Thomas Keller's Butt and a Q & A with Scott Weiner of The Fifty/50 Group and Roots Pizza

Though I try to mask this by writing in the voice of a 17 year-old-boy, you’ve probably figured out by now, when it comes to evaluating food, I have the soul of Bernie Sanders. A lot of this had to do with seeing the chef Thomas Keller’s butt. 

Wait, did someone hack Thomas Keller’s phone and put his personal videos on Pornhub Premium, you just thought?

Nah, it’s not like that. The first time I dined at the French Laundry in Napa Valley, I was finishing up at one of the last tables of the night. My server asked me if I wanted to tour the kitchen, which is sort of like asking SNL’s Pete Davidson if he’d like to date a beautiful woman. Hell, yes, I wanted to see where “Oysters and Pearls” and salmon cornets were invented.

The server led me away from the dining room, down a darkish hallway. At the end of the hallway, surrounded in a halo of surgical suite-like bright white light, there on his knees, half his body stuck in an under-counter refrigerator, was the posterior of Thomas Keller. Keller was in his 40s. He was already considered the greatest chef in America, if not one of the top chefs in the world, but he was on the floor wiping down the lowest surfaces in the kitchen.

Keller’s commitment inspired me, made me want to seek out chefs who set the tone, who strove for a higher standard. Since then I’ve stood in many kitchens and watched entire services go by. There were Andrew Zimmerman and Rob Levitt making charcuterie from scratch at Del Toro when no one would have cared if they used Hormel bacon. There was Ryan Poli, a former French Laundry cook, who could have just bought a commercial bottle, making scratch cocktail sauce at the now defunct Butter, by grating horseradish root and adding fresh thyme, something I still do at home. While working on the Alinea cookbook, I saw Keller’s former right-hand man, Grant Achatz, who thinks the word compromise is a promise you make on a cell phone, do only things that were difficult, original, and perfect.

Informed by these examples, for awhile I mostly only celebrated the chefs who pushed all limits. Like an “artiste”, I believed making no concessions was the right way, that business would follow if you stuck to the ultimate standard, whatever that was. 

But also, I was a suburban kid weaned on franchise chain food, who didn’t eat sushi until I graduated from college. I loved Hot Pockets and still revere the Totino’s party pizza. Why was I such a hard ass?

I still criticize at a pretty high standard, but as you can tell from my Popeye’s stir fry experiment the other day, I have also mellowed quite a bit. There are a lot of reasons for that, but one reason is being exposed to the philosophy of a guy named Scott Weiner, principal and founder of The Fifty/50 Restaurant Group with his partner Greg Mohr.

Before I knew Scott personally, I knew his restaurants and bars, the namesake Fifty/50, Roots Pizza, and West Town Bakery. I never expected much from them, because, while his places presented as fun, they were never Michelin three-star bound. And yet, every time I walked out of one, I found myself delighted. Maybe the best example of this, and the one a lot of Chicagoan’s have experienced, are the mozzarella sticks at Roots, almost mahogany-colored fried planks oozing with cheese so gooey that if you had the wingspan of Milwaukee Bucks phenom Giannis Antetokounmpo, you could do a cheese pull and the curd wouldn’t break.

Weiner’s chefs could have just bought some Wisconsin brick cheese and called it a day, but they make the mozzarella fresh in house and hand bread them, a difference that makes the sticks the best version in America.  Which is to say, sometimes Weiner’s standards are very much the same as the chefs I’ve just written about.

And yet, unlike so many of those single operator restaurant chefs, Weiner, whose group runs 19 different places and 15 different concepts, is building the next great Chicago restaurant empire. The group isn’t as big as BOKA or Lettuce Entertain You, but there’s no reason to believe they’re not on their way.

Weiner knows that while everyone wants to eat at Alinea one night, they want to play lifesize Jenga and slam PBR the other six nights of the week, as they can at his newest spot, Utopian Tailgate. While they’re doing that, however, they’re gonna be able to chow on buttermilk-brined fried chicken thighs, or nachos piled high with 24 hour-sous vide pork from Portsmith executive chef Nate Henssler. 

Weiner runs a family-oriented multi-location like Roots, but he also invests in “art” like Hennsler’s work at Portsmith, or in Homestead on the roof, a rooftop garden to table concept. Weiner may be known as king of the barstaurants, but he balances passion and profit in a very effective way. He won’t cut corners, but he also has a knack for knowing exactly when a corner should be round or straight. Theoretically, if a chef proposed putting fried tarantula on one of his menus, Wiener would say, maybe let’s start with bacon-fried house spiders instead. He has a yen for understanding the appetites of his customers, while also honoring the desires of his team.

Weiner’s never said any of these things explicitly. It’s a read I’ve gotten from our conversations. While he’s given a great gift to Chicago in the form of premier hospitality and entertainment, I’m grateful for the present he’s given me, which is to realize that it’s ok to like Thomas Keller, but you’re a jackass if you don’t love a great mozzarella stick.

I caught up with Weiner last week, a few days before his restaurant group, through the generosity of a local tech CEO, started preparing and giving away 400 meals a day to Chicago’s furloughed and laid off hospitality workers and local charities, to see how he’s weathering the COVID-19 situation.

How are you guys making it through this? I was struck by the fact that your mission statement for the restaurant group says, “We strive to take care of our people first.”  A lot of people say that in the industry, but few formalize it in the first sentence of their charter.

It’s tough. A week ago we had 625 people, and we just furloughed 580, but we are paying their benefits. Emotionally I feel like a failure. I just put my hands on the bricks of West Town Bakery and thought back to 2008 when we opened and felt like, holy shit, I can’t believe we did this, but now it’s all closed. [Editor’s note: all 3 locations of Roots continue to offer takeout and delivery]

I’m spending every minute trying to think about how I can resurrect more money and make my businesses more sustainable.  I’m not paying myself right now. People think that everyone in this business is rich, but this is our 12th year. We celebrated the anniversary yesterday, and this was the first year we were poised to break through with real profit. We were looking at taking in half a million for private events for March and April. That’s probably not going to happen. It just means we will defer profitability to take care of our people first.

You aren’t responsible for COVID-19. There’s no way you should feel like a failure.

I know I’m not responsible for the virus, but you wonder if you could have done something more, generated more cash or foreseen things a little differently so you could keep more people employed while this blows over.

You were working at China Grill in Las Vegas after the 9-11 attacks. Restaurants were under siege back then. Is there any comparison to now?

At China Grill we went from 700 covers a night at dinner to 30.  I also remember distinctly, China Grill said we won’t lay anyone off, and that stuck out, and I’ve tried to emulate that kind of commitment to my own employees.

I also worked at Lettuce Entertain you, where I learned about systems. Running a restaurant is all about discipline. You come in everyday and you do your job, and you make decisions on a standardized basis. I could stay home right now, but I get up early and treat it like every other day. Routines are routines. I am focused on finding ways to generate more revenue during this shutdown so we can bring as many people back to work as soon as possible.

Is there any upside to this shutdown?

While I’ve been managing 600 people, my wife has been dealing with an exuberant toddler by herself a lot. So, now I’m home a little more, and I’m commiserating and getting involved a bit. She has the hardest job in the world to make sure our son is a good citizen of the world.

I’m trying to relax a little. I’m reading a book about Edith Kermit Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt’s wife. I’m a big Teddy Roosevelt fan, but I guess the answer is no, I’m restless. It’s tough to enjoy a single minute, because I’m thinking about how to drive more business to Roots, and how I can keep people employed.

Have you thought about any changes you might make when you come out of this?

There are going to be a lot of free agents on the other side of this. We have always said we will only hire the highest quality people. But, sometimes we’ve had to scramble because of growth and we didn’t always follow that. Now, we’ll be in a position to stick to and be disciplined about making sure we have the best of the best.

Obviously Roots has great pizza, best mozzarella sticks in the game, great salads, that’s a message I want to tell people, to make sure they order delivery and take out, but I’m wondering if there’s anything else you’d add to that idea right now

Roots is about building a place for the community and families. You know people are talking a lot about the [third party] delivery services right now, but they’re not part of our community. For example, my drivers at Roots are employees. We pay their benefits and their insurance. My app for the restaurant is my app. It costs less to order direct from our app than from a third party. Every dollar we make goes to my employees and my drivers. Grubhub is lying about waiving fees, when really, they’re deferring fees. You know how when [former Chicago police chief] Eddie Johnson lied to the mayor and she fired him? When Mayor Lightfoot hears about how [Grubhub CEO Matt] Maloney lied to her face, there will be a reckoning.

We invest in [Google] Adwords to direct business to our websites. Grubhub outbids against us on our own restaurant names to direct traffic to their own sites. You can’t compete, because they have unlimited budgets. They’re not investing with local money. They make money and send that money to Softbank in Japan. They’re not good stewards and not good for this community. This is the worst company possible. These people are horrible for the restaurant industry, they want Chicago restaurants to be subservient empires that stay afloat so they can make money on them, but they don’t want them to ever get ahead. 

Roots continues to offer takeout and delivery from all three locations at

1924 W. Chicago Ave

2200 W. Lawrence Ave

1610 N. Wells St.

They are currently offering a “Happy Home Hour” featuring 50 percent off all delivery and carryout of packaged beer, wine bottles, and White Claw ordered from 3pm to 6pm every day of the week when ordering thru the Roots website. and the Roots app available via the Apple App Store(iOS App) or Google Play (Android) ). Guests need to enter the code "happyhomehour" upon checkout to receive the discount.