Dudley Isidore

Dudley Isidore, the chef everyone calls Doug, started cooking at seven because it was the only way to taste the food before everybody else did.

Brad and Isidore met at events where Isidore was catering, both of them working a room full of people, and they clicked on the spot. Isidore's read on that is that no meeting in life is unnecessary, positive or negative. When he came into the McBastard Studio for the SALTYmf GOAT Podcast, he asked in advance how many people would be there, then cooked lunch for the whole crew instead of just the host. Brad had already made him a goat charcuterie board that Isidore now uses for events at his house.

Isidore is Haitian, spent his early years in Florida, and moved to New York around nine to live with his mother. Before that his grandmother raised him, and she kept catching him sneaking tastes out of her pots, which in a West Indian house gets you punished. Her solution was to bring him into the kitchen. He started on garlic and potatoes and got to taste everything before it went out. He is now executive chef at The Beverly in Atlanta and consults on three restaurants at once, including Rewind Lounge and Bistro out past Stone Mountain. He has helped open about seven. When he hires, he does not run on the resume. He tells people he is spending eight hours a day with them, a third of his life, and he can teach skill but he cannot teach character.

His mother was a single parent working 20 hour days with five of them in one house, so he got a fake work ID and went to work. He was tall and looked older than he was. Kenny Jerome hired him as a busboy at a Jewish restaurant called Traditions. One of the chefs there, Garrett Wembley, asked how old he really was, heard eleven, and offered him a free culinary education he would be paid for. Isidore took it and handed the money to his mother. He stayed at that restaurant ten years, until he was 21, running the place by the end. He describes it as a GM without the GM pay. He says the establishment took advantage of him because they never educated him about his worth, and he puts part of that on himself for not going and getting the education. He has since worked a 36 hour day across three locations.

He names the people who put him on and keeps naming them. Kenny Jerome. Garrett Wembley. Jaleel Lambert, the first chef he worked for in Atlanta. Michael Fuller at Max's Chop House in Marietta Square. His own staff, Miss Yvonne, Chef Black, April, Jay, Tyrone, Jeremy, mostly have no culinary background at all. He hired them for a passion for people, and Chef Black called him earlier that same day to ask when the next event is. At home the deal is straight A's and you get whatever you want, which is how his youngest daughter ended up handing him her schedule before he sets his own.