The 4 Essential Things Stephanie Izard Learned Working at Olive Garden

The restaurateur, author, entrepreneur, and "Top Chef" champion sings the praises of a chain restaurant education that still holds true.

Stephanie Izard and the Happy Birthday Song

Welcome to Season 1, Episode 10 of Tinfoil Swans, a new podcast from Food & Wine. New episodes drop every Tuesday. Listen and follow on: Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, TuneIn.

On this episode

In our 10th episode, executive features editor Kat Kinsman managed to find chef Stephanie Izard in a rare quiet moment when she wasn't fussing over the final details of opening a new restaurant (or two), in front of a camera on Tournament of Champions or Hell's Kitchen, testing a new sauce for her This Little Goat line of products, or at work on one of the billion other projects she has going on at any given time. If you'd shared a snapshot of this future with Izard back in the days before her groundbreaking Top Chef win, James Beard Awards, and F&W Best New Chef accolade, back when she was playing "restaurant" with her childhood friends or working the host stand at Olive Garden, she might have fainted — and it wouldn't be the first time. Izard reflects on her trajectory from competitive swimming, to owning a restaurant in her 20s, to becoming one of the busiest chef-restaurateur-author-entrepreneurs in the food world while still trying to find time for pickleball.

Meet our guest

Stephanie Izard is the chef and owner of Girl & the Goat and Cabra — both with locations in Chicago and Los Angeles, as well as Chicago's Little Goat, Duck Duck Goat, and Sugargoat. Her constantly evolving This Little Goat line of globally inspired spices, crunches, and sauces ships nationwide from Goldbelly, and she is the author of the books Girl in the Kitchen, and Gather & Graze. Food & Wine named Izard a Best New Chef in 2011, and she received the award for Best Chef: Great Lakes from the James Beard Foundation in 2013. She is a frequent competitor and judge on shows, including Tournament of Champions and Hell's Kitchen, and won the title of Iron Chef in 2017 and Top Chef in 2008.

Related: How Stephanie Izard Puts Together a Cocktail Party in Just One Hour

Meet our host

Kat Kinsman is executive features editor at Food & Wine, author of Hi, Anxiety: Life With a Bad Case of Nerves, host of Food & Wine's podcast, and founder of Chefs With Issues. Previously, she was the senior food & drinks editor at Extra Crispy, editor-in-chief and editor at large at Tasting Table, and the founding editor of CNN Eatocracy. She won a 2020 IACP Award for Personal Essay/Memoir and has had work included in the 2020 and 2016 editions of The Best American Food Writing. She was nominated for a James Beard Broadcast Award in 2013, won a 2011 EPPY Award for Best Food Website with 1 million unique monthly visitors, and was a finalist in 2012 and 2013. She is a sought-after international keynote speaker and moderator on food culture and mental health in the hospitality industry, and is the former vice chair of the James Beard Journalism Committee.

Related: 9 Delicious Grilling Recipes from Chef Stephanie Izard

Advice from the episode

The O.G. lessons

Olive Garden instilled things that are still true for me. You learn: hot food hot, cold food cold, money to the bank, and clean restrooms. Those are the four things that you're taught when you go through training. I mean, it's all true.

A hospitable stay

You can teach someone the wine list, you can teach someone how to bring someone to a table, you can teach someone eventually bartending after they've bar-backed for a while. There are so many skills that you can teach, but you can't teach someone hospitality.

Falling down on the job

I was the front of house manager, I did all of our books and ran the kitchen; it was a tiny restaurant. So I was calling back the reservations, and I say, "Hi, Mrs. Jones, I'm just calling to confirm your reservation for tonight..." I had the phone in my hand, and I fainted, and I got up off the floor a couple of minutes later, and I was like, "Oh my gosh, I need to call Mrs. Jones back and tell her." So I called and said, "Hi, I'm so sorry, I just happened to faint while I was confirming your reservation, but just calling to make sure everything's good for tonight?" And I fainted again. I was not even 30 years old, and that's when I decided, "I think I should sell this restaurant. I think maybe I'll take a break from doing all of these things and go back to working in restaurants, travel some more, and then try this again." Right after I signed the papers to sell the restaurant to another chef is when Top Chef called.

Related: Grilled Tomato Salad with Mozzarella and Unagi Sauce

Going swimmingly

In high school, I was a swimmer, so I was ravenously hungry all of the time. For a light afternoon snack, I would make myself a whole bag of frozen French fries, and I would put it on a plate, but I would garnish it. I was sprinkling spices on top and then I garnished it with dried parsley around the edge of the plate. I look back at that and think, "Who garnishes their after-school snack?"

No kidding

I look back to when I was 10 years old, having friends over to our house and we would play restaurant. My mom would be out doing whatever and we would take all of her good china and we would even raise a table and make it into a bar. We would make little menus and it would have a bunch of offerings, but we were only allowed to use the toaster oven, so we would only serve this frozen chicken cordon bleu. We weren’t doing much of the cooking, but we just loved the idea of playing restaurant, which looking back on that, I'm like, "I don't feel like that's normal."

About the podcast

Food & Wine has led the conversation around food, drinks, and hospitality in America and around the world since 1978. Tinfoil Swans continues that legacy with a new series of intimate, informative, surprising, and uplifting interviews with the biggest names in the culinary industry, sharing never-before-heard stories about the successes, struggles, and fork-in-the-road moments that made these personalities who they are today.

Each week, you'll hear from icons and innovators like Guy Fieri, Padma Lakshmi, David Chang, Mashama Bailey, Enrique Olvera, Maneet Chauhan, Shota Nakajima, Antoni Porowski, and other special guests going deep with host Kat Kinsman on their formative experiences; the dishes and meals that made them; their joys, doubts and dreams; and what's on the menu in the future. Tune in for a feast that'll feed your brain and soul — and plenty of wisdom and quotable morsels to savor.

New episodes drop every Tuesday. Listen and follow on: Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, TuneIn.

These interview excerpts have been edited for clarity.

Download the Transcript

Editor’s Note: The transcript for download does not go through our standard editorial process and may contain inaccuracies and grammatical errors.

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Read the original article on Food & Wine.