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Welcome to the Connected Table Live.We're your hosts, Melanie Young and David Ransom, your insatiably curious culinary couple.
We enjoy traveling the world to bring you the dynamic people who are front and center and behind the scenes in wine, food, spirits, and hospitality.
We love sharing their stories with you because this is a people industry, and we hope you'll support them and visit their restaurants, hotels, wineries, and whatnot.
We are broadcasting from our beloved adopted home, New Orleans, today, and we're really excited to have the guest that we have known.He's been a guest in the past.
Yes, he has, a long time ago.
We are bringing him back for many reasons to share his story, and I'm going to set it up this way. The pomegranate is a symbolic fruit in many cultures.It means the circle of life, fertility, abundance, and resurrection.
And we know New Orleans is all of that, right?
And so is the life of our guest, Alon Shaya, who owns Pomegranate Hospitality Group, which includes restaurants in New Orleans and Las Vegas, Denver, and the Bahamas. Alon is based in New Orleans, and he has two amazing restaurants.
They're very different, and they're both fabulous.Saba, which is a homage to his Israeli roots and his grandfather, and Miss River, which is in the Four Seasons, an homage to the city of New Orleans and quite beautiful.He joins us today.
It's interesting, Alon's life could have taken a different course.Very true. And we were inspired in an event we attended at Saba to learn about this.Thanks to a teacher who took him under her wing.He is the man he is today and the success.
So Alon Shaya, welcome back to the Connected Table.
Thank you.Thanks so much.Really glad to be back with you guys and to be on your incredible show.
Well, we went back and looked in the files.It was 2015.And we had just started our show when we interviewed you the last time.And you had just been named Best Chef Southeast by the James Beard Foundation.And we're on a roll.
But it was a much different time in your career.Why don't you give our listeners a little bit of a back story about where you grew up, how you grew up, and your first thoughts about food and how that came into play?
Yeah, I was born in Israel, and my grandparents, my Saba and my Safta, on my mother's side, were from Bulgaria.And they were kind of really a big part of my life from the moment I was born, and really cared for me and were like,
essentially like parents to me because my parents worked a lot.My grandparents, my Saba and my Safta were there for me.
When I was two, my father immigrated to America, to the Philadelphia area, and began working to save up money and get an apartment. get a down payment on a car and all the things that you need to kind of do to settle down.
And he needed to get a job and started stocking shelves in a thrift shop on Samson Street in Philly. when I was four, my mother and my sister and I came to America.
So, you know, two years later, um, we flew over actually on my fourth birthday and settled down, uh, outside of Philly.Uh, when I was five, my parents divorced and, uh, my mother was working two jobs.And so, you know, from the age of five to 10, um,
I spent a lot of time on my own in the kitchen, or in front of a television, or wherever I felt most comfortable at the time.And my Saba and my Safta would come and spend a lot of time with us.They'd fly from Israel and come to Philly.
And life for me during that time, obviously, was really kind of all over the place.I was trying to learn English.I was settling into a brand new country. My parents had split up and my sister, who was five years older than I was, was out constantly.
So I was really alone a lot.When my Saba and Softa came, things felt normal again.My Softa would cook and I would remember the house smelling like roasted peppers and eggplants.
and sizzling Bulgarian kebabs and flaky pastry borekas stuffed with feta cheese baking in the oven.And those smells and experiences with them really, I think, kind of just brought a sense of stability, you know, emotional stability at the time.
But at that age, it was just real, you know, identity crisis, constant identity crisis.And as I got older, began really
know, getting into a lot of trouble, you know, making a lot of really bad decisions and getting arrested for, you know, drug drugs and shoplifting and, you know, police chases, all kinds of stuff.So I, um,
You know, I was really on the wrong side of the tracks and I was the person that my friends parents were like, I don't want you hanging out with that kid.
And so I had a hard time keeping relationships, you know, and friendships because I'd find a way to, um, no, just. through acting out, you know, sabotage them.And I really didn't have a lot of mentorship or anyone that was really guiding me much.
So when I joined the home economics class at Harrington High School, when I was 14 years old, Donna Barnett was my teacher.And she really became the one person that I looked up to and listened to, and she could connect with me.
She got me my first job at a restaurant.She helped me realize that I could go to vocational school for half the day and begin putting on a chef coat, cooking in a kitchen, in a professional-style kitchen.
She drove me to my first day at work, made sure I was dressed right, made sure I showed up on time.She helped me understand that there was a way to do something after high school as far as furthering my education.
It really wasn't an option for us to go to college or for me to go to college.We really didn't have any money. There was really never even any talk of it at the house.But she said, you can go to culinary school.I was like, what?What's that?
She said, you could go and cook and make a career out of cooking.I was like, all right, let's do it.She just grabbed me by the collar and helped lead the way.I went to the Culinary Institute of America.
And, you know, I graduated with perfect attendance and, you know, top percentage of my, I was winning awards at the graduation ceremony from my, my wine knowledge and all kinds, you know, all these things that I just never felt felt necessarily were going to be a part of my future.
And. She's been a mother to me, like a mother to me ever since.And now fast forward all these years, we have a foundation together called the Shia Barnett Foundation.
And we work with local vocational programs and culinary programs to try to make a difference in people's lives the way that she did in mine.
You know, Alon, your story is a story of many young children, not necessarily only children of immigrants, but children who maybe grew up on the wrong side of the tracks.
As you speak, I think of some chefs we have interviewed and we know, Barbara Lynch, Bobby Flay, there are many who grew up And their lives could have gone another way.
They grew up, they were bullied, they had a rough crowd, as they say, that they hung out with, absentee parents.And there's always one person.I know in the case of Bobby, he always says Joe Allen.
And there's always one person that helps bring and lift that person up.And I think more credit should be given to teachers.
because Donna said to us when we met her at the Shia Barnett Foundation event at Saba, she saw your potential in your capable hands.And it's like she had that vision and took you under your wings.And it's so incredible.
What do you wanna say to people about that?Because teachers don't get enough acknowledgement.
Yeah, well, you know, Uh, it takes a special type of teacher, you know, and a special type of person.Uh, and Donna is that person, you know, and I think she's made a difference in many, many people's lives.
Um, and I know that there's a lot of teachers out there that are doing that every single day.Uh, and I think the, you know, my advice to young people that are kind of looking for direction is.
to be open to this opportunity, be open to the fact that things can actually improve and that you do have something that you can
contribute and, you know, whatever it is, you know, it can be anything, but you, whatever you're going to contribute, you have to get behind it and you have to have someone that believes that you can do it.
And, uh, and when that person comes along, accept that into your lives, um, and build trust in the fact that someone is looking out for you.
I think that's the hard part for a lot of young people is that kind of a lot of examples of broken trust throughout the years can kind of harden people to not be open to help when it is available.And that goes on for the rest of your life.
It's something that you can use your whole life, this idea that you're not in it alone.And when those opportunities do come by, grab them and do something with it.And I
uh, it took a little bit of time to shake off like the, you know, rebellious, um, energy that I had, but eventually I did.And, and, uh, it, it was, you know, a life changing event.
And, and, and I, you know, by the time I was 21, I was working, you know, many, many hours a day and completely committed to my craft and learning and becoming a chef and building my career. And I never really looked back.
When we were at the event at Saba, one of the students asked David and I for advice.And we each took it from different perspectives.Something that David said that really reflects your career trajectory was go to work in a hotel or casinos.
Get into the system and work those kitchens because the discipline is really important.And it also can be your ticket to travel the world.
And you really talk about that in your book, which came out after we interviewed you, Shia, An Odyssey of Food, My Journey Back to Israel.But you really cut your teeth in a lot of food, working in casinos and hotels.
Talk about what you learned from that, because that's important.
Yeah, well, I did my externship from culinary school in Las Vegas, and I was
19 years old uh and it was just like being in culinary disney world you know it was like there was no boundaries you know food cost wasn't ever talked about the the um the lobsters were like 20 pounds you know the there was ice carvings and there was uh all all these incredible um
moments where I could go and just walk into an incredible Chinese restaurant on property at the Rio and watch the chefs cooking and walks and expertly stir-frying.And I could walk into a Japanese restaurant and see people make sushi.
And I can go to an Italian restaurant and see what a a meatball the size of a softball could be like, you know?And all of these things that just kind of opened my eyes, as well as like a big corporate structure.
But, you know, from a technical standpoint, it was great.From a cultural standpoint, you know, I really kind of began working under really tough toxic people from the very, very beginning.
And at a young age, you kind of feel like, hey, this is, I guess, the industry.This is what it is.And I would say to other people that even if it's a big, glitzy, glamorous casino, or it's a small mom and pop shop, that it's
What I would say I would take back and what I think I regret the most is surrounding myself just around the great food and not necessarily around the great people who could teach you how to be a good leader.
And that is something that I just had to learn the hard way over the years. And today, that's kind of my advice, is that graduate high school.Go to culinary school if you can.It's definitely worth it.
And then go and work for good people who believe in respect and empowerment and people who want to build you up and not push you down. Yeah.You know, Donna was someone that pulled me up.
She was, uh, she was the kind of person that picked you up and put you on a platform, lifted you.Uh, and I think we all know the types of people out there that work on pushing you down.
And, and it's really important that, uh, young people today look for the people that really want to pull them up.
Well, you know, when you were young, you were bullied and you had to get back up and you're bullied in the kitchen.It's it is toxic.
And we actually actually look very carefully when we go to restaurants now to see make sure we're going to restaurants that have a reputation for uplifting their people.We support those restaurants.
It's very important to us and should be part of what you think about, because we don't think restaurants should be sweatshops.They should be people.It's the hospitality industry.It's a people industry.Right.
That's right.And if the people that are working there don't feel like they're treated hospitably, they're, you know, they're not going to treat the guests hospitably.
And so it's a, it's not only a good business decision, it's also just a good life decision and something that I think you guys are doing the right move by, you know, ensuring that you're supporting businesses that, that believe in that.
It's really, really important.
It is very important because you know, you have, when that, That toxicity is in the kitchen and in the back of the house.As Alon said, it does transfer at some point to the front of the house.
If somebody is having a bad day and they snap or they're just in a bad mood, they're not going to treat the customer like they probably should, right?Yeah.So yeah.
First, before we get into pomegranate hospitality, we want to also give a nod to another woman that has lifted you up and the charming story of how you met your wife, Emily, because she really has also helped enable you to be the person you become.
She, she was very generous with letting you pursue your dream of going to Italy.She's been there by your side.Talk to us about how you met and what does she mean to you?
Well, I mean, she means everything to me.She's definitely the reason that, you know, I'm able to to live the life I always dreamed I wanted to live.And, you know, she
from the very beginning has been just such an incredible support, not only in allowing me to do things that I was passionate about doing, but in really helping me do them the right way and to serve as a partner in all of the decisions and how we've built Pomegranate Hospitality, how we are building our family,
without Emily, you know, none of this would have ever come about.So we met right after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans at a young and Jewish and new to New Orleans kind of mixer put on by the Jewish Federation.
So we're kind of like the poster child for like you know, the Jewish Federation's kind of young, new, welcome to New Orleans group that they have.And so, you know, we met there, we were friends for a while before we began dating.
And then we began dating, and then I kind of picked up and moved to Italy to go and apprentice out there.And she obviously supported me through that.And we now have a three-year-old daughter are named Ruth and a three-month-old son named Ari.
And we have our company, Pomegranate Hospitality, and we've surrounded ourselves with incredibly great people.And our team is just people that we respect and look up to and learn from.And
Yeah, it's been quite the journey, and Emily has been kind of my sherpa throughout the whole thing.
And you have her red beans and rice on the menu at Miss River and in your cookbook.So she's important that way as well.You know who else made it a Jewish mixer?Sarah Beth and Bill Levine.Fun fact.And my aunt and uncle.
Jewish mixers are great, you know?They work. Yeah, they work, they're schmaltzy and wonderful. So let's talk about pomegranate hospitality.It's big.As we dug deep, you're all over the place.And it's exciting.You have something in Las Vegas.
You just got back, so you return to Las Vegas.But your flagship is here in New Orleans.And you kind of went full circle to embrace your Israeli roots with saba.And I have to say, it's some of the best hummus I've ever had.
We learned you put baking soda in your hummus, which was new to me.That was interesting.Talk to us about it.Talk to us about what this restaurant means to you and why you named it after your grandfather.
Yeah.Saba is really a culmination of me making a full circle back to my roots and embracing my heritage and my grandmother, my Saba and my Safta's support for me throughout my childhood.
It was really a way to honor my Saba, which means grandfather in Hebrew, to open a restaurant in his image. And also in Emily's granddaddy's image, you know, her grandfather's picture is up on the wall there as well.
And it's kind of just like an homage to, you know, our families who have led the way for us. a way to celebrate the incredibly diverse and dynamic food of Israel, of the Mediterranean, of the Middle East in general.And so it's just been really great.
And then, of course, we have an incredible team of people, everyone from our cooks to our servers and dishwashers and managers that have all really put their love and passion into that restaurant to create a space that I think is very welcoming.
It's kind of like a neighborhood restaurant, which we really love.It's in a residential area.We really wanted the place to feel like you were in a neighborhood.And we get a ton of regulars that live up and down the street.
They walk their kids there and their dogs there.And it's a really fun energy there.
So for our listeners, it is in uptown New Orleans in a very beautiful residential area.A lot of fun shops and little cafes around there.
We like to spend our Sundays walking around there and then going up to Audubon Park for a nice walk around the park.
Yeah.Yeah.It's a beautiful part of New Orleans.
Yeah, yeah, we encourage everybody who visits New Orleans to expand their horizons.It's not just the French Quarter.We say that all the time.Love it, but expand.We love Middle Eastern food.We love the Middle East.
I went to Israel, Alon, as a teenager.My grandparents, who are Southern Jewish from Lithuania, Heritage, sent me to help me develop a Jewish identity.I spent more time chasing boys. But I'd like to go back with David one day.
I know it's not going to be anytime soon, given the situation over there.But I hope that we can go, because it is a transformative experience for everybody who does visit Israel.It really is.
Yeah.And I think that can be said for lots of countries.And throughout the Middle East, there's a lot of great places to visit. When I go back to Israel, I'm always reminded of my childhood, my Saba and my Safta.
It really reminds me of them and the memories that I shared there with them.
And it always inspires me for cooking, because the food scene there is not only rooted in a lot of tradition, especially when it comes to the Arab food there, like the hummus and the baba ghanoush, but also in this very modern approach to the melting pot of Israel, of the people that have come there from all over the world.
uh, and, and all over the Mediterranean.Um, and so, you know, I'm excited to explore Georgian food and Moroccan food and Turkish food and Libyan and Yemenite.
Um, and all of those, uh, and, and, you know, Lebanese and, and Egyptian, like all of those cuisines offer something that's just so unique and so interesting.And then when they kind of combine with.
a diverse group of people that are living in the country and sharing tables together and sharing families together.And and the food becomes something that is very unique and very interesting and constantly changing.
We'd like to explore it, too, and we're just so happy that we have a restaurant like yours to at least either dip our toes in.There's some very good ones around the country, but not enough, frankly, not enough.We'd like to see more.
because it's a very healthy cooking as well, which we want to support because it's not always easy to find in New Orleans.
Yeah, that's right.After a few days in New Orleans, a vegetable is not necessarily a bad thing.At Saba, we try to keep a lot of those on the menu.
Well, at the Shia Barnett Foundation dinner, the first dish out was this beautiful presentation of vegetables that I guess they were lightly blanched, but to me they were like, it was a bowl of jewelry.
I was so excited about that one dish because you don't really get a lot of vegetables that beautiful here in New Orleans.Usually they're like... Yeah.
They're usually cooked to death.
cooked to death or buried in something else.
Things are definitely developing and changing.And there's a lot of incredible examples of our local resources being treated with a lighter touch now.So that's good, too.
Well, we're glad to see that, because we're feeling the results of it after six months here.
There is the traditional cuisine that's very butter heavy and sauce heavy and things like that.But a lot of the menus that we have seen lately, to Alon's point, have really started to lighten up.They're offering salads.
They're offering things like avocado and things like that, too.So they're looking towards health, because they know that people have to have that in their lives.
Well, there's a Get Fit NOLA program, which helps, but I think everybody is conscious of it.
And then I think every restaurant knows now that to have healthy options as well as, you know, low alcohol, no alcohol options and the beverages is just part of what you must do now.
Yeah.You're seeing that.There's a lot of great restaurants that are embracing that, that we love to go to.Then also in New Orleans, there's a beautiful and strong Vietnamese presence here.
Being locals here, we eat a lot of Vietnamese food because it's light, it's fresh, it's bright, and very, very delicious.
We love Vietnamese food here.As you've talked about the Middle East being this incredible melting pot, which it is, New Orleans is also this incredible melting pot and has emerged through generations of immigration that have come over here.
So there's a kinship that's nice.Yeah, absolutely.Yeah.
Yeah, I definitely compare Israel and America in a lot of ways, and Israel and New Orleans in a lot of ways too, because of just the history of immigration and the combining of those different cultures to create something super unique that doesn't really exist anywhere else.
Exactly, exactly.So when you were approached to create a concept at the Swanky Swanky Four Seasons downtown, how did the concept for Miss River come?Because it's a completely different restaurant from Saba, and in a different location.
It is, for our listeners, downtown in an area that probably every tourist is gonna go to, and it is a beautiful hotel.Talk to us about it.
Yeah, well, they reached out to us about opening a restaurant at the Four Seasons.And we were definitely excited about that because of the history of the Four Seasons brand and the strength of their luxurious brand all over the world.
And so when they were like, well, what kind of restaurant do you want to open?I was like, well, you know, I think I would like to open a restaurant that could be here in a hundred years and could feel like it still belongs.
And to me, that was really just embracing the tradition of New Orleans dining, of haute New Orleans dining, if you will.
Emily and I have, over the last 22 years of living here, so many of our celebrations have been at places like Brennan's and Galatoire's Commander's Palace and Arnaud's and all of these restaurants that you go to and it just feels like a celebration.
It feels like you're in such a unique place in the world.And so we wanted Miss River to kind of be our love letter to that experience.And when we created the menu,
we really wanted to put all of our effort into making delicious Louisiana Creole cuisine.So that's what we've worked towards, and we have a lot of fun with it.It's pretty whimsical at times.We have a fried
chicken, but it's a whole fried chicken that we carve in the dining room and we make flaming espresso martinis.And we do a dirty rice in a clay pot with a duck egg yolk and duck liver pate.
And so it's kind of, I think, a really fun way to celebrate New Orleans food.And the hotel is amazing and the dining room is really beautiful.
And then probably one of the most beautiful bars in the city, the chandelier bar.
Yeah, absolutely.Yeah.And so we with pomegranate also, you know, contribute to the chandelier bar and cook all the food for it and help.
you know, we, we created the kind of identity with it, uh, along with Miss River and it's, uh, it's just been a, it's a great gathering place.
It's a great place to, uh, splurge if you want, you know, on caviar and champagne and reserve, you know, bourbons and tequilas and stuff like that, or, you know, just, uh, have some beignets or, or cracklins and, uh,
and Ibiza, and just have some fun and relax.But it's a great place to get started or finish the night off.It's right on the steps of the French Quarter, Central Business District, and the Warehouse District.
All three of those neighborhoods really butt right up to Miss River and Four Seasons.So it's a great place to to really feel like you're in New Orleans, but also, um, be super comfortable.
Well, we had that dirty rice.It was good.It was really, it had, it had the liver and the egg.It was, it had so much umami going on and we love good dirty rice, but that was an elevated.
It was.And I love duck eggs too.So yeah, it was nice to have that. Remember when we lived up in the Hudson Valley, Melanie, and we used to get duck eggs.
There was this guy that lived a couple of miles down the road from us, and he had a pen of ducks and a pen of chickens in his backyard.
And he had a refrigerator full of dozens of each type of egg in his garage that was just open 24 hours a day for anybody to come in and leave a couple of bucks in.
And we would go down and we'd buy duck eggs all the time from him.It was just great.
You know what else we liked was the blue crab gratin with those, this is such a Southern thing, butter toasted saltines.That's like a very Southern, it's like unbelievable.You don't get that in the North.It was, that was a lot of fun.
And the mushroom toast, you know, you could just go there and nibble.
Yeah.And so there's definitely the New Orleans favorites on there with things that are on the heavier side, but we also try to really keep it light and do some really great salads and vegetable preparations there as well.
I don't know, the vegetable preparation we had was mushroom toast.That was our vegetable that day.We had the black and gulf shrimp, I think you have vegetables with that.
And then I had the... The black and gulf snapper.
I had the koubion, they spell it court beyond, but locally they call it koubion.And I can't pass one up, there are not enough of them on the menus here in New Orleans, it's like a fish stew.
It is.It's like a fish stew with crab, shrimp, oysters, red fish, and we make a roux, as you do with most Louisiana dishes, to prepare to get started.And we also, at Miss River, have recently put in a wood-burning oven.
out in the courtyard, and I've been making pizzas out there, which has been a lot of fun.
So we're doing pizzas on the menu now at Miss River, but like really fun, kind of like, you know, classic pizzas, but like with a lot of spritzes, you know, a big spritz menu that goes along with them, and that's been really great.
And then we're also roasting things like cochon de lait in the wood-burning oven as well. during the weekends and featuring that carved on the chef stage.So we're doing dishes that I think people that come to New Orleans really want to have.
You want to have beignets, you want to have oysters, barbecue shrimp, gumbo, cochon de la, baked Alaska.These are all things that are on our menu because you know, if you're coming to new Orleans, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta have that stuff.
That's the, that's what new Orleans is known for from a food standpoint.So don't miss out on that stuff.
And yet, and yet there's some amazing P mentioned pizza.This is like a city that's going crazy on pizza right now.Where do you go to get your pizza when you're off duty?
Well, I really like, um, I like pizza delicious a lot.I think that they do a really. really great job for like a New York style pizza.
And, um, and for like a wood fired pizza, we've been, um, we've, we've been going to, uh, Margo, um, which has been really great.And, and so, yeah, you know, we, we love pizza too.I, you know, I've made tens of thousands of pizzas in my lifetime.
So yeah, we did work in Italy for a while.So I think, you know, pizza.Yeah.
And then I also, you know, I had opened a couple of Italian restaurants in town prior to cooking Israeli food.So the pizzas are super important to me.
We never really ate a lot of pizza until we came to New Orleans for some reason.It seems to be like a thing we do quite a bit, bring it home and crack open some bottle of wine.
So how do you celebrate the High Holy Holidays, which are like upon us right now?Do you have any traditions?
Um, yeah, I cook, I cook a lot of food, you know, we have friends over, uh, now that we have our children, um, our traditions, I think are, are, um, Shifting and building as, as we speak.So, uh, it's, it's great.
We're going to go to temple and be with our community and come home and cook and eat.
That's what you're supposed to do.We were with a young restaurateur chef.Actually, we told him he must go to Saba.His roots are Hungarian-Jewish.Jerry Solomon, he has a place called Aggie's Counter.We brought the book.
We showed him the book when we saw him at Turkey and the Wolf.And today, because we're really into heritage right now, the Israeli connection, because we really think the food is amazing.
There's so much rich heritage from Eastern Europe into Israel to the South.I'm reconnecting with my own roots with it right now.It's really exciting.
Absolutely.Yeah.I've never had the pleasure of eating his food, but it looks delicious.
Well, he hadn't had the pleasure of eating yours.We said, beeline at the Sabah before you leave. Um, really, really important.So what are some mantras you live by now?I mean, you really have come full circle in your life.
You are now, um, a sick, you are very successful in as a hospitality entrepreneur.Uh, and you have this amazing foundation to enable and inspire young people.What do you, what do you live by today?
Your mantra or a quote that inspires you that you want to share?
I think my mantra today is be kind and be supportive to people that I respect and love and support causes that I think are important, not only in food, but with everything.That's really what I want to teach my children.
And I think that the lessons that I'm getting ready to teach my three-year-old are really the lessons that I'm constantly reminding myself of and trying to champion.Be collaborative.Be kind. support things that are important.
Do more than just your craft and be a part of your community.And that I think is my mantra right now.
I think about your three-year-old, Alon, and it's just about when you were still living in Israel, but about to have a life change coming to America.And that was such a big change for you.
Your children are lucky that they have a stable home and a family that loves them, and they're here, and you can teach them so much based on what you've learned.It's really important.
It is, yeah.And I've really made a self-commitment to myself and to my wife and to my children to be present and to be there for those moments, cook dinner for them and be present as a father.
And I think that I'm very fortunate that I have a good structure around me that I can do that.
That's really, really terrific.We want to make sure we share with our listeners before we go a couple of things.Your website is palmhospitality.com.We can't wait to go visit your place in Vegas.
We were talking before we were on the show about Vegas is like you mentioned Vegas is a Disneyland.It still sounds like one.We have to go and check it out.
We met some wonderful students from the New Orleans Career Center, which is a beneficiary of the Shia Barnett Foundation.This is a trade school.Honestly, everybody should have a trade.
Everybody needs to have a trade in their life to fall back on or to pursue.And that's nolacc.org.And then we want to encourage people to check out the Shia Barnett Foundation as well.And that website is Why don't you tell us because I'm pulled it up.
Uh, shy of Barnett foundation.org.
Fantastic.Well, it's been really great to see you.We've run into it a number of events, including the Boku's door.We were at the shy of Barnett foundation.We hope more wonderful high profile programs and events come to new Orleans.
Let's make a point of making that happen.Okay.Yes.
Well, what the New Orleans Career Center is doing with trade education is a great step towards that.
And I definitely recommend people to support your local programs that are teaching trade and not just having kids fill out little circles with number two pencils all day long, because that to me didn't work.It works for some people.
And nor did it work for me.
It didn't work for David either.
I'm not discounting it.I'm not saying it's not important, but I think you have to also balance it with being able to do a trade because you could make a killing as an electrician or a plumber these days.Or a contractor.
or an automotive repair, or cyber security, or a lot of different things that the school is being a part of education for our community.So it's incredible.
Absolutely.If I went back to school, that's what I would do.I'm telling you, it is the way to go to always have a trade in your back pocket.
Very important.Or your front pocket.
Or your front pocket.Alon, it's been great talking to you.Thank you so much.Thank you for all you do to support aspiring young chefs and future chefs.And congratulations on your success with the restaurants at Pomegranate Hospitality.
The one table we haven't been to yet of yours that we want is your Monday night red beans and rice dinners. We hear they're epic.
They are great.They are great.It's our occasion Shabbat, we call it.
We like that kind of Shabbat, right?Yeah, Shabbat.Yeah.Well, thank you.Shalom.We wish you and your family a wonderful holiday.And we will see you probably in one of your restaurants or events soon in New Orleans.
And for everybody listening, come to New Orleans, support the restaurants, Get out of your French Quarter.We love the French Quarter, but expand your horizons and visit all the wonderful neighborhoods that the city has to offer.
And you'll have a amazing hospitality experience.
Thank you.You've been listening to the Connected Table Live with Melanie Young, David Ransom, and Alon Shaya, our guest.As always, we encourage everybody to travel, taste, sip, inspire, and always stay insatiably curious.Thank you.
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