We're really excited about this month's cover, Bravo's Top Chef Season 6 Winner, and Titan Judge on Food Network's Bobby's Triple Threat, Chef Michael Voltaggio. He also makes a number of guest judge appearances on Guy's Grocery Games as well as Beat Bobby Flay! When he's not on set, you can find him taking his dishes and experiences to the next level alongside his brother Chef Bryan Voltaggio whether it's at Voltaggio Brothers Steakhouse, Vulcania, Retro, Volt Burger and other projects! As someone who we have admired in terms of his culinary point of view, technique and keeping hospitality at the forefront of all that he does, we wanted to sit down with him to talk about how he got into the industry, where his passion comes from, how he has navigated the hospitality space, his approach to his concepts, working alongside family, Season 2 of Bobby's Triple Threat and how he has taken a number of opportunities to connect with guests and viewers as well as to stay sharp in and out of the kitchen!
ATHLEISURE MAG: So, when did you first fall in love with food?
CHEF MICHAEL VOLTAGGIO: Oh wow, I don’t think that I have ever been asked that!
AM: We ask the tough questions around here!
CHEF MV: I think that it happened around necessity. I would say that I first fell in love with it when I understood the creativity that went into it. Because, I was a very, very picky eater as a kid and when I got my first job cooking, I started to look at ingredients as a kid meaning that things like cauliflower for instance – I remember thinking to myself that if I could make this, in a way that I like it, then people who actually like cauliflower will love it. So for me, I started seeing how creativity could sort of, not only like give me a chance to artistically express myself, but also be a chance for me to maybe make ingredients more accessible for more people because it made the ingredients more accessible to me. So I think that realizing that the creative part was as important as the technical part, I think that was the moment that I fell in love with it.
I always knew that I wanted to do something creative, but up until I was 15 or 16 years old, which is when I started cooking, I wasn’t being creative yet. Like, I was playing sports in high school and I wasn’t the best student and I was sort of interested in a lot of things that were creative, but I didn’t have a creative discipline that I could focus on myself.
AM: What was the moment that you realized that you wanted to be a chef? Taking something that you just enjoyed and then making it as a professional.
CHEF MV: I mean, I think that it happened as sort of a default. Like, I was doing it to just sort of survive. I was one of those people that started cooking – because when I did it, it wasn’t like it was today where it was like, “oh, you’re going to be a chef!” It was more like, “yeah, I figured that you would end up in the food industry.” I sort of feel like I woke up and 25 years later, I still have the same job and I’m just like, “wow, how did this happen?” I’m in my profession prior to even graduating high school. My career has started already, but I didn’t know that at the time. What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was already on my path. I’ve loved food ever since I could remember like 4 years old and I have had this job since I was 15. Not many people can say that. I’m approaching 30 years of experience and I feel like I am just getting started.
I would say that my career, after my apprenticeship, that I did at The Greenbriar Hotel when I went there when I was 19 years old to start that program, that I really felt like that, “ok this is what I am going to be doing for at least a substantial amount of time.” I had never gotten to experience any form of luxury in my life at that point, either because I grew up sort of pretty humble or in humble surroundings I would say. When I got to work in luxury, I knew that not only did I want to do that because I wanted to take care of people at that level, but I knew that at some point in my life, I wanted to feel it myself as a guest. So I knew that the only way that I would be able to experience luxury is if I understood how to work in it at the highest level and then hopefully one day, get to sit down at the table for myself.
AM: I can understand that feeling!
How do you define your style of cooking?
CHEF MV: It’s weird because if you had asked me that question 10 years ago, I would have answered it differently than I would today. The reason being that I think that I have obviously matured a lot as a person, but more specifically in my professional career, I think that I have matured a lot in the sense that I don’t know if I have a style and I think that that is interesting about the way that I like to cook now. I’m really still obsessed with learning the things that I haven’t learned how to do yet. So for me, it usually starts with something that I want to learn and then I build something off of that, that I can then offer to my guests.
So, let’s say for instance that I want to study a specific cuisine, I’ll go and study that cuisine and then figure out how that fits into one of our restaurant concepts. Now that we have different concepts, it forces me to study different kinds of cuisine.
I would say that the style that we communicate in the restaurants on our menus is that we like to sort of under offer and over deliver. We like to write descriptions of menus that are familiar to people and that almost seems not that exciting so that we get that chance to sort of surprise them and wow them. I think that that’s oftentimes how we approach a lot of the things that we do is to sort of under offer and over deliver.
AM: I really like that.
Who are your culinary influences?
CHEF MV: Wow, that is a tough one because I mean, I would say the one culinary influence that I have had in my career and this is a direct influence, because I have worked with him is, José Andrés (The Bazaar by José Andrés, Mercado Little Spain, Nubeluz). For someone that made me look at food completely differently, it would be him and I think that a lot of people who think of José, they think of the modern things that he has done in restaurants and that’s a big part of it, but when you talk to José, the thing that he is the most passionate about outside of feeding the world and helping people right now which is incredible, is actually the traditional food of Spain. Seeing him communicate to me that without a foundation like that, you can’t really do all this modern stuff because at the end of the day, the food has to be delicious. Learning that from him was probably a sort of pivotal moment in my career, because I was doing a lot of things then because I wanted to learn all of these modern techniques and I want to do all of these modern things. I think that often, people get caught up in the exercise of that and lose touch of the hospitality or the make it taste good aspect of it. I would think that I really settled into a level of confidence where I worked with him that would sort of influence me for the rest of my career.
AM: I first became aware of you on Season 6 of Bravo’s Top Chef. I’m a huge fan of that show and seeing you along with competing with your brother on the same season, what was that like for you and why did you want to be part of that show?
CHEF MV: So, when I went on Top Chef, this was sort of a moment in the industry where that was really the beginning of how you had the legends like Julia Child (Mastering the Art of French Cooking, The Way to Cook, The French Chef Cookbook), you had Emeril (Emeril’s, Emeril’s Coastal, Meril), you had Wolfgang (Spago, Wolfgang Puck Bar & Grill, CUT) and the list goes on and on – Yan Can Cook, Ming Tsai (Bābā, Mings Bings, Simply Ming) – they were cooking on television and the list goes on and on and on. They were a handful of real chefs that were cooking on TV and then there was sort of the entertainment side of it. I think that when Top Chef came out, I think that that was the first show or competition that was pulling chefs from kitchens that were really grinding and really after it and giving them a platform to sort of go out and come out from being those introverts in the back of house to like these big personalities!
So I think that when the opportunity came, I was like, I wonder if there is a bigger way to sort of bridge this gap between people that are actually chefs and people that are just sort of chefs on TV. Can we really tell this story in a bigger way and connect to a bigger audience and through that, grow the interest and the curiosity in a higher level of cooking or a different level. Whether it’s making people culturally more aware for those that are interested in cultural cuisine or demographics of cuisine or whatever it is, can you educate people by entertaining them? So I didn’t see it as, I want to be on TV and I think that there were certainly a few of those even on my season on Top Chef that were there for that reason. I signed up to do that competition because I really believed that I could win it. I think that some people get involved in programs like this not necessarily thinking that, “hey, I can really win this thing.” For me, I thought, “I could win this thing and this could create an opportunity.” I couldn’t predict what you’re seeing today where every chef at every level or cook for that matter is in some way trying to communicate what they do through some form of social media or entertainment. Back when I did Top Chef, it was like there was this line in the sand – these are the chefs, the real chefs and these are the ones that are on TV, but not everyone was doing television or some form of visual media to tell their story. Then you look at today and everyone is doing it. I think that the risk that I took was worth it, but I also wanted to learn a different kind of skill set, like I wanted to learn.
I think that I was doing this ad for I think Vitamix and I remember going up to the set and I had a teleprompter in the camera and I was reading my lines off the lens while doing my little demo and I was with the blender that came with it and it was like, “welcome to your new Vitamix.” They kept telling me, “Michael, we can see your eyes reading the words in the lens – we can see you doing it off the teleprompter. Can you try and memorize at least part of it?” Again, in that moment, I was like, ok if I’m going to do this, then I need to get good at it. By getting better at television or getting better at sort of some of these visual mediums, I felt that I was getting better at communicating with my guests too. I think that as somebody who works in hospitality, it started to pull another part of myself out that would allow me to want to communicate with my guests even more. I felt like that moment and all of it I can credit back to the opportunity that I had on Top Chef. I think that outside of the exposure, outside of the money, and outside of the study that I had to put into the food, I learned so much going through that process. Even I think as a company owner, how to better and more effectively communicate - I think that that is something that I was missing at that time of my life.
“I think that I have obviously matured a lot as a person, but more specifically in my professional career, I think that I have matured a lot in the sense that I don’t know if I have a style and I think that that is interesting about the way that I like to cook now. I’m really still obsessed with learning the things that I haven’t learned how to do yet. So for me, it usually starts with something that I want to learn and then I build something off of that, that I can then offer to my guests.”
AM: What was the moment that you realized that you wanted to open up your own restaurants as that’s such a big step!
CHEF MV: So I was in Pasadena and I was running a restaurant there called The Dining Room at The Langham. They were actually super supportive and that’s where I was when I won Top Chef. I had left The Bazaar and left José. I was working at this restaurant in Pasadena when this show started to air. They were super supportive and they were like, this is your project, this is your room. We’ll grow you here, you’ll grow something big with the hotel and all of that. In my head I was like, do I need to go and do this on my own before I can go and do this in somebody else’s environment?
So they were very supportive in saying, “hey, we’ll renovate a restaurant and conceptualize something around what your goals are.” I was like, “this is super incredible and I think that I would want to do that.” But then I got a phone call and somebody said that they had a restaurant space and they were interested in meeting me and investing in me. At that moment, I was like, “oh, it can happen that easy!” They had read and heard about some of my accomplishments and they genuinely wanted to invest in me. And so I was like, now I need to see if I can do this. So, I took the meeting, we negotiated the deal and this person, his name is Mike Ovitz he started CAA. I don’t know if you are familiar with them.
AM: Very much so!
CHEF MV: He basically said, “what do you need to open the restaurant?” I have the space. I said that, “I really wanted someone to get behind whatever vision I have because this is the first chance that I have to do this and I kind of want to figure out how to do this on my own. What I really just need is money.” He gave it to me. He got behind me, we were partners for over 7 years and we still remain friends to this day, and he was a really good partner in the sense that he was there, but he wasn’t in my face with expectations. He built his career as somebody who supported artists or somebody who supported creatives. As someone who supported creatives, I think he did just that. I think that as a restaurant partner, it was the best scenario that I could find myself in because this was a person that built his career supporting creatives. So then, the money was there and it was time to start opening the restaurant. As you can imagine, I had to learn everything. I had to learn the legal side of it, I had to learn the human resources side of it, I had to learn the accounting side of it – I had to learn how to become a president of a company – not just how to run a menu. That’s the part that I hadn’t realized that I had signed up for at that time. You don’t know all of the nuance of starting a business until you start a business and then it’s, wait a second, I have 10 full-time jobs now!
AM: Pretty much!
CHEF MV: And so, I think again, if you look at that experience, it’s very similar to what happened on Top Chef. Here I was not realizing that I was now going to acquire a whole new set of skills that I didn’t have yet and so for me, you have this trajectory where you’re building on top of previous successes and you’re combining those successes to get more than you have to put yourself in a situation where you are learning. Then you have to retain that information and then you have to be able to teach that to other people, because it's the only way that you can grow your team around you. If you don’t have the tools to give them to be successful in your role or if you don’t know the expectation of the people that are going to work with you, then they’re not going to have a good experience and neither are you and neither is your business. So, for me, it was really important that I really understood everything and every layer that I was responsible for.
AM: You and your brother back in 2016 opened Voltaggio Brothers Steakhouse together which was your first venture together. What was that like doing that especially as siblings?
CHEF MV: I think that at that point, we had gone in separate directions from each other and I think that we realized that we could accomplish a lot more if we worked together so we started flirting with the idea, and so when MGM called and said, "we have a restaurant in the Maryland/DC area and we’re building this hotel, we think that you should be involved in that," at the time I was living in California and I had Ink – it was still open. My brother was living in Maryland. The reason that the call came in was that somebody who had previously been my boss was the one that was making that call. They had called me saying that they had been watching my career since we had worked together. We'd be interested n potentially doing the restaurant project together at the MGM National Harbor and I was like, in that moment, my brother still lives there, I live in California this story makes the most sense that Bryan and I are both locals from that area and we should do this together. So that became the pilot for how we work in perpetuity. Bryan and I are now business partners in pretty much everything that we do in the restaurant space. So creatively, logistically, work wise – everything involved, it just made more sense. If we work together, we can work half as harder or accomplish twice as much. Just having that support system and having something that you trust as a partner, we didn’t realize how beneficial that was going to be for us moving forward. Because here we are this many years later and we haven’t broken up yet. I think that speaks volumes for how you can do it the right way. There is nothing wrong with family getting into business together.
AM: I love that! We also cover a lot of EDM artists, we enjoy going to music festivals and you guys have Volt Burger which has been in various festival circuits and Live Nation venues. Why did you want to be part of this experience in this particular way?
CHEF MV: I think again back when I talked about entertainment as a medium or a discipline that would be a great tool to connect more people, I think that when Live Nation came to us with the opportunity of getting Volt Burger put together and being in multiple venues across the country, I think we’re in 30+ venues at this point. I think again, we get to connect to that many people that fast. So, for us and Tom See who is the President of Venues for Live Nation, when he called, he really – you could hear it in his voice and see it in his face, that he had a real commitment to elevate just not the food and beverage experience, but the hospitality experience at the venues, I think that when you look at companies that are willing to invest in the safety and the overall experience of their customer base, like I could feel it and I could feel his commitment to where they wanted to do something bigger and do something better. A lot of people call with sentences and statements like that, but they don’t really get behind it.
AM: Right!
CHEF MV: Then you get passed off to somebody else and then it sort of dilutes itself. I think that with Tom and his team, and Andy Yates, Head of Food and Beverage – they’re both personally up to Mr. Rapino the President of Live Nation – they’re personally committed to making sure that what they’re going to do is going to happen. I think that for us, we have learned just as much from them as they have learned from us. I think that again, it’s all about that learning aspect of it. When you can be in multiple cities at once, and I’m not saying physically. We are sometimes physically present at these venues, but it’s a chance for people who don’t necessarily have a direct access to us to sometimes go back to that surprise moment that I talked about when we can under offer and over deliver.
Imagine a fan – or somebody that has always just wanted to try something from the Voltaggio Brothers – they go to a concert to see their favorite artist and then they’re walking through and they see this big banner of Bryan and I on the side of a burger stand and I can only imagine in that moment from them that they have that reaction again! It's like, "oh wait, I'm here to see this musician and there’s the Voltaggio burger!” In my head, I’m envisioning people having an even better time. This point in my career, if you were to ask me what my most important part of my career is, it's hospitality. I genuinely still get excited when I see someone’s reaction on their face when they taste something that I have made. I’m not like, “yeah I knew it was going to be that good,” I’m more like, “wow, thank you! It means so much to me that you like it that much!” It makes me want to go and do more. I genuinely feed off the energy of the people that I take care of. I think that a lot of chefs and a lot of restaurateurs lose touch with that.
AM: This year, you opened Vulcania at Mammoth Mountain. What can guests expect when we’re going there?
CHEF MV: Mammoth Mountain made a commitment to elevate the food and beverage experience. It’s one of the best outdoor recreational mountains in the whole country and in all four seasons. In the summer time, we're going into that now, they still have snow – people are still snowboarding there until like August 1st or 2nd – skiing as well. But again, here’s an opportunity to connect to a whole different demographic that I have yet to really have a chance to get to.
I think that the most unique food markets to elevate the food right now are in markets where there aren’t huge saturation of other restaurants. 1, because there isn’t that much competition and 2, that means that there is probably a need for it right there. So getting to sort of pioneer and go into an area that there isn’t a lot of chef-driven sort of concepts in Mammoth and them wanting to bring that there, to me meant that there was a need for it. Their guests were asking for something different or maybe more and again they made that commitment to hospitality to provide that.
So, that’s when we were like, how do we create a concept that is appropriate for families, appropriate for a very transient sort of guest, but also please people that need fuel to go out and do all of these extreme sport activities. That’s when we were like, we’re Italian and our last name is Voltaggio, we haven’t really done an Italian American concept together, let’s use this as an opportunity to now study this and to do that cuisine together and expand on our repertoire and our portfolio of what we can offer moving forward. So, we dug deep and dove deep into the research. We have always made our own pastas and sauces, and pizza at various different opportunities, but never brought it all together in one restaurant concept.
Then we got to dig deep into even naming the restaurant. Vulcania actually means volcano. Mammoth sits in a volcano more or less. That mountain is a volcano. And the first ship that brought our family to the US was the Vulcania!
AM: Oh wow!
CHEF MV: Yeah, so Voltaggio’s that traveled from Italy to NY, came on a ship called the Vulcania. So, the whole thing just came together. You can never say that something is your favorite restaurant. I just love the restaurant, I love the location, I love our partners, and I think that being part of a destination like that, the restaurant itself becomes a destination too. That’s a pretty special thing!
AM: That’s insane and I love the story involved in that!
I also love the idea of Retro. I like that it is kind of feeding into that 80s/90s feel with fashion and entertainment and its confluence. Can you tell me more about the concept and what the vibe of this restaurant is?
CHEF MV: The goal – well 1, it was a very fast turnaround. We had to come up with a really strategic way to sort of redecorate or revamp a room if you will. When MGM came to us with the opportunity and as you mentioned, we already had a restaurant with them at MGM National Harbor and so my favorite thing about our partnership with MGM is the only reason we don’t do something is because we haven’t thought of it. Any idea that you have, they have the resources and the ability to bring it to life as long as it makes sense you know?
I look at that space and Charlie Palmer (Charlie Palmer Steak, Sky & Vine Rooftop Bar, Dry Creek Kitchen) is one of my mentors as well, how do we take this iconic space at the Mandalay Bay and how do we make it enough ours so that it doesn’t feel like what it was while not taking away from what it was. Meaning, Aureole which was one of the first restaurants in Vegas that really told the story of these chef partnerships.
So we approached it with, what if we like – we moved around a lot as kids – what if we treated it like we did as kids where our parents had us in a new house and we got to decorate our new room. That’s effectively what it is. We call restaurants the room – the dining room is the room. So, let’s go decorate our room. We started down this path of what that would look like and I always had this in my head. I used to work with this chef named Katsu-ya Uechi (Katsu-ya, The Izaka-ya by Katsu-ya, Kiwami) and we talked about a concept that would be retro modern meaning that you could start with retro dishes and modernize them a little bit. I remember having to call Katsu-ya and say, “hey, I know that we had this conversation together and I know that this was something that you were really big on and wanted to do one day. Is it ok if I sort of do this concept, but in a much different way than what we discussed?” We had both nerded out on this back in the day and this opportunity came up where I could bring it to life. He was like, “yeah, go for it. If anyone could do it, it’s you.” So my brother and I decided to noodle on the idea and using that as the foundation to build this whole concept on top of.
What if everything that was important to us in our childhood through our personal and professional careers, what if we could tell that story through a restaurant. So down to the white CorningWare pots with the blue flowers on the side of it, we’re serving food in that. To the décor, Keith Magruder, if you look up BakersSon on Instagram, he’s an artist that did a lot of the art in there. So there’s a lot of painted album covers that throw back and tribute to the music in the 80s and 90s. He did things like make 2 scale 3 dimensional water color paintings of Nintendos and Blockbuster Videos and he made these cool paintings of gummy bears. He did an Uno Table and these 3 dimensional donuts and things like that. So what we did was we went into this room and just like when we were kids, it was kind of like, I’m going to hang up my favorite poster on the wall and I’m going to put up a couple of tchotchkes in the space and it's going to be mine.
What we didn’t realize was going to happen is that all the creative people in the company that worked for the company got behind it in such a big way that everyone started to contribute to the process! Down to Tony Hawk sent us one of his skateboard decks and wrote, “Go Retro” on it so that we could hang it up inside the tower. It was just one of those things where it was like, you have to be so careful when you have an idea because you don’t know how fast it can go and how many people will embrace it and get behind it. Before you know it, you can wake up and have something as incredible as Retro.
The food, we have Pot Roast and Mac & Cheese. But our Mac & Cheese, we make the noodles ourselves, we make this cloud of cheesy sauce that sits on top of it that’s sort of feels like the sauce that would come in a package of Velveeta, but we’re making it from really good cheddar cheese, we’re making a bechamel, we’re emulsifying the cheese into it and aerating it with a whip cream siphon – we’re making our own Cheez Whiz more or less!
“Then we got to dig deep into even naming the restaurant. Vulcania actually means volcano. Mammoth sits in a volcano more or less. That mountain is a volcano. And the first ship that brought our family to the US was the Vulcania!”
AM: Oh my God! It’s the best Cheez Whiz ever though!
CHEF MV: Yeah! It’s like, how do we start with this idea and then turn it into something that can be appropriate in an elevated dining experience? We’ve got a lot of that sprinkled throughout the menu. We also have things that are comforting too.
It’s not just like kitschy or trying to do something for the sake of doing it. Our Caesar Salad is just a Caesar Salad, but then we serve it with a little bag of churros that we make out of Parmesan Cheese. Our Mozzarella Caprese is a piece of cheese that we dip in a Pomodoro skin that creates a skin of tomato on the outside of it so that it looks like a tomato, but it tastes like a tomato sauce and it’s on the outside of a piece of cheese.
AM: Oh wow! Earlier this week on your IG Stories, I want to say that you had an avocado, but it was a pit that looked like a gelee – what was that?
CHEF MV: So, we had a dish and once again, this was us reacting to guest feedback, we had a dish that I called back, we had a dish that I called Chips and Guacamole on the menu. So, we did this giant rice paper wafer and put a confit of avocado in the middle of it. But the problem was when it went out to the guests, they said, “well, that’s not Chips and Guacamole. I don’t know what that is.” I think that some chefs, their egos would not allow them to say, “ok, do I listen to the guests and do I make a change?” So, when I hear stuff like that and it’s consistent, I’m like, “ok, I need to change this dish!” It’s not living up to the guest’s expectations. So, then I was like, Avocado Toast, bread would be more appropriate to eat with this. I wonder how I could make this retro. I learned the technique of spherification from José Andrés. It was created by chefs, Ferran Adrià and Albert Adrià (Tickets, Enigma, Little Spain) back in El Bulli back in the early 90s. It’s not retro. We’re in 2023! Can I pay homage to it without saying, “oh that’s such a dated technique, that I can’t believe that you’re doing it.” It was such an important technique that it changed like, José, the Adrià Brothers, they made a global impact on how chefs looked at food. So for me, I was like, I think that I can make a black garlic purée and spherify that the way that I learned how to do it when I was working with José and put that in the middle of an avocado that I’m putting in the oven and put that on a plate and put a couple of other seasonings on it and put it with some really good crusty bread and serve it as an Avocado Toast.
AM: That looked so ridiculously good!
CHEF MV: But you know what’s so crazy? Some people today, like the next generation of people that are out eating in restaurants, they never saw spherification. Like let’s say that someone who is 19 or in their 20s or whatever, they missed that whole thing. We have this obsession with trends and we program our brains to say if it’s trendy, then eventually, it will go out of style. Therefore, you have to forget about it.
Where kale had its moment, like last year, or 2 or 3 years ago that the Kale Caesar Salad became so popular people were like it’s so popular, you can’t put it out because it is on everyone’s menu. Or like Pork Belly, it disappeared! Like Pork Belly was on every single menu and then all of a sudden, one day you woke up and you’re like, “where’s all the Pork Belly?” Every chef was cooking it, but I think that people got it to be trendy because they liked it and that’s what they wanted. We have this innate desire for change when change isn’t necessary. I think that spherification got trendier and then people were like, what’s the next cool thing? But then when we do that, we forget that the cool things that we have and that these chefs have sort of put forward to learn, we feel this pressure to not embrace it or to not do it anymore because now we have to create the next big thing.
AM: Yup!
CHEF MV: Why not just keep it around? So we brought that back and not only as a nod to the Avocado Toast, but a nod to the individuals that were behind that technique. I thought that it was so cool when we first learned it and I didn’t think that it needed to go anywhere.
AM: I love how you approach food like that. As someone who in addition to being the Co-Founder of Athleisure Mag is a fashion stylist and a designer, there are many times when I’m like, “yeah, this is a great look, we don’t need to lock it as a trend that has an expiration or pause around it. We can still use this.” I love that you’re talking about something that I fight about on the fashion side all the time.
CHEF MV: I think that there are a lot of similarities between fashion and food too! When you think about the sustainability aspect, when you think about again – in your world, and I think that that’s why I love fashion as much as I do. But now, even in buying my clothes, I go look for old things. Like, I don’t want the newest trendiest thing, I want the old trendy thing, why did it go away? Where did it go? I think that when you look at some of the most successful brands now, they’re the ones that can continue to just bring it back whether it’s recycled with an actual item or an idea, it’s that storytelling that I think that people actually gravitate towards.
AM: I totally agree! I always tell people it’s about going back to the archives!
CHEF MV: Yeah!
AM: There’s so many things that you can spring back from it. You can put a twist on it and do whatever. But the archives are the archives for a reason! They’re going to be here much longer than some of these other things that are going to be a flash in the pan.
CHEF MV: I feel like people can go shopping in their own closet. If you’ve saved stuff from 3 years ago that you haven’t worn and then all of a sudden, you’re like, “wait a second, I’m going to look back at that.” Maybe you got something as a gift that you would have never worn when they gave it to you and then you rediscovered it again in your closet and I think that any creative could recognize that with whatever kind of discipline that they have. Just go back into your closet and try something old.
“But now even in buying my clothes, I go look for old things. Like, I don’t want the newest trendiest thing, I want the old trendy thing, why did it go away? Where did it go? I think that when you look at some of the most successful brands now, they’re the ones that can continue to just bring it back whether it’s recycled with an actual item or an idea, it’s that storytelling that I think that people actually gravitate towards.”
AM: Exactly!
Since being on Top Chef, you have been on so many TV shows judging and guest hosting and even doing series, why did you want to add these into your portfolio?
CHEF MV: I think it’s because I don’t want to become complacent. I think that my biggest fear in life was going to be that I would get stuck doing the same job every single day. Although that’s great for some people, and it’s necessary to have those who are committed to that, it didn’t work for me. I never had the attention span to do just that. And so, as I get those opportunities, I think that it make me better for what I do. For instance, if I go and I have 4 days where I can work on this television show, after the 4 days are done, I’m excited to go back to my restaurant. Maybe in those 4 days while I was gone, I learned something while I was there that I could bring back to my restaurant. For me, again, it’s about learning. I’m learning. I get to do something that I would have never had the opportunity to do. When I started cooking, if you told me that I would be doing dozens of episodes of television a year or any television at all, I remember when I was doing some local television and how nervous I was. I was like, wait, I didn’t sleep and I was telling everyone and it was local news! I thought it was the coolest thing on the planet for me to able to get to do. Then, fast forward to now and I’m a show that can reach millions of people. So, not only did I see the opportunity, but I feel a sense of responsibility to use that platform the right way and I think that I just love the fact that I get to communicate with that many people at once. I think that it’s an opportunity for me to tell my story, but also to continue to contribute to this commitment of hospitality that I signed up for. I’m not just making people feel good, I genuinely do this because I love the fact that what I do that maybe I can make someone else smile or whatever. I know how that sounds, but I genuinely believe that! The fact that I do that and I get to call it work is so important!
AM: Well, I know that you always bring so much energy when I see you on different shows like Bobby’s Tripple Threat, we’ve had interviews with Chef Brooke Williamson (Playa Provisions, Top Chef Season 14 Winner, Tournament of Champions Season 1 Winner) a number of different times. When I saw that you were on there, I couldn’t wait to see what you would do. Or, if I see you on Guy’s Grocery Games – it’s really cool to see your point of view when you're doing all of these different things.
CHEF MV: Yeah, when you look at the competition side of cooking too and what I learned very quickly is that it’s a very different discipline. A lot of super talented chefs who are in restaurants struggle with the competition side of it, especially if there are a lot of different cameras and stuff around them. So again for me, I thought, if I could become good at that, then that’s another level of chef that I can become good at and I think that what’s interesting about that is that I do it so much that the first time I competed, I took it so seriously. I still do! I get so much anxiety every time that I’m about to go. But then I do it so much and I started to look at competition cooking like the sport of cooking.
AM: Yup!
CHEF MV: It really is and it’s not for me as much about entertaining and doing a demo of what you’re doing. It’s more so that people can watch it and cheer for their favorite athlete and I think that that's what culinary competition really is.
So now, we win some and we lose some. You have to learn from those losses and I think that those losses are the ones that I have learned the most from. I think that anyone that competes in any competitive setting would say the same thing. You have to experience those losses to then go back and say, how can I be better so that I can get more of those wins. I think that it became a personal obsession because I wanted to continue to learn and win! Because it really is a sport – it’s a sport!
AM: Are there any projects that you have coming up that you can share that we should keep an eye out for? I feel like you’re always doing something!
CHEF MV: One thing that I can say is that Season 2 of Tripple Threat will start airing in August! I think that that’s the next big thing that we’re excited about. Then it’s about just getting back to work with Bobby Flay (Amalfi, Bobby’s Burgers, Brasserie B), Brooke and Tiffany Derry (Roots Southern Table, Roots Chicken Shak, Top Chef Season 7 Fan Favorite). I think that there is more to that than what everyone has seen so far! I think that for me, that is really one of my favorite projects that we're doing right now. Myself, Brooke, and Tiffany - Bobby included, we’ve all become so close to one another through this project and I think that more of that – I want to be able to keep my knives sharp and my brain sharper. I think that the best opportunity for me to do that is growing my relationship with Live Nation, Bryan and I are really sort of excited about the amount of support that we’ve gotten from MGM with every project that we have in the works with them. I think that for now, honestly what I’d like to focus on is focusing on what I have going on. I think that right now is a good point to say that I am satisfied with everything that we have our hands around right now. Let’s just focus on doing the best job that we can at that and then maybe next year, pivot and start focusing on some other stuff. For now, I have a lot of responsibilities and I have a chance to make a lot of people happy and I’m going to focus on that!
AM: As someone who is so busy, how do you take time for yourself so that you can just reset?
CHEF MV: I mean, I think that you have to force it. I have a tendency to say yes to everything and I think that I grew up working more 7 day weeks then I did 5. I would say that I did that for a good part of my life. I wanted to do it, but I did it because I had to as well. I mean, I had 2 daughters when I was young and I remember when I was doing my apprenticeship, on my days off I was standing in a deer processing plant at a local butchers house processing meat and stuff to pay the bills you know? I think that my work ethic is something that is really important to me and it’s something that I don’t want to lose touch of. I think that it’s a super valuable asset, but at the same time, I’m allowing myself to do that, to take a couple of things and to just go do something. Like yesterday was my daughter’s birthday and it’s a little extreme, but my brother flew me here from Vegas, we were at our restaurant doing an event and I was like, “I need to get to my daughter, it’s her birthday.” She’s down here in medical school, she’s going to become a doctor.
AM: Oh wow!
CHEF MV: Not only is it like a Voltaggio going to college which is one thing! But a Voltaggio becoming a doctor is another! My other daughter is here as well and she’s like also doing her own thing and so when you have those moments to spend time with family, my brother flew my wife and I down here just to spend 2 days with my daughters here. I think that family time is so key!
AM: Your smile is so big right now!
CHEF MV: Well because I think that as much as I hate that I am going to say this, I really neglected my family for a long time because I had this path that I had to do these things so that I could be better for them. So now, I think that at this point in my life, as much as I provided for them, I think that I could be more present for them and that’s something that I am really trying to carve out time for.
AM: If we were invited to your house for brunch, what would be something that you would cook for us? I always love knowing what people’s brunch menus are.
CHEF MV: I mean as much as I hate to say it, I would have to have something with caviar on it because I think that, I don’t know, to me brunch is caviar. I think that that’s really weird to say, but when I worked, no one wanted to work brunch at the luxury hotel. If you got scheduled to work brunch, you were getting punished. I think that that was the first time that I tried caviar. Working brunch at The Greenbriar Hotel or at The Ritz Carlton or something like that and I was like, “hmm, I like this stuff.” Then when I was in charge of running things, there was Caviar Eggs Benedict, caviar this and caviar that! I just really liked it. There’s a restaurant that we have here in LA called Petrossian, you have one in NY as well.
AM: We literally lived around the corner from them!
CHEF MV: So, they do this Caviar Flatbread there and I had it once, I’ve had it a lot actually, and I’m going to go home and recreate my own version of this. Every time I have a brunch, I am going to do this. You can do this with smoked salmon like the Wolfgang Smoked Salmon Pizza that Wolfgang Puck makes. But you buy the flour tortillas, and you brush them with a little olive oil and season it with a little salt and bake those in the oven. You pull them out and you have a crispy flatbread.
So now, you can build this breakfast pizza on whatever you want on top of it. So, now you grab crème fraiche, capers, grab some chopped red onion, parsley, a little hard-boiled egg, and whether it’s smoked salmon or caviar, you cut it into pizza. It’s easy, it looks beautiful –
AM: Wow!
CHEF MV: You said wow, I only described it to you and you said wow! I used to get that a lot when I went to Petrossian for brunch and I would always order the Caviar Flatbread. So, a smoked salmon version or whatever, I just think that the idea of using a flour tortilla is something that everyone should have in their repertoire!
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PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS | PG 16 - 27 CREATIVE DIRECTION Dominic Ciambrone, PHOTOGRAPHY Bryam Heredia, PHOTO COURTESY of SRGN Studios | PG 28 + 31 Food Network/Guy's Grocery Games | PG 32 - 35 Food Network/Bobby's Triple Threat |
Read the JUL ISSUE #91 of Athleisure Mag and see TRUE HOSPITALITY | Chef Michael Voltaggio in mag.
