier in that regard. So look, it’s just a different time. And it’s cool too. It’s beautiful. Like it’s so well conceived. It’s expensive. I can’t remember how much it is. You had the egg and the bacon, it must be north of 30 bucks, maybe even north of 40 bucks. But it’s not just about what’s on the plate. It’s a broader value proposition for people. And I could sit here and rail against that and go, it’s a bummer. It’s subverting the magic of it and whatnot.

I’m just being an old man. The world’s moved. can either, I can resent it or move with it. Sure. So Old Mates has a very interesting cap table. And generally finding investors for ventures can be challenging as is, but you’ve managed to bring on the likes of NBA player Patty Mills, cricketer Pat Cummins, actor Hugh Jackman.

Tenestar, Ash Barty, Surfer, Mick Fanney, comedians, Hamish Blake and Andy Lee. And I’m sure there’s a few more that I’ve not even added. All these prominent Australians. How did that happen? There’s a few things that inform that. And Andy Lee deserves the credit largely on that. He’s a dear mate and my co-founder and old mate. So old mates has three founders. Nick Stone, who’s the founder of Blue Stone Lane, a big prominent coffee group here in the States. Founded in...

started in New York about 13 years ago now, think. Myself, so we’re both hospitality career people and Andy who’s a big media figure in Australia. And so I’ll say that there’s a big part of it that Oldmates is largely mission driven. That what we speaking to earlier, that the absence of an Australian pub in New York made that market, that there was something missing that we thought people would buy into, not just...

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for economic ROI, but this is something that should exist. This is something that we care about. There’s a few categories in hospitality that really engender passionate responses to people. People love the nightclub from their youth. It’s the music that stays most important to people. It’s often where, and I hope the contemporary nightclubs remain as fun and as important to young people. Yeah, they’re definitely struggling. People love their daily cafe. People love the bistro that acts as kind of a home away from home.

depending on the city, depending on the market, that can be a different school of cuisine, but that one that you can hit on a Monday night or Wednesday night, whatever it might be, that kind of cheap and cheerful simple thing. And for Australians, the one that engenders the most affection and nostalgia and identity born of it is often the Aussie pub. Certainly the way for me. They’re more than just, they’re different to American bars. They’re often intergenerational. They’re daytime and nighttime.

food important, the celebration is important, sport can be part of it. It’s a lot of cultural informers have it. So I think that was a big part of it that we could represent to people saying, we’re doing this. And it’s not just about the balance sheet. It’s not just about ROI. It’s about the cultural mission of the venue. And everybody who invested understood that and bought in on that very quickly. But so we

The fortunate thing, phase in my career, like earlier on fundraising is an incredibly difficult thing, asking somebody to take a bet on you. Now, having been developing and operating venues in New York for 13, 14 years, it’s gotten, and having a couple of winners in the track record, it’s made it little bit easier. And so we had a bunch of people interested in investing, particularly when they bought in on the mission and Australians wanted to do things. But Andy’s a dear mate and a longstanding mate.

really impressive professional, his work ethic, his quality of execution is unbelievable. Somebody I admire a great deal. And we were saying, okay, we’ve got the concept, we had a location, bigger than we’d initially planned, now we’ve got to fund it. And that guy has a Rolodex like nobody else in Australia. And so he was like, well, let me get on the phone with my mates. And Patty Mills is an old pal of Nick’s. so he got on to Patty, but yeah, Andy just.

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Hamish jumped on straight away, that’s his comic partner. McFanning was an early adopter and a couple of people said no, that’s fine. it was a pretty high strike rate. And our thing was with these, they’re all high profile people, celebrities, we said this is not ambassadorial, this is just a fundraise. If you don’t want to, we can raise it somewhere else, we’re confident of that.

But we would like you guys to be the partners. It can be silent if you want. You lean in as much as you want to or not want to. And the good news is, the wonderful thing is, pretty much every partner who’s been involved has gone, no, I love the story here. I love the mission here and the execution. I want to lean in and be part of that story. So like Mick Fanning donated to Bell’s Beach. Bell, the trophy of the Recurl Pro.

held in Bells Beach every Easter, that’s now an important part of the tradition of the pub. We ring the bell, we shout the bar, stuff like that. So each of these celebrity partners were one, great investors, and two, have become champions of the venue also. So it was kind of an accidental strategy, credit to Andy, as I said, but it’s proven a very worthwhile strategy for us. Yeah, it’s great. Can you see where it goes from here? So on the back end of my episodes, I’d like to wrap up with some closing questions about just the general philosophy of life and the way you view the world.

So what’s a view that you have that would make people either scratch their heads or potentially get angry? We’ve been speaking a lot in the professional context so far. I’ll talk in professional context.

I don’t... You introduced me at the top as an entrepreneur. I don’t really identify, think, as an entrepreneur. It doesn’t matter what people identify as. I’ve got to be careful. I sound like a wanker here. But I’m really fortunate now. Every project that we do, it has to meet a baseline economic imperative. You know, I’m not of a net worth where I can just do stuff to burn money or whatnot. And as I said before, the boat has to float.

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You know, like the thing has to pay the rent, it’s got to pay the payroll every week and whatnot. You know, it needs to be sustainable. But I think in New York and now, a lot of people start with the economic intention and then build a project on the back end of that. I 100 % do the inverse. I think this is something that doesn’t exist. This is something I think would be cool.

and then see what kind of economic modeling could work around that. So something like Old Mates, it was never done or considered as, here’s a big economic opportunity. It’s, hey, here’s a cultural opportunity. And so maybe I don’t know enough about the word entrepreneur, and I’m not thinking of it thoughtfully enough. But that strikes me as somebody who the ambition and the function is economic growth, economic gain.

I’d have to disagree. I’d have to disagree. might know more about it than me. I don’t think about it so much. Yeah. Yeah. But it’s firmly and fundamentally OK. Let’s build cool shit. And then if it leaves some scratch at the end of the month, then win-win. Yeah. I mean, I treat the word, maybe it’s been bastardized now, but I treat the word entrepreneur as a artist in business. So generally, it’s an entrepreneur, someone taking big, unique bets.

seeing the world in a contrarian way to how most people are seeing it and creating something out of nothing under the game of business. Whatever, can be any industry whatsoever. It doesn’t matter. I like that. So that’s, I see you doing that. know, Chinese Tuxedo as an example was a tough space, a very unique space that was ahead of its time when not much was happening in Chinatown from what I understood. And...

you made it into something that’s been running for 10 years. Old mates, there was a gap of five years of an Australian pub. Here we are. yeah. Maybe that wouldn’t make anybody angry, but. No, no, It seems like you’re downplaying it, which is the Australian way. Nice, nice. And what’s one of the biggest things over the last two years you’ve changed your mind on? It’s not so much a mind change, I’ll say, an evolution. And I won’t go two years, I’ll go about five.

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That’s been a really important evolutionary period for me personally. My relationship with work has entirely shifted and changed and my worldview and things I get reward from, which has really been born out of building a family. Above all. yeah. so we spoke earlier about the journey to opening the restaurants and the venues in NYC and inherent to that, I don’t know if my telling of it captured that, it was everything.

It was everything. was my, it was really difficult for me in March, 2020 when COVID shut everything down because my work life, my leisure life, my professional identity, my personal identity is entirely wrapped up in hospitality, nightlife, restaurants. You know, I was working 80 hour weeks and I was either sleeping or in other.

hospitality events in the interim. And a lot of that was learning, a lot of was experiencing, but it was 360. It consumed my life, for better or worse, and I’d say largely for the better. But it’s been the passage of time maturation. I have my partner, Lizzie, who I met in 2019, just about six months before COVID shut everything down. So that was fortuitous timing.

In retrospect, one of those things where at the time you don’t know how it is, but it was an opportunity to really rewired my priorities and deep profound abiding love for her and her daughter. now stepdaughter was two then. so the three of us live together now. My stepdaughter is eight. And the decisions previously were, how do the venues function first and foremost? And then everything else would organize itself around that, which was necessary.

And that was my first 10 years in New York and that was probably necessary for some of the wins and some of the successes. But now it’s okay. My family is the fundamental and the principle priority. How do I organize my professional life around that? And here’s the interesting thing. Here’s the twist. like Old Nights is probably the most deeply personal venue I’ve done today. Tuxedo is very special as well. But Old Nights is deeply, deeply personal. And approaching it...

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (01:08:43.911)

with this world view where, my family first, my obligations and my priorities to my partner and my little girl hasn’t actually compromised the venue, which I think a younger, more mature version of me would have been concerned about. It’s actually made it more robust. It’s given it deeper roots. It’s empowered others more substantially in relationship to the venue, which makes the venue more real and more substantial. So...

I think as a younger man, if people were talking about this stuff, I would have thought some of it was a bit lip service, some of it was counterintuitive or whatnot. But going, when I approach these creative demanding projects from a real position of stability and security born of my family, how it value adds the projects and the new community that that establishes and creates. that’s not two years. It’s been tested and in action the last two years.

development of so-so’s as a full service restaurant and Old Mate subsequently, but it’s really a five year evolution, I think. Yeah, I’ve heard the idea that people in relationships make more money than single people and people with children make more money than people in relationships and single people because of that exact fact where you have to systematize better and you have to step away otherwise and you’ve got other things that you’re doing it for now. There’s an ideal

generally above the business, which allows you to separate and maybe be a more effective business person. The crazy evolution is a decade ago, I had no priority higher than the venues. know, a decade ago was just running to opening Tuxedo and it was number one priority in my life. I now have two distinct and acute priorities north of the venues. And by virtue of that, I’ve gotten better at my job. So that’s been a nice evolution and lesson.

When did you realize you had control over the outcome of the rest of your life? I wouldn’t be as absolute in it. I wouldn’t be as declarative and put it in as fewer words. But what I did realize some time ago is that life is going to happen to me regardless, irrespective of how I exercise my agency. That means trials and tribulations, failures, indignities, they will happen. But opportunities.

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triumphs, successes, they are available to me, to you, to anybody. They’re in scale and degree of them, but they are there. So I have an acute sense of agency and irrespective of how I action that agency, life is going to happen and transpire. So things like luck, I think it’s really important to just tell yourself and be absolutely confident that you are lucky and that you will

good outcomes. I’m lucky I am loved. you know, you you will have good outcomes because good outcomes are there. Bad outcomes are there too. And you will have bad days and bad things are going to happen. That is that is something I can be absolutely sure of for me, for anybody for that matter. But there’s this, you know, so how did you how did you articulate initially? When did I realize I was in control of my life that of the outcomes of the rest of your life? I’m not singularly in control.

But there is nobody who has more impact and agency than me on those outcomes. so how am I going to affect and what impact and influence am going to have on those outcomes, Yeah, so it’s just being really intentional. And that’s a great basis from which to take risks, calculated risks. I’ve taken some silly risks. Haven’t we all? I’m glad for them. A lot.

more ambitious than I had rights to be at some stage. The tuxedo builder had no rights to be at that time. The naivety sometimes is what you need. The naivety was the superpower, absolutely. That can sound really glib. Like I’ve heard other people say things to that effect and whatnot. You’re like, fuck you, man. It was the context, time and place. And I had some good context, good time and place, good people around me, definitely. That’s a fact. But yeah, naivety was definitely a superpower.

stretching yourself, being being ambitious, being so ambitious, you’re not sure if you can realize that ambition and service it has always been the best case outcome for me. Thank you for your time. My pleasure, This was great. Thank you for the time in the interest. Of course, mate. Of course, you’re got a lot of very interesting. You hold yourself in a very interesting way that I’ve really respected as I’ve got to know you over the last, you know, six to eight months. So it’s been really good to sit down with you. So

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (01:13:25.96)

Wrapping up, there anything you’re excited about at the moment that you’d like to let our listeners in on? Just in general, in the world out there? Whatever works for you. Yeah, I think really, really dynamic time in New York. For people younger than me, I’ll say ignore the naysayers, ignore the do-mers. They’ve been here in New York as long as I have. The choir for the do-mers is as loud now as it’s ever been nearly, but it’s not. So one thing the do-mers say is this is the worst it’s ever been.

We were speaking about summer 2020 before. Let me tell you, it a damn sight worse then. The whole time I’ve been here, I’ve been told, this is the end of New York. These people are leaving. This is a disaster. know, whatever it might be, it’s not. This is a resilient place. And inherent to it is its adaptability and capacity to change. And it is on an inflection point right now. And inflection points are what offer opportunity. So how old are you? 33. 33. Great. Great age. Great age to be in New York.

and a really good time to be here as well. My first decade in New York is not going to go down as one of the historic wonderful decades. I arrived Bloomberg era. It was not a particularly culturally interesting time in New York. It was fascinating for me and wonderful for me. Don’t get me wrong, from 26 to 36, I had the time of my life. But it was millennial coded, not that compelling, not that exciting. These next 10 are going to be a damn sight more compelling. And there’s going to be huge opportunity, huge cultural impact.

sense of newness and there’s nothing I love more in New York than newness and people like you, people your age, if they’re listening or whatnot, you will be the agents of that. You will make real impact and stuff and you’ll get an opportunity to enjoy it and influence it more than me, 10 years older. So I’m really excited for that. So, okay. So what would you say to

yourself 10 years ago.

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about the 10 years to come or now? How to make the most of the next 10 years ahead of you based on the person sitting in front of you now and the lessons and mistakes that you’ve made? I’m pretty happy with the way things have shaken out. It’s been pretty positive. The capacity for risk and appetite for risk has been really fundamental, which is something I found really difficult at times. And who knows on paths not taken.

how things may have shaken out, you know, and we can have a confirmation bias. We look at the things that have been wins and whatnot and go, okay, that proves that was wise and whatnot. There’s a whole bunch of instances that weren’t brilliantly wise. Rather than reversing and going back and speaking again to my 33 year old self, I’d change it to say, like if I was 33 years old now, or yourself or somebody in that context, what’s gonna look like now?

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (01:16:20.057)

I’m not old enough to get really grizzled and really risk averse and, know, the, I think risks in your professional interpersonal life go, I used to have a thing where like I’d see people around and I kind of knew them and I wouldn’t say hello because I think, does that make me look thirsty or I only kind of know them. They won’t know who I am or whatnot. And this is hardly.

big major risk, but maybe it’ll evolve into a bit of a parable. And now, if I know that person, I’ll at wave, I’ll at least say hello, I’ll reintroduce myself or whatnot, because why the fuck not? Why the fuck not? So particularly in New York, the nature of a city like New York, particularly somebody who’s culturally ambitious like yourself, well socialized, has a great network or not.

The mentor of why the fuck not will serve you a great deal. And it’s a better counsel more often than not. And so if you just approach places from an authentic, I don’t like the word authenticity, it’s grossly overused. So I’ll change it. If you approach things with sense of integrity, kindness, and good faith, just why the fuck not. Headlong into everything. Opportunities. It’ll get to a time where you have to be deliberate about what you say no to.

So if you have a period where it’s what you can say yes to, lean into that. That’s a good way to wrap up. Where can people find you if they’re interested? Please come and frequent the venues. So as mentioned, we have the three restaurants, Chinese Tuxedo, The Tiger, which is at 1 Howard Street in Soho, and So So’s next door to it. was spending a lot of time in So So’s over the winter, I think. It just celebrated its first birthday as a full service restaurant.

turned Peaches in the cellar of 5 Doyas Street into Opera House, which is a high-end, ambitious cocktail bar. I really, really admire the program there that the guys have put together. Much, much more talented bartenders than I ever was. And they’ve done an incredible range there. And then Old Mates, which is down on John Street. You know, they’re all within a few blocks from each other. I tend to rip between them on the city bike. So I try and touch each venue most days.

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (01:18:43.285)

Yeah, and I’m just getting really rewarded for different contexts for people, whether it’s just a Tuesday, why not dinner with a friend or family member through to celebrations, you we host weddings, anniversaries, we’ve hosted wakes, you know, it’s being written into people’s lives, whether it’s the quotidian mundane stuff, or the really special stuff, I consider an absolute honor to be part of it to host it. So please come and be part of it. And why do think we’re here? What do you think the meaning of this whole thing is?

That’s a nice closer, mate. Just think that way. Look, the fact of matter is don’t know. I don’t know. And I’m OK with that. I’m comfortable not knowing. I think there are other personality types of people who would like to be a completist to know entirely. If that was my mindset, I know that I would definitionally be and remain disappointed. Frustratingly, sadly, I will die without knowing the whole mix. So, yeah.

Right now I’m of the mindset I don’t entirely know. We’re equipped with our five senses. We can receive and process a lot of data off of those five senses. I think there’s all kinds of data that isn’t available to us that we don’t know. If you don’t believe that, just blow a whistle near a dog. They experience it very differently to us. are frequencies that we do not hear or speak in. I admire those scientists and stuff who are asking the questions to find more. And I will...

very readily gobble up all that information I’m interested to know. But in the meantime, I’m just gonna throw parties, mate. In the meantime, I’m slinging beers. That’s right, that’s right. So look, I hope to get to know more in the years to come. think the alien discourse right now is really interesting. the fact of the matter is don’t know. Yeah, okay. And I’m okay with that. Nice. And if you enjoyed this episode, please go to YouTube, search that one time without a Metwally, click subscribe and I will see you next week.

Thank you, Mike.