Alinea

and the

board has decided you're not the ceo anymore also that's right yes yeah I mean, you know, when I left TOC, like, you know, or when I sold the Alinea Group, the statement you put out is, I'm allowing more opportunity for the people, like, in the organization or whatever.

But the reality, of course, is that either, like, you sold for good reasons because something was not, you know, you were no longer a good fit.

or you got your ass kicked out of

Yeah.

You're really good at the vision part and you're really good at working backwards.

And I think the story of Alinea you told me that I knew it was this great three Michelin star restaurant.

What I didn't know was that before you made it, you declared this will be a three, this will be a Michelin star

They can be together.

It was like my Alinea girlfriend.

It was like, yeah, we were together, but we weren't right for each other, and it was fine.

Alinea, if you're listening...

Give Mark Rohde, do Mark Rohde a favor.

I want redemption.

It's like they're excited.

We had the opportunity to eat at Alinea, and we were just talking, and the couple next to us could tell that we were restaurant people, and they're like, hey, did you say you're from Houston? And they're now...

our finest regulars they're like they're like oh we've heard about march and we're like oh my god they hadn't

been they hadn't been and we're like

And for background, there was a point during our relationship where for some reason, it came up that we were talking about fancy restaurants.

We were talking about the restaurant Alinea came up.

And I mentioned to her that, oh, yeah, I've been to Alinea.

I actually went to Alinea with a former girlfriend, I told the current girlfriend.

Mistake one.

Yeah, not really thinking.

Not really thinking.

And she let that go for a little while.

I do.

Meanwhile, Benzo, the dog, is eating stuff that's prepared by a chef from Alinea, which is a two-star Michelin restaurant.

Yep.

Okay, all right.

He creates the best restaurant in America.

The number one restaurant in America was a l- called Alinea.

It was the first Michelin star restaurant outside of New York.

At the time, he said that the Michelin guide was not even coming to America anymore [laughs] to check out restaurants.

Like, the fact that we're not three stars will be a reflection on them and not on us.

[laughs] So just takes this audacious approach, pulls it off.

He finds this amazing chef, Grant, partners with him, creates, creates this restaurant, Alinea.

And in a, in a industry that famously sucks as a business, like if you say, like, "What are some of the worst, worst businesses you could start?" A restaurant would be up there.

And then also like an understanding that our restaurants, you know, there's a whole spectrum of why people go to restaurants and where that restaurant hits on the spectrum.

And so no one's going to Alinea in Chicago because they're starving and they just want to sustain themselves and they want to get calories in before their bike ride, right? They go there the same reason as they go to the movie theater to be entertained.

It's like a whimsical experience, right? Well, we're somewhere in between those two.

And I think integrity of the product has always been center.