My name is Curtis Minter, Jr.

I'm the president of Akron Roundtable and senior fellow of Third Space Action Lab out of Cleveland, Ohio.

At this time I would like to invite Jim Emanuele.

He is the US Foods Senior Territory Manager and our program sponsor for today, and so we are grateful for this.

Let's receive him with a round of applause.

Every time I come to an Akron Roundtable, it's beautiful to see people across the lot of the arts, from my connections with Miller, South and Firestone and then obviously all the restaurant and food people.

So it's beautiful.

But all right.

Our guest speaker today is a chef whose work has helped put Northeast Ohio on the national culinary map.

Akron native Vinnie Cimino is the chef and co-owner of Cordelia and ROSY in Cleveland.

A recent James Beard Award finalist and one of Food and Wine's best new chefs.

As someone who spends a lot of time with restaurant operators across our region, I've seen firsthand how important that strong hospitality leadership can be.

And that's one reason I'm especially pleased to introduce today's speaker.

His approach to cooking is rooted in hospitality, sustainability, and a deep commitment to supporting local farmers and producers throughout our region.

Just as important, he's built a reputation for putting people first, something that resonates deeply in our industry where culture, community and the well-being of our teams matter more than ever.

From his Akron roots to his recent collaboration with another hometown favorite, Swenson's, Vinnie's become a respected voice for the future of hospitality and an outstanding ambassador for our region.

Please join me in welcoming Chef Vinnie Cimino.

I'm Jason Horinger.

I own a business here in Akron called Birchwood Supply.

That's how Vinnie and I first met each other about ten years ago.

I made a dining room table for him and his wife, Sarah.

Two.

Two.

Two.

Yeah.

The new one.

Now for the new house.

Yeah.

So we're just going to do a bit of a back and forth.

Vinnie and I go way back.

I have some specific questions.

A lot of these are personally based because these are things that I like to know from his perspective.

But I think all of us in some way, shape or form will gravitate towards it.

But first, in line with your introduction in regards to community and hospitality, I want to start with this Kurt Vonnegut.

I once told my wife I was going to go out and buy an envelope.

Oh, she said, well, you're not a poor man.

Why don't you go online and buy 100 envelopes and put them in the closet?

And so I pretended not to hear her and went out to get an envelope.

I meet a lot of good people and see some great looking babies.

And a fire engine goes by, and I give a thumbs up, and I'll ask a woman what kind of dog that is.

And I don't know.

The moral of the story is we're here on Earth to fart around.

Of course, the computers will do us out of that.

But what the computer people don't realize, oh, they don't care, is we're dancing animals.

Yes, we love to move around.

And it's like we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.

I thought that was fitting.

Today, as we start, I've seen behind the scenes.

I was in your kitchen when you were weighing Cordelia and some other options.

Yeah.

Let's start with that.

Not just the idea of the hospitality industry, right?

That's a term we know.

I've been in the restaurant.

I've been in.

ROSY.

I know you, some of your employees.

I know Tony through Instagram, but you and I just had a great conversation.

As if we knew each other for a long time.

And there's something you notice.

I see similar faces over two years.

Same employees.

I can go give hugs to those people.

The same waiter that when I was there on the friends and family opening for Cordelia.

Still there.

Same thing with ROSY.

There is an investment in your people.

There is a buy in.

People just don't go to work.

It's a genuine enjoyment of being there.

You and Andrew have cultivated this.

What about the hospitality industry?

And I have a question about this further that we'll get to.

Why is it more to you?

Why is it more important for you in a lot of ways, to take care of your employees, to take care of that community, that environment, cultivating and curating what that experience is for the people that you're in charge of?

In a lot of ways.

What's why is that so important?

Yeah, I mean, I guess let's back up to, you know, that initial conversation that you and I are having in my my home kitchen as we were outfitting a sink into our countertop and, you know, during the pandemic, trying to figure out what was next in life.

And, you know, like you said, I was kind of weighing some options.

I had this opportunity to open up Cordelia, and it was a very, like, loose thing.

I was in talks with the folks at House 330.

I was, you know, weighing if I wanted to open up my own brick and mortar sandwich shop.

But in that moment of the pandemic, I was really focusing on the nonprofit that I had started called Cleveland Family Meal, or just feeding folks out of work hospitality professionals, really anybody who needed extra help because this is Covid.

This is Covid.

This is Covid pandemic.

So as as I realized as a world shut down, you know, as a chef, we'll be back before the world chef shutdown.

As a chef like my my sole focus was food.

You know, that was my job.

I had to cook food.

You know, how can I cook the best food?

Then the pandemic cabinet.

And I realized that if there's no people, there's no food.

So my my focus really vastly shifted from the sole purpose of, like, cooking really good food to, like, if I don't have any people, I can't cook any food whatsoever.

So the people really became the most important part of that equation.

And we started feeding people and we, you know, started like just doing anything we could to help folks out.

And that idea of hospitality is kind of snowballed into everything that we do today.

You know, we go out of our way to take care of our people because we know without our people there are no restaurants.

You know, my partner Andrew and I, you know, are two people.

Cordelia's 8000ft.

You know, it's a it's a big space in the same way that you talk about, like, raising your children.

Like it takes a village.

I mean, it's really what a restaurant is the same thing.

It takes a village.

And we are very fortunate to surround ourselves with so many wonderful people day in and day out, that not only do they help us run the business, but they allow us to continue to provide for others.

And it's not just about our our guests, but our.

We take great pride in taking care of our people.

You know, I think that's where hospitality starts.

First, you take care of your people.

Your people then will in turn take care of of those that they're in charge of taking care of.

Do you want to talk a little bit about what that looks like for you guys, and what that's become now that Cordelia has become kind of its own thing at this point, with what you guys have been recognized for, ROSY's started.

What does that look like as far as taking care of your people?

What have you been able to provide for your employees as you grow in employees, but also kind of just those basic necessities of life?

Because traditionally speaking, from your and I conversation, like the hospitality, the restaurant industry, a lot of the times can be very bare bones.

Yeah, a very unforgiving.

It's very unforgiving as far as wages and tips.

And you're kind of just scraping at the, at the bones of a lot of things.

But what have you guys been able to do and provide for your employees?

What's been a focus that you guys have really tried to push?

So Cordelia will celebrate four years in the July beginning of August.

And, you know, the fun thing is, is that it's, you know, kind of transformed throughout the years of what we wanted it to accomplish, what we wanted to provide.

You know, as we open up this restaurant, like, I was in there, I'm in the industry, you know, I cook, you know, I was I never had health care.

I never had a a for one program, like, so like these are things that I wanted to selfishly, I wanted to have for myself, but I also wanted to be able to provide for others.

So we opened up Cordelia, you know, with medical, dental, vision and matching for one program.

And, you know, as we instilled all these things, we also realized that, like, you know, a lot of I'm 43 years old, you know, most of our our staff is either not of the age where they need to be on their own insurance now that it goes to 26 or like it wasn't a priority for them because, you know, they money was basically, you know, to make sure they had enough money to be able to, to do everything they wanted to do.

So as the conversations kept growing with our team, primarily, it was like, what is important to you isn't the same thing that is important to me.

Again, I'm 43 years old.

I have three kids.

Like my goal is like, take care of my family long term.

Like, you know, for a 23 year old person, it's not necessarily like they're not worrying about, you know, putting their kids through college.

They're worrying about making, yeah, different priorities, you know.

So we started having conversations with our team and figuring out what, you know, was the most important thing to them, what they wanted to see out of this.

We knew what we wanted to continue to make our industry a career path and not just to pass through.

We wanted to continue to take care of our team better tomorrow than we did today.

So about and this is about a year in the making.

I think was about a month ago now we.

Instituted PTO for all of our staff.

So both part time, full time, everybody has PTO.

If you've been with us for a year, you automatically are entitled to one week of PTO.

And then from there, it's an accrual for as long as you work, how many hours you work a week, you can accrue up to a week of PTO.

We also raised our minimum rate of pay across the board to $20 an hour, which, you know, was something that we really wanted to make sure that we were taking care of our people.

So then they can then turn, take care of their of their people.

So, you know, it's one of those things like, you know, our dishwashers make $20 an hour.

Some of our line cooks make $20 an hour.

I go to our line coach said, do you want to watch this?

And said, no.

Okay.

Easy peasy.

Like nobody, nobody bats an eye kind of thing.

But the goal is to continue to take care of folks better tomorrow than we do today.

We also have been very.

We've been able to implement some extra mental health benefits for our team as well, which has been very, very helpful for all of us, honestly.

And then, you know, we just opened up ROSY.

It's been about four months now, you know.

So from there it's a little bit different.

We we can't do PTO for everybody there just because it's a brand new restaurant and it's got some debt to pay off.

But we still do a matching for one K program, still do all of our mental health medical dental vision implementation.

So our goal for there is to continue to be able to provide more like we did at Cordele and continue to take care of people the best way that we can.

Yeah, and my brain is going in 20 different directions right now.

So the worst bridging off.

And I want to touch on a couple of things.

But the first kind of building on it.

Taking care of your people, you're kind of spitting in the face of convention in the restaurant industry at this point, in a lot of ways, because of what you came up with, what you and I have talked about, how you're treating people, minimum base pay for a one time off, not working people until you know to the point that they want to quit.

There's this idea, and we all experience it in our own way, in our own industry.

This is the way it's always been done.

That's a hard convention to fight against.

Yeah.

You and I talked about this over the years and what you came up with.

You've been very intentional of going in the opposite direction of it and wanting to take care of people and knowing beating people down or just working people silly hours and doing all of those things is not a way to foster any bit of community.

So it always it comes back to that.

But what have you found for years now, two restaurants in, who knows what's going to come next?

You and Andrew do, but nobody else does.

What does that look like?

Bucking the trend of this is the way it's always been done.

You know, line cooks, dishwashers are a dime a dozen.

You just get younger guys coming in.

But fostering a community is hard.

Yeah.

You know, we put all of our investment back into our our spaces and our people.

You know, the thought and theory, at least for us, is that, you know, we're hoping to build something that is sustainable for a long time to come.

We want to continue to provide for for those folks.

We want them to, in turn, what they do basically, is they they take great gratitude in their the opportunities that they have.

You know, our folks are happy to come to work.

You know, there's smiles on their faces.

We just got back from Chicago last weekend for the James Beard Awards, where we had 52 people with us.

You know, like we bought a bunch of tickets to the award, don't get me wrong, which was always a great thing to do.

That's not 52.

Just friends in like, that's 52 of your employees.

Yeah, those are employees.

It's not just Sarah.

Friends, family.

Yeah.

Like they the last two years you guys have done this.

Like you take everybody you take your employees to the award ceremonies.

Maybe we want to come.

And so we bought a bunch of seats at the awards for all of our management team, our our partners, everything.

And, you know, everybody else is like, we want to come too.

So they come on their own volition.

They spend their own money to come to Chicago to, you know, stay in hotels, to drive, to fly, to take the train.

I hear you, I don't recommend the train.

I didn't do the train.

But, you know, I mean, for this year, if I could, they just want to be there and support.

It's like such an incredible thing.

So, you know, from there we make sure like we we acknowledge that support.

You know, we we took our management team out to dinner.

After dinner we all met up at a bar and, you know, celebrated one another and toasted to the fact that we were in Chicago.

After the awards were over, we went back out again.

And like just being around everybody in that atmosphere, you know, this is where you see every day.

But it's different because you're in a different town doing something different.

Like it's not a work function.

It's just like people hanging out because they want to be around one another.

And to be able to have that in a restaurant is something like truly special.

I mean, like I said, 52 people in Chicago, it's wild.

Yeah, it really is.

And we took a picture two years ago when we were finalists, and I think there were like 17 people in this photo and we're like, this is a big crew and then we can.

Paired it.

I love.

Seeing that to this year.

And it was like, you know, from where the the window of the storefront was, we were like this.

And then all of a sudden we're like this.

And it's just it's just so cool.

It's so cool to see our team grow.

It's so cool to see our team being able to to do the things that they want to do, to be a part of the things, and especially for us to be able.

I'm sorry to be able to share it with them.

I mean, that's, you know, we didn't win.

We didn't win the award, but we won in, you know, who we are and our team and our hospitality.

You know, the fact that we got to share with all of them and be there in Chicago with all of those folks, like, that's the the, the real win for us, you know, to come back reinvigorated, to be able to to share with our people, our team, our community, our city, like, you know, all of those things matter way more than the metal does.

And that's interesting because the in thinking about this and what you've built and how this goes, there's this idea of celebrity and you're kind of moving into that.

It is what it is.

I'm not focusing on that.

Yeah, but you've been now because of this international, like you've been all over the place, been all over the place in the United States.

Europe.

But knowing you like I know you as Tony knows you as those of us around, like you do all of those things, and you connect with these chefs and you and you're with all of these people.

So that's reinvigorating in one way.

How does that stretching beyond what is immediately around you?

How does that fill you?

What bringing it back to what's immediately around you with Northeast Ohio, with Akron, with Cleveland, with your commun All of those opportunities are great.

And you grow and you build.

But knowing you and knowing what your focus has always been, it's never to keep.

Those are great opportunities.

And that's a question I want to get to here in a little bit.

But I know you bring that back to your immediate surroundings.

What's that experience been like for you?

Well, I will tell you the first thing when I tell anybody where I'm from, everybody says, oh, LeBron James said, 100%.

I will take that all day long.

And then, then I in turn tell them, you know, technically I was the original kid from Akron because I'm like a year older than he is.

So, you know, semantics.

It's okay.

But yeah, I mean, you know, what I really appreciate is the fact that I, I get the opportunity to showcase Northeast Ohio.

You know, not everybody understands how great it is to live here, to be a part of this community, to to do what we do, where we do.

It's and it's only to the last couple of years that we've found that both Akron and Cleveland area are finally like the density of population is growing, which is huge.

You know, for 50 years it's been depleting and people have been leaving and go into other cities.

Now people are realizing finally that it's they don't have to to leave to find what they want.

It's in their backyard.

You know, we have Michelin coming to Cleveland sometime next year.

I mean, the amount of cooks and chefs that I've spoken to over the past six months who now are were in bigger cities, are wanting to come home because they were looking for something they couldn't find in their backyard.

Now they can, you know, they're like, all right, how do I come back?

Where do I go?

What do I need to do?

You know, that's special to see, to be able to go out to all these different cities and to represent, you know, Northeast Ohio is, to me is a great honor.

I love hyping up Cleveland, Akron, talking about who we are, what we do.

You know, it's it's really something special.

And people just don't understand.

Like I, I talked to chefs out of Florida or California, you know, these places that you think are like really nice.

You know, they're growing seasons are like so much shorter than ours are.

You know, I'm like, oh yeah, we get tomatoes for like seven weeks.

They're like, we get tomatoes for like four days.

I'm like, you know, that's cool.

You know, we get peas for two and a half weeks out of the year and people are like, we don't even get peas anywhere.

So being able to like, tell people about who we are and what we do and how we celebrate these ingredients, these farmers, you know, the people who provide for us like it's a whole different world and people just don't understand it.

And then they get excited about like, oh, I got to come to Cleveland.

You know, I got to come and see what you guys are doing.

I had to come and and eat the food that's there because, you know, they don't have what we have.

And it's, you know, as we think like, oh yeah, maybe we have, you know, winter, you know, 11 under the 12 months of a year kind of thing.

They have the nice weather.

Most of the time.

It's really us who are so fortunate to be where we are with how much does grow in our backyard and how much, you know, we get to celebrate it.

Like, you know, you're in California, you're in a tomato all year round.

Is it going to be good?

Tomato probably going to be pretty darn good here in California.

But in Ohio we get tomatoes for those 6 or 7 weeks.

Like we're going to celebrate the hell out of those tomatoes.

6 or 7 weeks.

I'm gonna get a tomato every single darn day.

My daughter is probably eating them like an apple kind of thing, like, you know, that's just kind of what we do.

And then when the next season happens, we celebrate those things and we celebrate them so hard because we know that, you know, until next year, we're not going to see them again.

Really.

We can get them in the store and, you know, go to Whole Foods or Acme and find them, and they're going to be California grown tomatoes that have been shipped to us in a refrigerated container.

And they're fine.

They have sustenance and nourishment to an extent.

But like what comes out of your backyard and what's grown like out of the soil in Northeast Ohio is like just something so special to it.

You know, I'm gonna go down to the delays here in a couple of weeks and literally fill up my Subaru with corn and take it up to the restaurants.

And I'll do that once a week for, you know, six, seven weeks.

And I'll get, you know, probably 8 to 12 bags of corn every single week.

It just take it out to all the restaurants because it's, you know, it's the best darn corn there is.

What do you see in your in your intentionality with Cordelia?

With ROSY?

Just what?

With what you've done.

You're obviously in downtown Cleveland.

That's where you cut your teeth.

You did that for years.

We'll we'll get into kind of how you came up.

We'll get to that question.

I'm born.

I'm born and raised Akron.

You and I both.

Yeah.

We're both small business owners.

Akron has its challenges, some very glaring challenges, but also myself.

And I think you as well were eternal optimists.

Like, there's a reason why we're both still here.

And and we know plenty of people that have cut and run and gone to bigger cities and gone to bigger markets, and it's easier to and it's it makes things a lot easier.

What are some of the challenges and what are some of the advantages you see?

One, with Akron creating a sustainable a an exciting place for food.

What are some of those challenges and what are some of those advantages you might see?

Well, like I said, you know, for the first time in a long time, you know, Akron, as a New York Times just came out like it's a growing population.

You know, people are now discovering some of these, you know, mid major cities, some of these old cities that people are finally coming back to and realizing, like they're getting out of these, these, these larger metropolitan dense areas and finding better quality of life in cities like Akron, you know, cities like Cleveland.

You know, I think that as our density continues to grow, the opportunities for small business will continue to grow.

You know, I think that's the biggest thing that I've seen, you know, throughout my time and even like, you know, we have two restaurants, both in Cleveland.

One of them is downtown Cleveland on East fourth Street, the heart of everything.

It's busy all the time.

We open up another restaurant, ROSY, a mile away across the bridge in in Ohio City hinge town area.

And it's it's busy.

It's a, you know, it's a much smaller restaurant, so it stays busy in a different way.

But like just being one mile away over a bridge downtown, like it is completely night and day.

For what?

For for what it does.

Yeah.

So, like, just having more of that community around, like, we'll continue to drive and support more folks.

And I think that, you know, as small business and people like we we all tend to band together, we find inspiration in one another and which continues to push us to do more, to want to provide more for our communities, to different opportunities and whatnot.

So, yeah.

This is a question I've wanted to ask for a long time, something that you and I talk about, something I admire about you, the people that are around you.

From my perspective, this is just me personally.

When I'm looking at design work, when I'm thinking about stuff for the shop, I want nothing to do with people that are in my industry.

Right?

That's just my nontraditional way of how I came up self-taught.

A lot of those things.

You are constantly around chefs.

You are with a group of people.

You are doing these things at festivals at any number of events, right?

So naturally there's a lot of overlap.

What other parts of culture, what other parts do you fill up with your creativity?

Is it constantly talking to chefs?

What other parts do you tap into where you might be thinking about a dish creatively, but you've pulled from an entirely different part of culture, right?

You may have looked at an artist differently and thought, that translates to the plate.

Where do you fill up?

What do you get?

Where do you go back to that?

Well, sometimes.

I think creativity is a, you know, several black and white.

It's always in color.

I think that you find creativity in, in so many different ways.

Like, you know, I get inspired by, you know, my wife and my kids.

I get inspired by, you know, going around to other restaurants, seeing other cities, you know, it's there's so many things out there that, you know, by the by the farms, by the ingredients, by just, you know, anything and everything.

You know, being here, being able to to talk to all of you like, you know, this will continue to drive me to do more.

I mean, that's kind of where it all lies in.

It's not like one simple thing.

It's it's so many, you know, my brain just doesn't stop.

So it just keeps pulling in things from different places.

Yeah.

Yeah, I get that.

Speaking of for I want to give Sarah her flowers, like.

Yeah, I think she's here.

Now where she, I she's.

Got with all the kids in the back.

Yes.

Sarah, I have a paragraph here for you.

Just so you know, I know both of you.

I've.

We've shared meals.

We, our kids are close to the same age.

This is hard.

This is really hard in a relationship.

And not only.

For her to.

And that's.

Yeah.

In that I, you know, in a marriage, in a relationship, just the normal things in life are hard enough.

On top of what Cordelia and ROSY have become and the time constraints and the responsibilities.

So there's this balance.

And we talked about this a little while ago, but I've thought a lot about it.

Where do you to balance and understand?

Like it's a weird juxtaposition because the train can leave the station and it's never coming back like you could.

You could add on more and more and more and more.

It's very easy to because people are always going to want to.

They're always going to want a piece of chef, right?

Because of what you do and the team you've created.

Where's the value for you now in your 40s, with what a no means pertaining to the kids, pertaining to Sarah, pertaining to the life you go home to that not a lot of people see.

Right.

So there's that.

And then when do you to continually find ways to be creative, to allow things to, to allow that relationship for the two of you to not get carried away because you're, there's this persona and public piece, but you have a family which I know is of the utmost importance to you, right?

Yeah.

And, you know.

That's a lot to take.

Whatever you want.

Of course, my family will always be the most important part of anything that I do.

I think that the reason I push myself so hard is because I want to show my children what things are possible.

I want to be able to provide more for them than I was given the ability to, to have, you know, I want to ultimately make them proud.

I want to show them that if you do good, if you're good people, you work hard.

Like, you know, good things can happen.

You know, it's it is a just position is always in ups and downs.

It's not always easy, but that will always be.

My end goal is to make sure that, you know, my children, know what the possibilities are, that everything I do is, is trying to be better for them and for our communities.

Because I think that, again, people are the most important part of everything that we have.

Now, I will say that I'm still figuring out how to say no.

I've said it.

I think twice.

You know, there's been a lot of yeses.

Let me tell you, my wife can attest I have traveled, I believe, at the.

In June alone, I believe I it'll be 18 days I've been gone.

So a lot of very good opportunities.

But it's also 18 days that are not home with my family, you know.

So it's something that I definitely am very aware of.

And, you know, in this moment right now, like, you know, I'm taking advantage of these opportunities, but I'm also very aware that, you know, I need to make it to softball games, and I want to be there for T-ball games.

And, you know, I'm finally getting to at least a a moderate point of the restaurants I trust wholeheartedly on their own.

So now that allows me to to think about, like, all right, you know, my daughter's got a softball game, I can go to the softball game and not have to worry about what's going on at the restaurant.

Yeah.

And, you know, trying to do my best to be a better father, a better partner, because, you know, it can't all be about work.

And it's definitely hard for me personally because I do love what I do.

I love hospitality, I love cooking, I love sharing stories with others.

I love celebrating our farmers.

It's it's, you know, more of a hobby than it is a job for me.

So this is something that I really, truly love doing.

But, you know, with everything that you do, there's a, you know, like a relationship, there has to be a balance.

So I will tell you that I'm a very flawed person, and I constantly working on being a better partner to my wife and a better father to my children because it's, you know, we're in this growth moment of trying to to balance it all.

That's the hard thing where as a small business owner, when you start, regardless of whatever notoriety you start with, whether you're in downtown Cleveland on East Fourth, wherever it may be, there comes that point of you have to say yes.

You're chasing like you're constantly chasing things.

Somewhere along the way, you go from chasing to be the chased.

And I see there's that shift has happened.

So I think that know wanting to highlight the importance you put albeit not easy and it's not always going to be great and there's going to be a lot of bumps with it.

But understanding how, you know, and just getting a little bit of an understanding of how you to continually come back to that with each other.

Yeah, I will tell you that I would not be sitting here or being able to do anything that I do without my wife.

You know, her support throughout the years has been endless.

From the the moment that I decided to take a she'll knows way more than I do.

But like I said, $27,000 a year pay cut to go and work as a sous chef at another restaurant, as we just bought a house and had a, I think, a almost one year old, or maybe a one year old at the time, like, and she was like, well, if you don't do this, you know, you're you're kind of dumb.

So which you would know more?

You know, you got to follow your dreams.

You're not going to be happy if you don't do this.

So like we'll figure out how to make it all work.

Yeah.

And I mean, that was that moment that like all right.

You know, we kind of jumped.

You know, we could have just been where we were and did what we did.

But we just like you got to follow your dreams.

So I did.

And she gave me that opportunity to do that.

I started off as a fourth sous chef at the Greenhouse Tavern, making like, I think it was like $28,000 a year.

And it was I was working 100 plus hours a week.

But.

You know, from that moment, I was able to surround myself with people who knew more about food than I did, who pushed me to to do better.

And I was able to see what I, you know, what my goals were, I guess.

And I wanted to be a. Continue to be a better chef and a better leader and do and do more in that realm.

And I was very fortunate that within, I think about seven months, I got a promotion and was able to, you know, keep building from there and keep growing and doing more and more and more.

But again, like, you know, I talk about it like, oh, we've been sprinting for the last four years since the restaurant's been open.

Really.

I guess we've been spreading for, you know, the last 11 years since we you started going.

You teed my last question up, by the way.

You just did without knowing it.

So last question.

We'll get to everybody.

I'm going to let everybody jump on you with their audience Q&A.

How do you there's a I'm going to butcher it completely, but there's a story.

Denzel Washington interviewed by a journalist and he's talking earlier on in his career talking about his success.

The journalist is assuming Denzel Washington is an overnight success.

And his response?

I'm sure was nice.

But curt, in a lot of ways, he goes, I'm a 20 year overnight success.

There's been a lot that's gone into the four years of Cordelia.

There's been a lot to go into the short time with ROSY.

You're in Sarah's relationship years and years and years, the relationships you cultivated.

Do you think do you find it advantageous that with all of this.

That's come the award nominations, the best chef, building teams, opening and building restaurants.

Do you find it advantageous that this hits you in your late 30s, early 40s, that this allowed you to kind of root and ground yourself in some things that you maybe not have grounded, would have grounded yourself in in your 20s?

Like if this like, let's just say you didn't know you like, let's say you rose real quick as a fourth sous chef.

Something happened.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

It's going to look real different in your 20s than it does now.

Yeah.

So where's where's that advantageous for you right now where you can ground yourself obviously Sarah, the kids, you have really good people around you.

What do you come back to?

What grounds you in all of this, in this craziness of the quote unquote celebrity, the notoriety, the awards, all of those things?

How are you able to keep a level head?

How are you able to kind of come back to those things that are most important to you?

In my 20s, I was a ___ head line cook, you know, pardon my French.

But, you know.

Lots of things that, you know, you probably shouldn't be doing as a 20 year old, 20 ish year old.

You know, I as I talk about, like, my career path, one of my biggest turning moments, I started working at Ken Stewart's Grill in Akron, and some of my fellow colleagues and chefs are here tonight or today.

Yes.

And, you know, I mean, they were mentors to me.

Like, I saw what they were doing, what they were able to do.

I wanted to to know more and continue to push myself to be better in that room again.

You know, I, I didn't know much.

I, you know, always was in the, the mind of like, I need to put myself in a room with people who know more about food than I do know more about cooking, than I knew more about something else than I do.

Because I will ever, forever be a student in any field that I go into because I just I really enjoy the learning aspect of it all.

And I think it's one of the reasons that cooking and hospitality has been such a big impact in my life, because it's an ever evolving relationship.

It's we're constantly learning more.

We're constantly figuring out how to do it better.

Growing, doing more things.

And it was a moment that, you know, I held my daughter for the first time in my arms and realized that, like, all right, there's more to life than, you know, being a ___ head line cook, you know?

So time to kind of really figure out what I wanted you to do.

And, you know, I was working at Ken Stewart's and I, you know, I think I had worked for for Ken for roughly six years.

I think somewhere around there started off as a salad cook, eventually built myself up to a sous chef at the grill, and then went to the East Bank and helped opened up the east bank.

And by the time we I left that place, I was the executive sous chef, beverage director, assistant manager, you name it.

But I had also realized that I couldn't go anywhere else.

There was nowhere else for me to go within that that company, there were great chefs who were running the grill, running the lodge at the time.

And, you know, there was a a chef above me there who had a stranglehold on that position.

So I had to I had to make a move.

So that's when I went to work at the Greenhouse Tavern, and it was a place that I knew that I was going to learn a bunch about food and in a very roundabout way, learned a lot about leadership.

And I will tell everybody that there are moments in life that you learn a lot from what not to do as you do from you know what to do.

Yeah.

And the greenhouse was definitely one of those moments of like, they didn't go out of their way to take care of you.

They were like, you know.

Were better than everybody else.

So, like, you know, you almost need to pay us to be here in this really roundabout way.

Not that we've paid anybody wrong, but it was like this, like, you know, we're better.

So, you know, you should be lucky that you have this position kind of thing.

So.

And you worked you worked a lot all the time.

You said yes to everything.

You know, you it it chewed up and spit a lot of people out kind of thing.

So you learn a lot of who you are from that.

And in those moments, like you kind of get sucked into it.

Like, you know, my partner Andrew, you know, I, I give him some flack for this, not often, but often enough.

When he was looking to open up a restaurant, you know, which turned into Cordelia, I was on his first choice as a as a partner, you know, I think I was like a fourth choice or something like that.

I made the top five, thank goodness.

But one of the reasons that he told me that he didn't reach out to me, you know, first, after everybody said that he should reach out to Vinnie, I know he's looking to do something to was because he knew that I had worked at the Greenhouse Tavern for so long, and I had spent probably six years with the Greenhouse Tavern.

But because he didn't want to reach out to me because he knew how toxic that culture was and what it perpetrated, and, you know, taking advantage of people, not taking care of folks, you know, chewing them up and speeding them out.

We sat down and talked like, you know, I was like, that wasn't that culture wasn't me in those moments.

Like I was in just like survival, you know, I was in it.

I was trying to figure out how to not get chewed up and spit out.

I was taking notes of, like, here's how you should not treat people kind of thing, which allowed me to really focus and invest on the positivity of it all, like I did learn a lot.

I met a lot of great folks.

I still have some really long lasting friendships from that.

Not because of it, but almost like trauma bonding in between it.

And, you know, now we a lot of us stay really connected because we we made it out.

But everybody who made it out doesn't do anything like we did, like we was done to us back in the day kind of thing.

So, you know, we've all made it a point to like, all right, we've been through this.

I don't need you to go through this just because I went through this.

I, you know, and I don't care that.

That you don't know what I had to go through, because I'm glad that you don't.

Because I don't want you to have to experience it.

I don't want you to have to be, you know, burn with hot tongs just just for the heck of it or, you know, you know, chewed up and spit out just because that was what we had to do back in the day.

So our goal was to continue to push forward, to do a better tomorrow, to take care of people better.

Like, I don't need you to to go through all the hazing rituals or, you know, get yelled at for not cooking something properly, like, none of those things are positive.

Clearly.

You know, so how we do is we just continue to take care of people better and to lift them up and to be the support that we can.

And, you know, over the last four plus years now, like we found it to be very much a recipe for success.

You know, as I talked about, we took all these folks to Chicago for the beards.

We're sitting there in the audience and.

I believe six people who are with us were part of our our opening team, our first back of the House employee, our first front of the house employee, all of our opening managers still with us.

Tony's here today, has been with us for two years.

You know, we that's where we pride ourselves on the most is being able to build that, that network of support and then give people further opportunities.

Like that first back house employee that I hired was a line cook who started off in the fry station, who's now one of our sous chefs.

You know, that first front of the House employee that Jeffrey and I sat down with and interviewed was a server who's now a manager, you know, so it's like those things like we're continue to able to build them up and get them more opportunity.

Yeah.

There's a lot of people that appreciate your ability to want to go buy one envelope instead of 100 and focus on the community around you and pay attention to those people.

I'm want to take the time and open it up to the audience.

Q&A I'm very proud to call you a friend.

Thank you.

I'm very thankful you asked me to get up on stage with you.

I know Akron's very proud of you, as is Sarah and the family and all of those around you.

So we'll go ahead and start the audience Q&A.

Good afternoon everyone.

John Garofalo president of Akron Community Foundation and proud member of the Akron Roundtable Board.

As you can imagine, Vinnie, we have many, many questions revolving around the same topic.

And everyone wants to know, when are you coming to Akron and when can we all experience a Vinnie Cimino restaurant here in our area?

I figured nobody was gonna ask me this question.

I will tell you, it has always been the end goal is to open up something in Akron.

Right now.

We're.

Yes.

Thank you.

It was one of the things that took me the longest to make a decision about opening up Cordelia in Cleveland was that I wanted to do something in Akron, but the opportunity in Cleveland was there, and so we took it.

But that the end goal will eventually open up something from when?

I don't know, but that will always be the end goal.

Great.

Thank you.

You talked about the changes that you've made with your employees and retaining your employees like insurance, PTO, $20 minimum and mental health effects.

How has it affected turnover and or call offs with your organization?

We have great employee retention.

Yeah, we really do.

We've been very fortunate.

You know, I think that's the goal is to make sure that we continue to to have that because we can give them more opportunities and our business continue to grow.

Great.

There are a couple of different questions about how food brings together a community.

Can you talk about how important food is to building community?

I mean, I think food is people, you know, from the people who grow it to the people who eat it, who celebrated, who cook it.

You know, it brings us together around a table, around a backyard barbecue.

We, you know, it's just this communal gathering.

Great.

We we all are glued to TVs watching shows like the Bear.

How realistically our show, our shows like that.

Not very realistic.

Good to know.

A lot of.

Lots of hard work.

Don't get me wrong.

Not very realistic.

Lot of young folks in the audience want to know.

What advice would you give to an up and coming chef?

Work hard.

Put your head down.

Be grateful.

Ask questions.

Yeah.

One of our listeners wants to know how does one earn a James Beard nomination, and what does that process look like leading up to the award ceremony since you just experienced it?

A good question.

I have no idea.

You know, I'm happy to to be here and to do it.

I'm still kind of flabbergasted at the fact we were in Chicago last weekend, so I don't know.

I just put my head down and I do everything I can.

I try to treat my people better than you know, I was treated.

I try to get back to my communities where I can.

And, you know, I'm gonna do the same thing tomorrow as I did yesterday and just kind of keep going with it.

How is being raised in Akron been an influence on your work and on your life?

I came from a big Italian family.

We celebrated a lot of events around food, and I think that part of that is always been with me.

You know, my grandmother had a restaurant in Kent when I was growing up here.

I would serve beers and regulars and wash dishes kind of thing.

So I think being around this industry and, and people and always celebrating around food like has just snowballed into, you know, my love affair with hospitality and cooking.

Great.

How many of you have been to Cordelia or ROSY?

So quite a few folks.

For those people who have not been to Cordelia, talk about the atmosphere and what makes that special.

So Cordelia is we refer to as modern grandma.

It's familiar flavors reimagined, all centered around, you know, our love of Midwestern cuisine and food and how we grew up.

You know, in the beginning, when Andrew and I were talking about Cordelia, like, we wanted to create the most quintessential Midwestern restaurant.

What did that mean?

I have no ___ idea.

What we found out.

What it meant was that we wanted to celebrate our people, our heritage.

We both came from different backgrounds.

My grandfather or my grandfather was from South Dakota on one side and on the other side from southern Italy.

And then my partner's parents were pastors and they were traveled all over.

And his grandmother was from Georgia.

So there was no like straight line of like, this is what, you know, what a quintessential Midwestern restaurant is.

But what the continuity was, is, you know, being especially from northeastern, it's like a melting pot of so many cultures and cuisines and just people celebrating people.

So that's what we did.

We just decided to lean into the the people celebrating people.

And, you know, we get inspired by Eastern European, Italian.

We have a great Asia town in Cleveland that we like it inspired from by going out to eat to.

And all of a sudden you'll see like a Szechuan pasta on our menu.

Like, you know, what does that mean?

I don't know, it's a combination of a bunch of different things, like just flavors that we like to celebrate and people we get inspired by.

And that's Cordelia.

It's just this, this center of celebratory experience.

It's warm, it's inviting.

It's pretty rustic.

When you go in, it's just like, you know, looks like, you know, grandma's house, in a way.

Knickknacks all over the wall.

It's got my grandmother's restaurant sign.

Go sit at the kitchen counter.

Can.

You know, it's just it's fun.

It's it's invoking.

And just, like.

So, Kind, I guess.

And which is a weird thing to say about a restaurant, but it really is.

It's just it's just so warm.

You're walking into a friend's house?

Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah.

So my family and I got to visit ROSY about three months ago, right after your opening.

And I was a little skeptical at first because of the small plate concept.

Because I'm not a small plate concept kind of guy, but I probably by far one of the best meals I've had this year.

Talk about ROSY and what came, what came with that model and how did you create that and what's that kind of atmosphere?

So ROSY has always been kind of like a dream, you know, I love cooking.

Over open fire and, you know, really celebrating like, such a, an instinctual way to cook.

And, you know, it's like so rudimentary.

It's so difficult at the same time.

We had this opportunity to to put an open fire restaurant in this really small space in Ohio City.

So as we were thinking about like, what is what is a follow up to Cordelia look like?

And knowing how much we celebrate our people, our communities, where we're from, we decided to take ROSY, like kind of a a more deep and meta dive into it.

Also, you know, if Cordelia is we're celebrating our grandparents, how we grew up eating or like, what if ROSY, with its open fire like celebrates our grandparents grandparents in this very like, old world way, you know, so that's where our inspiration comes from.

You know, like I said before, like Northeast Ohio's is melting pot of so many different cultures and cuisines, and we get inspired by, you know, so much Eastern European and northern Italian, Croatian, Slovenia and Slovakia and like this whole region of people here, you know, we just kind of started deep diving into some of these very old world techniques and recipes and then like making them our own into this, this fun hip space in Ohio City.

Great.

One interesting lunch goer wants to know how managing high food prices, how is that affected your business?

Yeah, yeah, everything is going up all the time.

I believe beef is up like 300% over the last couple of years.

I will say what we do really well is we don't throw anything away.

We utilize every single piece.

We ferment, we preserve, reserve, cure.

We're able to figure out how to turn our discard into things that help us mitigate our loss and help us make more money, you know, and it it all kind of evens outs.

You know, I will say this is like a thing that people don't think about.

Like, listen, I talk about our farmers all the time going to the farms, picking up stuff, celebrating them.

Two reasons A it's the best ingredient that you can get when you're pulling something straight out of that ground.

Be like, I'm also like, there's no middleman, so I don't have to go through somebody else and get something that's more expensive.

Like most people don't understand that it is cheaper for me to go to the farm, pick up these ingredients and bring them back to my restaurant and cook them.

I also don't need to have, you know, these crazy center of the plate type of things.

Like, I don't have expensive ingredients on our menu.

I make really good food with good ingredients, but none of them are like, you know, overly expensive type of ingredients.

I just made good food out of good ingredients.

Great.

Besides Vinnie Cimino who is the best chef in our region that no one has ever heard of.

So who is the next you that you recommend us trying?

so I would say that there are multiple chefs who work within our organization who are way better at cooking than I am, and I'm very fortunate that I get to continue to learn from them every day.

Our chef at Cordelia, Adam Bower, is like just such an inspiration.

You know, where he's taking the menu now is a place that I never even dreamt of it being able to go to.

You know, we led the we made the groundwork and he's just been able to like, you know, take it to a whole nother level.

So you guys are going to Cordelia now you're eating food like some of it.

Yes.

Is the food that I help create.

A lot of it is what he's creating now.

And that team is creating.

And I can tell you it's better than anything that I cook.

So, you know, I appreciate that.

You know, and there are so many incredible small restaurants that just don't get the, the clout that they deserve.

You know, one of my favorites here at Akron's in the Nepali Kitchen in North Hill.

Like, every time I go in there, it's insane.

It's so good.

You know, I every time my wife is like, where do you wanna eat?

Say, I was like, Nepali.

She goes, not again, you know, so but I like it because it's so flavorful and it's it's just delicious.

And, you know, we don't have a, you know, enough of that, that that culture, which I love, I mean, when I favorite joints in Cleveland is LJ Shanghai, like some of the best Szechuan cuisine I've ever had in my life.

And I've I've traveled a lot.

I, you know, when I find it in other cities, I go and it's like, I still like, you know, the best Szechuan cuisine is in our backyard in Cleveland.

Like, that's that's pretty special kind of thing.

So.

Please join me in thanking Jason and Vinnie This has been a production of Akron Roundtable, PBS Western Reserve, the University of Akron, and Ideastream Public Media.