For most of my career, I built things people never saw.
Systems. Teams. Solutions to complicated problems.
This one's a little different.
THE SHORT VERSION
A FEW THINGS THAT EXPLAIN SOME THINGS.
ONE OF FOUR BOYS.That explains some things.
FIVE DEGREES.Apparently one wasn't enough.
THE BOEING 777.I helped build that first.
HOSPITALITY.Good food. Better people.
NORMAN.Some things are non-negotiable.
CULINARY SCHOOL.Still a student. Always learning.
TWO THREADS
THE CAREER
AND THE THING
I NEVER LEFT.
01BOEING
Engineering. Systems. The 777 program.
02DOT COM TECH STARTUP
ERP, CRM and the usual amount of chaos.
03ELECTRONIC DISCOVERY & COMPUTER FORENSICS
Built a practice. Became a partner. Kept building.
04BDO
Forensic technology, teams and complicated problems.
05G&C
The least sensible résumé move. Also the one I chose.
MEANWHILE
I never really left hospitality behind.
I worked restaurant jobs while building an engineering career.
Server. Bartender. Manager. Whatever needed doing.
I kept cooking. I kept learning. Eventually I went to culinary
school because wanting to know more is apparently a condition
I have.
The corporate career and the restaurant work were never as
separate as they looked.
WHAT I'M BUILDING
I'M NOT TRYING TO
BUILD THE NEXT
BIG THING.
★
I'm trying to build a place I would actually want to go.
Good food without the performance. A room that feels comfortable
the first time you walk into it. A bar where somebody remembers
what you drink. Food made carefully, but without needing a
five-minute explanation when it hits the table.
I've eaten in extraordinary restaurants all over the world.
What stayed with me usually wasn't the complicated stuff.
It was the places that understood what they were there to do
and did it exceptionally well.
That's what I'm after.
WHY G&C?
IT ISN'T MY NAME. IT'S THEIRS.
GEORGE + CATHY HERMAN
George and Cathy.
My parents built a life on hard work, integrity and taking care of people.
My dad could fix just about anything. And did it with focus and purpose. My mom could feed an army. With four growing boys, she did that daily.
Their barbecue sauce was handwritten, passed down, changed and refined over decades. It's part of the foundation of what we're building.
But more than the recipe, it's the way they did things that stayed with me.
WORK HARD.TAKE CARE OF PEOPLE.DO THINGS RIGHT.
That's G&C.
FROM CATHY'S KITCHEN
THE RECIPES ARE REAL.
Handwritten. Used. Passed down. Exactly as they should be.
Cathy's recipes.
Travel taught me something useful: food changes everywhere.
The reason people gather around it really doesn't.
THE LONG WAY AROUND.
69COUNTRIES✦and counting.
123CITIES✦
THE AMERICAS
BAHAMAS
Marsh Harbour
BRAZIL
Rio de Janeiro
COSTA RICA
San José · Jaco
CANADA
Vancouver · Banff · Montreal · Quebec City · Prince Edward Island · Halifax · Fogo Island
