Wise Son's Josh Rosenthal on getting it right
On the restaurant industry camaraderie:
I was raised in restaurants having two chefs as parents. I've always seen it as this band of brothers; there's a lot of adrenaline in restaurants and there's a lot of emotion. When you're bound together with a team and you're put in stressful situations you get this real tight-knit feeling. We're always observing people that come to us and their experiences. We're there to curate their experiences.
The Man, The Myth, The Legend (photo credit: Christina Storozkova)
On his side hobbies:
I have a degree in photojournalism and I like street photography. On a day off, I will go out and pound the pavement. The way that I look at the images that I make on the streets, and the way that I feel about that kind of zen place that I go to when I'm making pictures, I'm allowed to engage with humans while I'm out on the street. In the restaurant, we're there for you. When I'm on the street I can be really selfish and I can make the images that I want to. I literally I'm either working with food or having coffee or engaging with some friends or I'm out making photos or developing pictures. It’s those three things.
On his favorite SF secret:
I love the fact that San Francisco has adult slides. Not one, but two. Just these little gems of the city that you can go to and escape for a minute. The slide in Bernal has a swing where you can overlook the city. There was a point where there was a tree swing on Valencia. Like what the sh*t? The Seward Street slides are fun. There's a set of adult slides out in Golden Gate Park as well. Just the fact that you can go to somewhere like Golden Gate Park or Land’s End and play.
On the evolution of restaurants:
(Photo Credit: Kassie Borreson)
I'm really truly interested in dialogue with people, but there's a shift in the way we exchange with each other in this day and age. We're changing as humans and we're changing the way that we engage with each other and eat and commune. Restaurants are one of those last places where community happens. But at the same time, that's changing as well. For example, I'm doing 30% of my sales in caviar delivery weekly. That's great - but it's also strange having guests come in and try to order a bagel and to wait like 7-8 minutes for a toasted bagel because there's $400 in caviar delivery sales going out the door. It's just a strange dichotomy that's happening in the way that we engage with each other.
On his open all the time ethnic spots:
There’s place on Broadway and Columbus My Cahn which has amazing scallion and mung bean and and egg pancake that they fry really thin and they give you with lettuce wraps its from from Vietnam. I've had it in Southern Vietnam. They've got a great crab and asparagus soup and they're open until like 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning depending on how they feel. Los Yaquis is really great for karaoke on the weekends.
On the best Cubano:
Get a cubano sandwich at That’s It on Mission and 21st. There is everything on it. Have you ever had that sandwich? It's like nine dollars and it's the size of your head. There's steak on it, there's hot dogs. There's avocado, beans if you want it. There's sour cream. There's lettuce and eggs and there's more. I'm forgetting like three or four ingredients. It's insane. I think that's what's really great about being in the Mission in general. It doesn't feel like an inner city per se but it does have some of the trappings of it.
On his Wise Sons order:
I tend to like to go with the flow and I only tend to get persnickety when it's things that are made with a dumb choice. If you're gonna put a tomato on my bagel in November in Arizona…. At Wise Sons for me, it’s onions and capers and cream cheese. I tend to like to do it open faced and then close it because that way there's enough salmon to actual bagel.
On what happened when I asked about California bagels vs. New York bagels:
I'm not even willing to get into that fight. You're messing with food memories. You're never gonna budge it. I can have all the opinions in the world and I'm still wrong. Moot point. The Jewish deli is a custom that goes back hundreds of years. If (the half sour pickle, the bagel, etc) doesn't taste exactly like what you remember from a specific deli it’s because there's family variances, but it's a tough conversation to get into. In the same vein, I've watched fist fights happen about mole. These are the kind of things you don't want to get into.
The thing that I do firmly believe that a bagel is defined by being proofed for longer because it needs to proof and rise and then fall again. It needs to be boiled before it's baked. If you do those things and you're adhering to some sense of tradition within the shape and texture of dough, how can you not call it a bagel? Most people in San Francisco have never had an Israeli bagel before, but there is a great kosher bakery on 6th and Daytona called Frena that does Israeli bagels. They're the size of your head. They're totally different. There's people who would probably not like them.
(Photo Credit: Kassie Borreson)
On managing a Deli:
A Jewish deli is a very strange concept and it's one that's really hard to exist in the scope of today's day and age. A Jewish deli is all about community, it's about love and food. The food is very simple, so it's gotta be full of flavor and treated well. That kind of stuff can only be translated by care. If you put a little bit of passion into every piece of food that you do, you're can create food that's simple but delicious.
We're all humans, but at the same time, the dynamic that can happen in a restaurant can be brutal. Especially in a Jewish deli. Because we hire people in their early 20s, I have to tell some of my servers sometimes, that the reason they are tested on the menu is because if someone gets a messed up bialy, they're might rip your face off. It sucks to have to buffer some hard-nosed 60 year old against my poor 22-year old Mission High School graduate that's at the City College of San Francisco. I actually kind of enjoy it, but at the same time, it's a little bit of a game of sociology. You're always trying to make that person chill the hell out.
What’s your biggest service pet peeve?
Lack of empathy for the guest experience. Anything can be apologized for as long as you try. I'm very forgiving. I like to let them do their thing, and I like to watch it. If they're doing it poorly, I'll kind of laugh about it and order another drink.
On SF’s restaurant industry challenges:
At a deli, you are privy to some of the major staffing issues in America. Finding good help is paramount to running a restaurant. It's probably not going to continue to work in the way that it is right now in San Francisco. We've got too many restaurants. The ones that miss the point are the ones that don’t find the passion and make the goal of embracing your patronage as part of the community. You've got to truly want to feed people and break bread.
I think at one level or another, that's kind of a spiel but at the same time, I personally firmly believe that we can execute change on the day to day by making people happy and turning things around and getting them to go back into the world without so much scorn. It can be hard sometimes. You end up turning into a punching bag for a lot of people.
(Photo Credit: Kassie Borreson)
On the new Wise Sons openings:
The newer builder are fun; they're really flashy. They are beautiful on the inside. It's like when you have a really nice car and if you open up the engine and people have done engine work to it and everything is immaculate. That's what those locations look like. Whereas with the original, you open it up and it's a clean engine but it's the original engine. We've done a lot of capturing and a lot of reframing and a lot of reworking. The backend, all of the logistics stuff is really fun, like our catering bill book, is so, so beautiful. To be able to hand this binder to a new hire and say, "Hey, flip to page 57. I need you to put together that package," and have all the pictures and everything. It's key in creating that consistency and delivering a really beautiful package.
