oh boy morning thank you so my wife and I own a little place called hon Oak hey okay well for those of you have it you're gonna want to punch in our address into Google Maps because it's gonna drop you off in the middle of the street in Northeast Portland now this is where you have to trust me that parking lot go to the back of that parking lot and go through the unmarked set of doors and our hidden courtyard opens up there's some scooters and stuff you got to watch out for you know they're all booby traps then you go through another door and down a hallway and you're in our garage space our dining room and open kitchen so these days I'm holding our 10 month old Frankie we call him Frank the tank I got our like we're him in an Ergo and I'm in the corner making dumpling somewhere my wife's son is chasing around Elliot you could see he's not wearing clothes because he's potty training and three years old and thinks he's Captain Underpants see here so you might have noticed by now this is our family home our business is our home and our home is our business it just happens to be our restaurant although I've struggled to call it a restaurant since the very beginning because I think it brings with it a lot of expectations we couldn't live up to in the first year or so we were only open two days a week and our staff were all our friends and family they had full-time jobs but were sort of coming and helping us bailing me out on their weekends but you know we were just trying to figure it out navigate our live work sort of you know divide find our place among all the amazing restaurants here in Portland and it was a significant time because that first year Elliot had just turned one and he was you know learning to walk but like really falling a lot and even now when we hire new staff I tell him yeah you're a cook you're a server but I got like kids running around man your babysitter but the result is truly a community built around our home our regulars have become our friends and our friends have become part of the family when we open our doors it's this sense of community that really is about place more than a restaurant place first so place first is the idea that I stumbled upon during our journey it's come to form everything we do how we choose to live work play and evolve the priority was put on the environment we create not the business model we'd pursue but that model that method placed first is contrarian to how one starts a business right because typically you figure out what you want to do then you figure out how well we were pretty dead set on the how I think we're still figuring out the what this is a little opposite from my background so-so or my training anyways my a little background in 2001 I graduated from the U of O I followed my brother out to New York he promised me free rent while I figured out what the hell I was gonna do with my life that gave me I think to three years to bum around and during that time I found an interest in cooking and I thought you know I'll either drop a bunch of money back in school go into further debt or maybe I'll just walk in somewhere and try and get a job dishwashing I'll work my way up so I was actually on my way downtown I was gonna enroll in cooking school when I just sort of on a whim made a stop I took a little side street quiet corner in the West Village I walked into this small restaurant cute little spotted pig hanging from the window and I asked for a job but what I didn't realize is that I had basically fallen ass-backwards into one of the most high-profile restaurants in the city in the country I think and I didn't get that dishwashing job I was a fry and we sold a lot of burgers so a lot of fries but before I knew it I had gone from fry to line cook line cook to sous chef and sous chef to head chef in almost 10 years I had been chewed up and spit out of the Michelin starred meat grinder the last five of those 10 years I was the executive chef of the Breslin in the rcs Hotel now so a restaurant that's open breakfast lunch and dinner we had 24-hour room service I think we did like you know five six seven hundred covers a day seven days a week 365 days a year it's a lot like Groundhog's Day you wake up with this like foreboding sense of deja vu it's the same damn day over and over again but you wake up and you like try something different right you figure out your angles you hope for a better result you find your small successes but you got to like take your losses because for me at that time it wasn't about the passion for food and cooking it was more about the ritual and repetition but if you do it the right way the reward for that grind is excellence and that level of excellence was my cooking foundation it also awarded my chef my mentor a nomination for the James Beard Awards so now this is the Oscars of the food world right so the highest honor in our field and all the best chefs in the country come to New York and they all you know walk the red carpet and I got to sit in the audience and root for her but I sat there and I noticed something chef after chef walking up on stage they would say thank you but then they would apologize they apologized for their time away from home I'm sorry for the long hours I'm sorry for the stress I'm sorry for putting my career above family and I started to hear the apologies more than the thanks and gratitude but it was definitely my own guilt that made me hear it because for ten years I had worked through every and miss most special occasions and and my only trips back here to Portland weren't to see my parents it was for work this was an epiphany for me and I remembered it so clearly when I got that phone call mom had stage 4 breast cancer it flipped my world upside down my career in an instant seemed over and everything I worked for immediately took a backseat so we pack up everything and we move immediately to be with her and between visits to the doctor's and chemotherapy I tried to like piece together some like form of my cooking career but the move had really like forced me to to push away from that old restaurant grind the next couple years the treatments improved mom's health and while it's a battle she fights every day son and I were eager to start our next chapter because just as we started to get settled and comfortable in Portland we got pregnant another life flipper right so naturally what do I do I panic and I'm like okay I'm gonna start a restaurant cuz that's smart right but uh but like that's all I knew and I had the plan because with all the advice had gotten in all my years of experience I I I knew that this was gonna work so develop a concept Portland's first Korean gastropub I think it can still work right it'll kill so care funding so maybe do a elaborate Kickstarter or you know find a celebrity investor tech millionaire or anybody like anybody with fu money cuz you don't you don't want to like lose your life saving and then and then make sure it can scale because fast-casual is the future right open one in every corner of the city you sell it off for millions and you ride off into the sunset but these methods weren't working for us and every listing we saw really just gave me that sense of deja vu it's that restaurant life PTSD and that maximum place first kept coming back to us and rather than setting up to open a restaurant it was my wife who sort of smacked me over the head and said why can't we have both why can't we find a collaborative workspace a Test Kitchen a gathering place for our friends and family for once can we have a yard a garden with a new baby we barely left the house and so we would really try and bring the world to us and we were determined to figure out a way that I could be a father first but still be a chef and this is how we were gonna do it you know she couldn't do the traditional anyways that's not really her training she's an incredible artist and let's face it the real creative talent in the family my true contrarian northstar so now our approach to the restaurant was going to be different a true family restaurant one word we'd only be open a couple days a week because I I was still accompanying my mom to her treatment when where our family would be ingrained and everyday sanctuary for burnt out cooks I sort of created a safe place for the biggest burnout yes that's me and where the traditional French Brigade kitchen hierarchy was kind of thrown out the door and where our staff can also benefit from our family first philosophy and most importantly I get to cook with my mom so now this sounds like the Promised Land right so where are we going to find it Craigslist [Laughter] so it turns out there's a real estate developer who found himself in a position to sort of bridge the gap between family and his business and he puts it online on Craigslist and son finds it and she's like okay we're going and she's dragged me kicking and screaming I'm fighting her tooth and nail and I tell her it's one of those Craigslist scams it can't be for real and then we arrived in the middle of the street looking for this damn parking lot so we walked through the doors and we revel in this sense of discovery this sort of hidden urban oasis and who do we find standing there in the middle of the courtyard Kevin Kavanagh [Applause] it was a brief meeting you know he's a busy guy we exchanged some emails we had a you know firm handshake but after a hug that really sealed the deal he just like handed us the keys and he said you know we'll figure out the lease later like don't worry about it yeah and we believed him because you know we saw this place and we're like there's no way we can like walk away from this we're gonna take it it's three times our budget and and and you know we thought about you know our restaurant how - we didn't have a concept we had no money we borrowed from sons family and I maxed out all my credit cards you know a good location we were like hidden people still can't find us today and whether it can scale or not we didn't know if we can even get the place open so what was once his family's home became our family home and what we have built as Han Oak it's still a work in progress though and we've really allowed it to grow organically we've only done as much as our family can handle but for now having fun as the goal with plans of summer-long tiki bars we're building out a little ceramic studio right now we cook but the door is open to evolution and as any new business owner or even new parent knows the long days well the long hours have gotten much longer and the days and years are getting shorter and shorter I find myself back in a grind but in a new way because to be able to step off the hot line in the middle of service to witness Elliott's first steps to be able to brush the kids teeth and read them a book and put them to bed every night to be able to close a restaurant for every holiday and every special occasion that's what gets me out of bed every morning the priority is put on the environment we create not the business model we pursue the priority was to find our place and build it because even though we're a restaurant right now it's about so much more than just the food while we've been honored with the feedback the recognition and the awards were never really the goal they're a byproduct of creating our home so now when people ask me what to keep in mind when starting a new business my list is pretty different from the one that was shared with me but I always give four pieces of advice to those going out on their own you have to put in the time and do the work that's your foundation and then find somewhere to learn the right way you can even spend some time in a place to learn the wrong way because that will help you discover your own way and then build a place where you want to be hopefully there's a good chance others will want to be there too so we couldn't have dreamed of being where we are today I'm like I'm standing here at TEDx Portland which is the most amazing thing what am I doing here you know we just we didn't want to build this restaurant we just wanted to build your favorite place where everyone would feel at home and we're thank you would be greater than I'm sorry it's mom thank you