How Chef Rush Built a Billion-View Social Media Empire I Chef Rush DSH #1216

I talked about that in my book, you know, Call Me Chef, Dammit.

And I said, ah, man, I was so mad at her for giving that because my dad was just hard.

You know, if I wish I could just be that hard person, but my mom was like, treat everybody the same.

Treat everybody the same.

She's bringing the homeless and, you know, feed them with her little kids.

And like, why is she bringing them?

We don't have enough food as it is.

You know, why is she bringing them in?

All right, guys, we got Chef Rush here today.

He's in town for Shaw Show, man.

Thanks for coming on.

Yep, yep.

Love Shop Show.

Yeah, how was it?

It was my first one, actually.

Was it really?

Yeah.

You're a virgin.

I'm a virgin.

No, Shaw Show was amazing.

I've been there a few years.

They show so much love.

Me being in the military, doing what I do with the veterans, with the suicide awareness, with the mental health.

So it was just like the whole time I've been there, I don't even remember because I took like a thousand,

ten thousand pictures and hugged people and cry with people and just amazing, man.

Wow.

You still doing 2,000 push-ups a day, man?

2,222.

Not on the weekends though okay yeah that's impressive man do you just bang them out as soon as you get up or you space them out throughout the day uh space them out throughout the day doesn't work for me that's too much time too busy uh i get up at three o'clock in the morning i'll bang them out all at once you get them an hour and a half i'm good uh 125 at a time I think go 17, 7, 6.

So everything has a mean, a rhyme, a reason.

It's not a workout.

It's about

mental health.

22 best unfortunately commit suicide a day.

And I do the rest just because of their families.

The kids and families who are unrecognized.

Yeah, yeah, mental health hits deep for me, man.

I struggled with it, and my father lost his life to it, so it definitely hits deep.

Yeah, man, so shout out to you for doing that.

That's incredible.

Yeah, it goes really deep.

I have a uh, I don't know, he's been taking care of me.

I've had a big, big thing with it, which things you don't know about.

A year ago, unfortunately, I lost my daughter to it

and her five- and six-year-old brother, and she was 11.

Whoa, and another command, uh, command sergeant major, and another

her stepfather.

That's insane.

So, and you yourself dealt with it, leaving the military, right?

ST.

I still do it.

You know, I still deal with it.

I mean, this is a product of who I am, PTSD, but it's all about who you are and what you're doing and what you're going to do into this world and what energy you're going to give out.

I mean, you can get hate, you can get love, you can have difficulties, you can fail and fail and fail, but that's just part of it.

I mean, who cares?

I mean, you got to look at yourself in the mirror or look at yourself and self-reflect and just say, you know, it's you against you.

Right.

You got to know yourself, right?

Because a lot of people, those comments will get to them.

Comments drive me.

I think they're pretty funny because they're most of the time they're irrelevant.

You know, they'll do something that's past a narrative that has nothing to do with you.

You know, whether it be, oh, Chef, you're dangerous steroids, you know, which I laugh at, which that just means I look really good.

Or they'll say something of the sort, which I kind of laugh at.

And sometimes I'll get a little freaky and I'll come back and troll them a little myself.

And then I block them and keep on living.

Oh, you block them?

I'm a hater.

Of course, I don't deal with with that time.

I blocked some too.

Yeah,

if you're in my world, I want my world to have, this is a safe place, right?

By all means, do your comments and say what you say.

Be respectful for it.

Right?

You know, I did a video.

If you saw the food video I just did about

the last one I did, what I would do for Fox.

It went on Fox Everywhere.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I also did another video, and it wasn't about what I'll cook for the first president, per se.

It was about what this country was built off of you know with the tomahawk steak with big big bowl like this flag on my shoulder like you know the our nation about the people about everything we've been through which was America on a plate right I want you to show where this land was built from from the farmers from from the ground up you know what people get to confuse a lot of it because you are what you eat right if you eat like crap you're gonna feel like crap but if you eat like respect you're gonna feel respect 100% i was surprised you got hate on that because you've cooked for four presidents yeah both democrat and republican so i don't get why people people would hate on that.

Who cares?

I don't care.

See, the thing about it is about not caring is whether it be black or white, indifferent.

I don't care about religion.

I don't care about monetary value.

I don't care about, you know, my people, however, when I say my people, meaning that you can be black, you can be white, you can be yellow, you can be anything.

I'm going to treat you like a human, regardless of the fact.

If you have your opinion, we're still cool.

As long as you don't bring it in my space where it becomes a little bit difficult or where it becomes to a part where I know it's going to get over that, we're good.

Say your opinions.

We could even argue.

I was in the military.

I've had times where I unfortunately grabbed guys and I shook them around a few times.

But at the end of the day, I say, you all right?

We're good?

All right, let's go.

And that's it.

Emotions are emotions for a reason.

They can save lives and they can destroy lives.

They can take lives and they can do things like that.

But at the end of the day, it's still going to be you against you.

I love that.

And yeah, food is a universal language, too.

Yeah, it's a love language.

I tell people now, you know, being thinking about Maha, making America healthy again, you know, we need to get back into what food really is meant to be, right?

You know, people ask me, what's my favorite meal?

What's the restaurant I went to?

You know, my favorite meal is a meal that I'll never ever get again.

That was with my mother.

She's not here.

And that will always be the set tone for me.

It was those endorphins that I remember where you just felt that warmness and that love.

I'm from Mississippi, the hospitality state.

So when I tell people food is holistic medication, it's love, it's friendship, it's all those things that was meant to be instead of just a click and say, I went to this five-star restaurant and this person cooked for me, that person cooked for me.

You know, think about what it is, which I do respect because I'm that that person also.

I like gourmet food.

I make pretty food.

But at the end of the day, my food, like I just told you, what I just did, it has to have some meaning to it.

I love that so much.

I agree, though.

I think there's an energetic component to the person making the meal.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

If they're not the nicest person, you could taste it in the food.

I 100% agree with that.

And I'm pretty nice.

Yeah, you're very nice, man.

Man, your meals are good.

I was going on your YouTube.

Some of your videos had tens of millions of views.

It was actually insane.

Some of them have hundreds of millions of views.

I saw a couple of them.

I mean, that's...

I have a great crew that I have fun with, right?

You know, and,

you know, it's a testament because if I look at some of the top ones I've done, you know, I was just with Nick and Boston.

I was with Albert and I do Baji and whatever.

I mean, we'll do one video and it'll get, you know, six, seven, eight hundred million, right?

And we'll do another one, do the same part of it.

So it's me being like a strategist because there's a reason why I'm doing the things I'm doing.

Like they're doing the things they're doing.

So I want want to get more kids in my corner.

I want to get more views because you got to think about it.

The TV is going away.

When we have it, it's great.

I want to do both sides of it with my TV shows.

But at the end of the day, still, we have social media where, guess what?

All eyes are on social media.

Yeah.

And you transitioned brilliantly.

I was watching you on Fletcher Show on the way here, and you did all the social media on your own for a while, right?

Everything.

Not on my own.

Now, still, still.

I went from

$250,000 in a year after my daughter actually was taken by her father, her stepfather, and both her brothers,

I lost it.

I didn't know what to do because I had lost another best friend a year prior in LA.

And then I had lost one of my soldiers to the same.

And I was just like, man, why me, why me?

So I was just, I was going.

I'm not going to lie to you.

And then when I finally said, okay,

a USA came to me to do a campaign.

They didn't know anything about this, but they came to me literally that week and said, we want you to do this campaign to head it up called face to fight.org and it's about suicide awareness you know from elizabeth dole and whatever and i was like

it's it was a sign it was a sign because it happened the same thing with my brother who passed away from cancer which they came to me and then

uh i just i dove into it and went to the white house chamber of congress you know national press club did a uh a media tour and then i got on uh um I got on social media and I looked at it because I wasn't familiar with it.

I got millions and billions of views, but it wasn't for me.

It was just me supporting and helping other people.

And long story short was

I'm a strategist.

I'm a logistician.

So cooking is actually a hobby of mine.

People, I just became extremely great at it, right?

But my other real job was different stuff.

And when I dove into it, I looked at all the social media at once.

And in the first month, I'm sorry, the first week, I had a million views on everything, subscribers, rather.

Wow.

On everything.

In a week?

In a a week.

That's crazy.

YouTube now, YouTube, Instagram,

TikTok.

I went to Facebook, got a million, literally.

And then the first three weeks, it was at 4 million, 5 million, 6 million, 10 million.

And it was just so much, but everybody was showing so much love.

The great thing about it was

every time I went out, even just to the day, there were all kids, like little kids, like six years old, seven years old.

Their parents were like, wait, my son knows you.

My daughter knows you.

Can I take a a picture?

And yada yada yada.

And it just, it made me hard.

Well, it was what I needed, you know, when I say a give back because we all have things we have to cope with.

That was my coping too, was being able to give back and also kids.

The veteran was one side of it, but kids was a lifeline to me.

I didn't know your general, your audience was a lot of kids.

A lot of kids.

That's interesting.

So they love the food stuff.

They love the food stuff, but they love the fun things I do.

I'm known as kind of like the angry gentle chef.

You know, it's kind of like a, it's kind of like,

you know, a balance where I got to get be angry and I get to hit a couple of my guys, pick them up and dust them off, and then have a little fun with them.

I love it, man.

I mean, you're talented in other verticals, too.

Oh, yeah.

You got ice carving going on?

I'm doing one this weekend, actually, this weekend at the Fit Expo.

I'm doing, I'm a master ice carver.

So I'm a sum.

I'm a pastry chef.

I do chocolate.

I do.

I do a lot of things.

Food is, honestly, food is just therapy for me.

I mean, a big therapy.

So when I dove into it, I had no idea that I would be the person that would be representing being a chef.

And the reason why I wear this is, which I made up, was because it was my foundation.

I didn't put on a shooting tie.

I'm a speaker also.

I don't put on a shooting tie.

I wear, I want you to know who I am and where I came from.

I could be a garbage man.

It's kind of like a testament saying you can be whatever you want to be.

You don't have to be that person that went to law school and a doctor or pilot and astronaut and yada, yada, yada, and so forth.

This right here today and age is America where everything is great, right?

Where you, if you get the opportunity, you make the opportunity.

Don't take, take advantage, but don't blame anyone.

Don't blame anyone for holding you back or saying this and that.

And if you don't know, figure it out.

I love victim mentality, right?

Victim.

When did you make that mindset shift?

Was it in the military?

I made that mindset when I was a kid.

Oh, that young?

I was literally that young.

When my

dad was a big brawny guy, a very dark big brawny guy.

I was scared to hell out of him.

And my mom, he was the one who taught me how to work hard.

And my mom, I said, was the one who taught me how to love, but I was scared as hell of him.

I just wanted to please him, please him, please and please him.

But he had no expression whatsoever.

And as soon as I could walk, he put us to work in

the gardens and we would do stuff in the farms and other people's farms.

And they would have, you know, other people would have, you know,

other it was white and black, but they would have equipment and we would do it by hand.

And I'm like, why are we doing it by hand?

You know, and he says, just do it.

And I hated it.

And now, but at this point in time now, there's no one that can work harder than me.

Even at my stage, where I am, there's no one that can work harder than me.

That's why I don't have anyone doing all my social media because you have to know who I am, what I am.

You have to walk like me, talk like me, be like me.

And you also have to be humane and empathetic at the same time.

This is not McDonald's.

This is not Burger King.

This is real life.

And you can save a life or you can actually hinder a life or even end a life.

Yeah.

I love us.

You got the work ethic from your dad, and the emotional side from your mother.

Of course, so you got the best of both, yeah.

A little bit more my mother, which I kind of hate.

And I talked about that in my book, you know, Call Me Chef, Damnit.

And I said, ah, man, I was so mad at her for giving that because my dad was just hard.

You know, if I wish I could just be that hard person, but my mom was like, treat everybody the same, treat everybody the same.

She would bring in the homeless and, you know, and feed them.

We were little kids.

And like, why is she bringing them?

We don't have enough food as it is.

You know, why is she bringing them in?

And

it was hard because

she said, everybody needs someone, you know, and, you know, that stuck with me as well as my dad said, you know, two things you need to know in life.

And always remember when I was young, he said, wherever you go, someone wants you to fail.

Next thing was, always be the hardest worker in the room.

Wow.

Someone wants you to fail.

That's so true, though.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It could be the person that's bowing to you.

It could be your friend.

It could be your family.

It could be anyone.

And you know what?

Now being Chef Rush, it is absolutely true.

I've had it so much in my life, joining the military, doing this, that I was very transparent in the military in my book and saying, hey, it's not all what it is.

You know, I was sent to do a job.

It's like if you were a garbage man, if you were this, they said, yo, the military gave you so many opportunities.

No, you have to give your own self-opportunities.

It's a job.

You have to make that thing happen.

Right.

They didn't say, put private Rush over here so he can be the greatest leader in the world.

They didn't say that.

that.

That was me.

I did that.

Now, now, granted, I was in a position to say, okay, it's going to happen or it's not going to happen.

But I'm as real as you can possibly be with that part.

And I support the military a million percent.

And that's what all the love I got at the shot show the whole time.

Thank you for what you do for their veterans.

Because

me doing this was I said working for all these leaders.

I said, if I ever got the opportunity, I know what I want to do.

And it's not what a lot of them are doing.

Because once they get that paycheck or get their monetary value, bam, they gone.

They out.

They out.

Right.

I think all my veterans, I think, thank you for your service, what you did, but it's what you're doing, but also what you did.

I'm not going to take anything away from you.

What I'm doing is what I'm doing, right?

You don't have to do anything, you know?

I'm going to support you regardless.

Yeah, that's why you see a lot of them struggle after they retire, right?

It's true.

Maybe it's true.

That's a purpose.

It's sense of purpose.

And that's where I go speaking about transitions, especially in

civilian forces.

So it's like bridging the gap between the military and civilians.

And it's a big gap because a lot of civilians don't know what to say or how to act around military.

And a lot of military can look at it.

You think about them.

I had a hundred people that I was taking care of, that I was in charge of, that I was a leadership.

And now I'm behind a cubicle.

And I'm listening to this kid right here telling me what to do.

Yeah.

That's a great change, right?

Huge.

That take you a while to kind of find yourself after you transitioned.

After I transitioned was a hard transition.

I went through a lot.

I was a transition no one knew, but I was in two inpatients.

I was in an outpatient for a year.

And it was hard because I

was

going to therapy.

I was talking to people and I just didn't like them.

I didn't like them.

I didn't like the medication.

They sprung me up on a lot of medication, which, you know, it was a trillion dollar industry.

I get it.

But at the same time.

You know, I was also very aggressive.

Really?

I've always been very aggressive.

I mean, when things are not right, right?

People say, oh, he's a general giant.

I'm not a general giant.

I will take your head off the quickest of anything in the world.

But at the same time, if there's no reason to, I won't.

And I'll defuse it any way I possibly do.

But if I have to jump in front of a bullet for to save your life, I'm going to do that.

But if I have to do other things, I'm going to do that as well.

And sometimes even with the caretakers, I was extremely aggressive because I knew what they were doing.

I had opportunity to see things and know things that a lot of my counterparts, whether it be Army, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, enlisted, or even officers, didn't get to see or know.

I knew them because of who I worked for, how I worked, and what I worked for.

And I knew that even at my disarray where

I'm at Chef Rush, they say, who's taking care of you?

People take care of me right now.

Shot show took care of me.

It was a lot.

I ain't going to lie to you.

I was exhausted at the end of the day.

I just left right there off stage and came right here.

But they showed me so much love and I would never deny any of them.

I took a million pictures and I said thank you a million times and I smiled a billion times and I don't care and I'm not going to waver on them.

I'm not going to say I'm tired of this and that because they mean more than meaning anything.

And with them saying thank you for your service, thank you for what you do,

it's just as important that I show them they're worth it.

Self-worth is everything.

Yeah.

You know, and also giving a person their praises and saying it, I don't care if you serve, sir, I don't care if he was a dishwasher.

Thank you for everything you've done.

Gratitude, right?

Gratitude.

Man, that's deep.

Yeah, that must have been frustrating knowing that.

And then being on medication for a year, it couldn't help out.

It was a thing.

And then I finally, when I had a moment of clarity, I literally sat on the couch for

like a year in the same spot.

And I was on so much medication.

Like, but I did the worst thing you could possibly do.

I

had a moment of clarity and I went upstairs and I opened up this big ass bin of medication, just all this medication.

And I remember

I just

looked at it and then I got it all and I just pulled it down the toilet and I flushed it.

Not knowing, but now I was myself that you need to whim off a medication.

That was hard.

That was hard.

But I know that I didn't have the capacity to do that.

You know, if I'm taking, you know, 30 milligrams or 10 milligrams or 5 milligrams and you have to be, you know, calculated to whim off of those libbit by libbit, which could have took months.

And I wouldn't have known how to do it myself.

So I really just struggled to do it all at the same time.

And I got sick as hell.

I ain't going to lie to you about that.

And it made me, now I know what, you know, people who are going through withdrawals feel like.

But after the fact was, I could see.

Wow.

So how long did that last?

The withdrawals?

Oh, my God.

It's like over a month plus.

Damn.

It was no chance.

It was bad.

You're talking about sick.

You're talking about your stomach.

You're talking about wanting to gay.

I mean, terrible.

Yeah, I had some Xanax withdrawals because I ran out.

And they don't tell you what you just said to kind of lean off of it.

They don't tell you that when they give you it.

No.

It's addictive.

Yeah.

I mean, literally your body thrives it.

It wants it all the time.

You know, so imagine taking five or six or seven different drugs or 10 different drugs that are all addictive.

Yeah.

I wonder what the average veteran is on.

How many drugs do you think prescription is?

Oh, my God.

I don't even want to guess, but if I had to think, if I had to think right off the top of the thing, I'm saying at least five.

Holy crap.

Yeah.

That's terrible because they're like 30s, 40s.

It is, it is.

And they have them for everything.

I mean, everything, everything.

And I think that's kind of like the universal cure.

Put them on drugs.

Yeah.

Right.

And so that's just part of it.

You know, and, but, you know, I know our medical industry for the vets and the VA and whatever has been a little tainted and it's been up and down and so forth.

You know, you, you hope and pray that it gets better.

You know,

hope and pray.

I met one of my guys the other night,

two nights ago, and, you know, we cried together because unfortunately something bad happened to him and he had withdrawals and he lost and he tried to do something really bad.

And I hadn't seen him in a long time, since the last shot show.

We cried together.

I hugged him.

And he's,

and I love this guy.

And he has a huge company and he does so much for veterans.

But he's had a lot of stuff that happened to him in the military, in Iraq, and in life and so forth.

And anything could be a trigger, you know, anything.

So I tell people,

because everybody wants to make fun of everything today.

Everybody's on social media making fun of everybody, every little thing.

The only time they don't make fun of it is when it happens to them.

Facts.

Yeah.

People are quick to judge, quick to bully, quick to judge.

You know, of death, you know, they do it, but when it happens to their friends, their family, their loved ones, it's like, why?

You know, so.

One of the things I do is I make a cause out of everything.

I don't care what it is.

If it's your cause, it's my cause because somewhere, somewhere, someone needs it.

And I've been fortunate to do that, especially with my speaking, because I've had the most crazes from Ernst ⁇ Young to

all the other people from the military, FBI, medical, speaking, speaking, speaking.

Everything's relatable when you think about your mindset, leadership, transition, food, and what it does.

It's a universal message, like you said.

So you can go across every platform, not just the one.

Everybody has a niche, but me, fortunately, I have a lot of layers.

Yeah, we were talking about it off off camera, how you're big in Korea, right?

Yeah, yeah, Korea, you know, and I did that purposely, you know, and I'm black, if you,

and I speak no Korean, and I love them, and they love me back in return.

And I went from this to huge, huge.

I've done three

Netflix shows there that even left me.

I came back and they want me to do another one.

I've done every big brand.

I do all of it, and I do nothing.

That's the power of

persuasion, right?

That's the power of

relevancy, of saying, hey, I want to do this and I want to show you.

Because us as Americans, sometimes we're

ungrateful,

entitled, uncaring.

But at the same time, it's like you'll eat some food and you'll look at it like, oh, that's nasty.

That's nasty.

Why is it nasty?

Because you didn't grow up that way.

Why you didn't do that?

You don't look at other countries' food because it can be very disrespectful.

You know, me, I went to,

I'm an etiquette person.

So I went to I went to actually school to learn etiquette about what to do, what not to do, how to do it, you know, what to say, when to jump into a conversation, when to jump out, when to know when it's too long or when it's that, how to do everything you need to do from running the front of the house to the back of the house to the estates to different places in different countries.

And, you know, I teach people on that part of it, you know, and the one thing that I cannot do is just kiss ass.

I need, I tell people, it's kind of like the

it's kind of like the art of selling without selling you know don't go begging a lot of people begging and it just turns people to the point to where it's just

it's just cringe right if you shine the way you're supposed to shine everything's going to come to you i'll tell you a true story since i've been doing what i'm doing i've never picked up the phone not once not every tv show from my kitchen commando from disney to all the korean shows to my show coming up now uh to my other show just getting ready to come out with uh tv TV1,

to all my brands, to all my endeavors, all my business.

I've never picked up the phone.

That's crazy.

Because a lot of people have a guy that does that or they themselves do it, you know, or a team even.

Some people have AI.

And even further, every team I've had that's in LA, I fired them all.

My lawyer, my literary, my publisher, I got every deal they had.

Wow.

And I said, why am I paying you to get you deals?

And I said, here you go.

Now give them a quarter.

I've waited a quarter, three months.

I said, if you don't give me a deal, you're out.

I don't want to keep bringing you because they say, oh, man, Chef Rush is getting all the deals, all the deals, all the deals.

Work.

Work.

I'd rather fail on my own than for you to succeed and me to fail or you help me fail.

It doesn't make any sense.

So you're in control at least, right?

Exactly, exactly.

At least I know if I did it, I did it.

I'm okay with that.

Right.

Because then it's on you.

It's on me.

It's on me.

Yeah, I love that.

Man, what's some etiquette people should know about, though?

As far as in Korea.

In Korea, woo-hoo.

woohoo.

Korea is very different.

So I go to Korea, Japan.

I go to Thailand.

Korea is very universal.

If you haven't been to Korea, you need to go.

It's a lot different than what it used to be.

The people are much more open, much more hip, much more this.

Slurping is okay in Korea.

Yeah, if you see my videos, I'm slurping like.

I love it.

I'm like, I could be mean, like slurping to death, right?

They love it.

They like, whoa, Chef, you slurp better than us, you know, using a chopstick.

You use a chopstick better than us.

You eat everything more than us, you know.

And if you have something that you don't like there, don't act like it's frowned upon.

That's okay, but don't act like it's the most disgusting thing in the world.

You know, um,

in Korea, a lot of things are people don't know is they don't have like walk up to people on dates, like go out, like, oh, I see someone, let me go try to date them.

They have a place they go for that, or people introduce them to people.

Really?

Yeah, it's none of that.

It can be a million women and men in the same place.

They will not talk to each other.

What?

They don't talk to each other whatsoever.

It's got to be pre-arranged.

It can't be prearranged.

You can't hit on a girl at a bar.

Yep, yep.

Or you'll say you're going to this dating bar where it's a dating bar.

So they say, oh, yo, you know, it's susceptible to go and say hi to a girl if you want to.

That's actually interesting, right?

Very interesting.

I feel like, because it's intimidating dating in America.

Like growing up at the bar to speak with girls.

Yeah.

So now if you know there's a place that you go to date, it's kind of easier, I feel like.

No, no, no.

Well, think about L.A.

and Vegas.

You know, in D.C.

or New York or all that part of it.

It can be very, very stressful.

I mean, hell, I don't know how to date.

So there you go.

You're just focused on working.

I work a lot.

What's some interesting dishes out there in Korea?

Oh, what are they known for?

I know Korean barbecue, obviously.

Korean barbecue.

You said that's not the same here.

It's not the same here.

No, hell, not even a little bit.

What's different about it over there?

The way they cook it, right?

And the beef.

They have a beef called Hanu, which is not allowed here in the U.S., which is actually close to being wagu, a Kobe, as far as flavor profile and triation with fat.

It's not allowed here, you said?

No, it's not allowed.

Why?

It's too cheap.

Oh, it'll blow everybody out of the box.

Wow.

That's why.

Interesting.

It's too cheap.

The margin for, if you think about it, it just doesn't make any sense for the U.S.

to bring it over.

But you also have the Australian wagu and all the other stuff.

But then you also have the black pig.

The black pig is something just like phenomenal.

It's something that you look, eat, and it's just like, what is this meat?

Tender, juicy, succulent.

You know, no

pork, nothing, nothing, nothing.

But, like, me, I eat the cowby tongue, which is they do great with their stews.

I call them stews, they're not called stews, but you know, where they just have all these flavors that have been cooking for weeks and months and just replenished over and over again.

I've seen those videos, yeah, yeah, you know, cowby tongue or jajayam, which is they call we call black spaghetti, right?

Which is just filled with flavor profiles, and everything is so diverse.

You know, I uh, I, I, I, I, I, I, honestly, when I go there, I'll eat about five times a day.

Holy crap.

And nothing's the same.

Nothing the same.

And I will be there for sometimes for, you know, four, five, six weeks.

Wow.

Right.

And I'll just eat every day because I do, I have a channel over there on the Korea.

Right.

So I eat every day, all the time.

What a living.

Oh, my God.

It's amazing.

It's amazing.

That's so cool.

So you get to review the food and make it easy.

I get to review the food.

I don't even get reviewed.

I just eat the hell out of it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's so cool, man.

Is that your favorite cuisine?

Korean food?

korean food is one of my top ones i always ask people like if you had to eat one cuisine the rest of your life what would you pick

no one's ever said korean actually

what's a normal one i hear italian a lot i hear japanese no one says american to be honest no one says i don't think we're up there uh no not up there i mean korean is a a lot of people don't go to korea they don't think of it like that uh but

I mean, if you think about Asian, you think about Japan, very clean food.

Very clean, very delicious.

You won't gain a weight over it.

you won't gain a pound over there, though.

It's very small portions.

You would struggle out there.

I was, yeah, I would struggle out there.

In Korea,

but it's just so many different flavor profiles.

You know, Japan has the ramen, which is amazing, which is depth and flavors and profiles.

And

Korea just has the diversity for all flavors.

I love it.

I know you've done some stuff with Gordon Ramsey.

What have been some big takeaways you've learned working with him?

Takeaways I've learned with Chef Ramsey,

he's amazing.

He's a magnificent chef and business person.

He's strategic.

He is a person that you can learn from.

And I've took notes from him on what you do.

When I did my show,

I had to kind of figure things out.

They kind of put me right in the show and said, here you go.

I didn't know what to do, but I want to do something that I would want to see, not what I want to do.

I got a fan of everything like, you know, I can say, oh, I cooked this great.

I didn't want to do that.

I'm like,

what would I do if I'm looking at something on TV?

And so I did that.

And I also wanted to make it kind of like community-based, you know, leadership-based.

So that's when I started doing, I put in the four P's, made it something that people can live by, stand by, and then I put it into the food and made people appreciate it much more so.

So doing that, even with Master Chef, when I did the, you know, the thing is to have fun, right?

Me personally, I get rid of all the,

I get rid of it, I never had it, all

arrogancy, right?

I'm thinking you just a thing.

Some of the people, I was self-taught, and a lot of chefs honestly wanted me to fail.

They wanted me to fail because they just thought I didn't belong.

I mean, and I'll be honest with you,

I didn't belong.

I don't know what that even looked like.

I was different.

I was black.

I was young.

I was like, what?

Yeah.

You know, they went to culinary school for what you were doing.

Yeah, but that's the part about it.

You know, you did something that I didn't do or could do or like everybody else.

And so you think you're better than us because you know it and you do it and you hold it over their shoulders.

Don't do that.

I hate people like that.

Maybe, you know, it's everybody got opportunity and everybody has the whole part of it, but that's not true.

Everybody doesn't have the opportunity.

No, because somebody just don't have the capacity for it or the knowledge base for it or whatnot.

But, you know, it's true that if somebody, if you've done something that you know people have not done, teach them.

Show them.

Understand them.

Don't act like they're just, I use a word like dumb that they don't know that they can't learn give them opportunity and um because I know I had all my opportunities a lot of opportunities taken away from me a lot of them taken away from me a lot of accolades that were taken away and you know what I didn't care it wasn't about accolades it was about being my doing my job and I did my job diligently um

but at the same time it was hard because you know,

you do and you want to be rewarded in some type of person or mindset or whatever.

But if it doesn't happen, it just doesn't happen.

You know, I'll go back to my dad when I was working with him in construction.

You know, that's why I learned to work out because I wouldn't have a gym in the YMCA you'd have to pay for and we didn't have any money.

So I used to do construction with when I was a kid.

And long story short was it was a big metal car that was there

every day when I would go and help him.

And he would tell me, go pick up that car.

And it was late on when I started working for him a little bit.

And I'm like, I'm a kid.

I can't pick up that car.

I mean, it's a metal car, like the real car.

I'm not the only ones right here.

And so, you know, the old heads, everybody was older.

And I would go and try and try.

And every time, you know, I'm still at school, this, that.

So a long period of time passed by.

And I remember the last time I went and I got to that car.

And it was like, don't always try to use your strength.

Try to be smart about it.

So I braced myself and I got under it and I pulled and I went from the back part up, right, instead of going from the front part.

And I picked the car up and all the guys started clapping and, you know, going, uh-uh, you know, and I, I had the most biggest sense of pride in my.

So when I walked over to my dad,

he was in the machine and he looks at me and he just said, about time.

And he went back to work.

And I was like, wow.

Okay.

And there was nothing I could say.

Like, okay.

All right.

I didn't get the accolades.

I didn't get the praises, whatever.

It was like, that's life.

If you do something and you do something great, that's not the end of it.

Keep effing going.

Don't just say, oh, I did this.

I did this right here.

Okay, what's next?

And that's what I tell my people.

I said, ah, congratulations.

Let's go.

Right.

I'm not going to take that from you.

But if you get caught on that one win, what about the hundred you're missing?

Right.

Some people call it tough love, right?

I call it

tough.

You got to be careful with entitlement.

Entitlement.

You're not, you're not really entitled to anything.

You're not entitled to anything.

Yeah, a lot of people think because they grew up wealthy or whatever.

No, no, no.

No entitlement.

Yeah.

When my father passed, he died a millionaire.

I didn't get a single dollar.

He gave it all to his oldest kid because you're not entitled to anything, you know.

But a lot of people, they would fight over that.

They would sue their brother.

Yeah.

I just let him have it.

You're not entitled to anything.

Yeah, you got to be careful with that.

Did you ever confront your father as you got older?

Did you ever speak up against him?

No, I never, but I never told him I was a chef.

He didn't know until later before he passed away.

Wow.

And because his motto was

the girls go to school and they cook

and

the men go to work.

And

when I went to the military,

he was against it, actually.

He was like, why are you going to the military?

You know, my older brothers or my other ones went to the Merchant Marines.

My other brothers were in the Navy.

And I just, I just want to do something better.

I was in Mississippi.

There wasn't anything there.

I didn't know what that was.

And when he found out, I didn't tell anybody.

I just did it.

And I had scholarships, right?

And

because he kept saying that, you know, the boys go to work, those scholarships meant nothing to me.

Now, since then, you know, I went on to get, you know, my PMP and master's and business and philosophy and all this other stuff.

But, um,

But later on, when he found out, because it was old school, they didn't look at TV and stuff.

When he found out that was a shift and I had all these, you know, accolades and all these other different things.

And he asked me, why didn't I tell him?

And I just said, because of what you said.

And, you know, he

felt really bad.

He started crying.

He was like, I don't want to care what you did.

You know, I missed all this that you have done, you know, which, you know, knock on wood was very successful.

But

I would tell you.

Everything I've gotten, I've gotten, oh my God, I've gotten, you know, Key to the Cities.

I've gotten acclamations from California.

I've gotten,

you know, covers of, you know, books and this and this and this and this, you know, my TV shows and all these things that you can put.

They're all still in packages.

They're still in boxes.

And people are like, Chef, why don't you show?

I'm like, because I'm not done.

You know, I'm not going to get caught up on that part of it because I didn't have.

a lot of that support like I would think I would have when you're doing what we're doing it can be hard right other people normal people don't understand.

And, you know, that's my hard part right now.

Just like you would know, normal people don't understand what this is.

It's not a grind or a hustle.

It's part of your lifestyle.

It's who you are.

So me doing all this stuff saying, you know, chef, you know, this, this, this, and this, you know, stop and wait a moment.

If I wait a moment,

that moment could be a decade already gone.

Yeah, because social media is advancing so fast.

If you're not, if you're not evolving, you're, you're going backwards.

Of course.

Man, that's deep, though.

Loneliness sounds like you dealt with that.

Oh, yeah, of course.

It's hard to relate to people with your mentality, right?

It is.

It's mentality base.

It's mentality base.

You have to think of it that you have to grow up and you have to grow out.

And, you know,

I don't have a small circle.

I have a huge, huge circle, but there's no one in it.

It's a few.

And people say, I got a small.

No, I want my circle huge because I need room for me and them to grow together

can spread out, right?

So I want to keep it knit.

I want to bring in people and I give everybody opportunity.

But if you can't perform, if you have intentions or, you know, misleading thoughts of what you're going to try and try not to do, you're out.

Boink, blank.

And I don't blame anybody else for anybody else.

It's like having a relationship.

And well, this girl did me wrong.

This boy did me wrong.

My boyfriend is this.

So I take it out on the next person that comes.

It happened, but that's not that person, right?

Even if they have the same venture, even if they say the same thing, but you got to let them do what they're going to do to find out for yourself.

Yes, you move on quick.

Of course.

So you don't forgive people easily?

Do I forget people?

Forgive.

I don't forgive easily.

I don't forgive easily.

Just because I'm human, I don't forgive easily.

You know, and I'm not going to try to play pretend like, oh, you know, I forgive everybody.

No, I don't.

I'm not going to lie.

I told you I'm not a nice person.

You know, I'm not going to be like, well, Chef is just a nice.

No, I don't forgive.

I remember what you did for me.

You hurt me.

You did something that took something away from me.

You took away money from my kids, my family, my wife, my livelihood.

You wanted me to fail.

You wanted me to not succeed on something that you knew I could have succeeded on.

Why would you do that?

I had never done that to you.

Yeah.

Does that drive you that hate?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, of course.

Everything.

Air drives me.

Yeah, because it sounds like you haven't really lost any motivation, you know, despite all your recent success.

It's impressive.

Cause a lot of people will get some initial success and then take a step off the pedal.

No, no stepping off.

You're grinding even harder than ever.

You got three shows you're working on right now, you said?

Yeah, yeah.

I've done

three Korean shows.

Zombie Verse just came out.

Black and White came out.

Kitchen Commando comes out next month on

TV1.

It's number one out of 47,000 shows on TV.

Yeah.

And that was made up.

Yeah, you said you got no script, right?

No strip.

It was just that.

And like I said, it was something that I wanted to see for myself and do.

And I have another surprise show that's getting ready to come out that everybody's going to go crazy over with some people.

People like that authenticity these days, you know?

I mean, it's the only way to be.

You know,

I can smell fake people, right?

They make me nauseous.

I'm serious.

You know, it's like being in politics.

It's like, ah,

I'm like, okay, okay.

This is making me sick.

Let me go get some air.

You know, nothing's wrong with that.

If that's who you are, that's who you are.

But I can't be that way.

And I'm very forward and I'm very direct and I'm very transparent.

Right.

Yeah.

And it's no harm or foul.

Yeah.

Other than McDonald's, what does Trump like eating?

He loves our Mickey Deeps.

I mean,

you know, I say this.

I say this, you know, if you saw what I made him with the tomahawk steak, right?

And I cooked it.

I'm cooking it the way I would like it.

You know, how if he comes back and says, let's make it well done or whatever.

The one thing I'll say, I say to people is,

and I'll, and you kind of reflected this right here, when people say, Oh, chef, man, you know, you're too big.

You just, I'm worried about your health.

And I was like, Man, shut the hell up.

You don't even know me.

Why are you worried about my health?

Why would you even say that?

And then everybody, oh, you just worry about you.

You don't care about me because you're trolling me.

I don't care.

With him, you know, he has everything, you know, like with his tacos, you know, he brought the button back for, you know, the diet.

He has a taco button?

Huh?

He likes the, you know, the bows and whatnot that he does and so forth, which is cool.

But

at the same time,

he is just simplistic.

Like,

I

can't, you can't do anything but respect that if a person just grinds like that.

Me, I forget to eat all the time.

And I'm a big guy and I'm a greedy guy.

I eat a lot.

I can eat, and I can eat from, you know,

a thousand calories to, you know, 7,000 calories.

And it all depends on what.

But if I'm doing something and I'm locked in, I am locked in.

I know you are also.

Yeah, I sleep breakfast.

But I hate it.

My body's like, okay, okay.

But I also have what's called adaptation.

I'm an endurance trainer.

You know, I haven't worked out like I'm supposed to, but my body takes care of me because I take care of it back in return.

I said, okay.

And I talked to my body.

I said, I'm sorry.

I'll make it up to you.

You know, we'll go do some extra push-ups or we'll go do this.

So I'll take you for a massage.

You know, that self-care, self-love.

We'll do all those things that we need to do to make it better.

But that's kind of like on that end.

I love it.

I know you used to be a running back, right?

Yeah, I love him.

I love, the only problem was when we've been a running back, I used to hit people that tried to hit me.

As a Giants fan, I'm so upset we got rid of Saquon, man.

That was a big L.

That was crazy.

That was the worst thing.

That was crazy, actually.

We fumbled it.

You know, a big fumble.

I mean, now he might win a Super Bowl.

Exactly.

Think about that.

On our rival team.

How did it even happen?

I mean, they wanted Daniel Jones.

That's how it happened.

And then he wasn't the best.

They got rid of him.

I mean, potato potato.

Yeah.

I mean, running backs got disrespected the past few seasons.

Oh, yeah.

They were underpaid.

No, oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

It wasn't about them.

I mean, it's always been about the quarterback of course but running backs were uh just kind of like a second thought yeah you know um who was your goat running back fall time

uh

hershey walker oh not adrian peterson huh not adrian peterson well i no no okay i take the adrian was great also adrian was a a complete beast i'm going way back because i know hershey what he you know what he went through you know you think about those steps on it but uh peterson was like geez i'm having flashbacks i'm going through the motions of it he came back from that acl terra I was like the first athlete.

And that's crazy.

And you had some nasty injuries.

You could relate to that.

Oh, man.

You know, I just had a guy I just met right before I came here who wanted to take a picture.

He had an ACL tear.

And I was like, whoa.

I'm like, he was like standing up and I was like, one of the worst injuries you can have.

It will take you out of the game 100% complete.

So I forgot about that.

So him coming back from that is like.

One in a million.

Yeah.

Now before all the modern days.

Literally, think about that.

One in a million, before all of the whole, let me stick you here, stick you there, and put you on this there four stem cells Yeah, yeah, exactly exactly yeah now you got all sorts of stuff.

I know you have a fused leg right yeah I uh I had my um both biceps cut off reattached I had my shoulder both shoulders cut open I had my right quad blown up uh on that part of it don't get it wrong uh I can still whoop you

people would have

seen you would never know that you know and you know what's crazy about that was when they did that that was before like I said anything and in the military they would cut you for anything and it was like let's practice on somebody and i was always and always in great shape and you know as a kid and i didn't know what my shape even meant it was just my natural build um and so

you know with them working on cadabras the whole entire time if you have someone just has no muscle then you have someone that has a little muscle like let's see what that looks like right so you get to cut on someone and so unfortunately uh they cut me um twice and i didn't even know they were doing it because they went in for one thing it's something else in which i was young and which younger but

i didn't know and it was like well they didn't tell you uh no when it cut my bicep they didn't tell me what no they didn't tell me after i was open i'm like why am i laying why is this hurting

this

and they were like oh you need it and i'm like you know because you know you can't sue the military you can't do this back then yeah it wasn't common back then yeah it wasn't coming back then you know um

But at the same time, you know, he was like, oh, you'll, you'll, you'll, you know, you'll be okay, but you won't grow anymore.

You know, you got enough enough size on you to be okay.

I'm like, did you just tell me that?

Did you just tell somebody that they're not going to grow?

They can't work out, they can't do this, and don't worry about that.

And that just wasn't an option for me, you know, to hear some stupid, you know, because you want to just cut me open,

you know, it was nuts.

They're doing that to people back then?

I did not know that, yeah.

And then, even in my leg, when that happened, was they misdiagnosed it and said it was, you know, like a

spraying, and it was,

it was just terrible.

And so that's one of the things you kind of deal with.

And that's why you kind of like, you get bitter and you think about another person judging you.

So that's why I tell people, if you have a thought, if you go to a medical personnel or a doctor or whatever who's a professional who say, I've been doing this for 30 years,

I don't care.

I'm just going to say my opinion.

If I feel that way, because the thing your dumb body will do is your body will talk to you.

And it was like, you got to cough.

Like my, my, oh, I got it.

My throat's itchy right now.

I'm like, I'm going to cough, right?

It's telling me that, right?

I'm not going to hold it in because I'm like, i don't know i don't need to cough but i tell people that don't just take the word for some people and say hey this is what you need to do what you don't need to do right if it's with your body because you only have one revamp go back and look at it 100 and a lot of people value doctors opinions so much and they start uh i believe they start manifesting what they tell them yeah you know oh yeah oh yeah like if they say you have this disease you have this long to live you're gonna start thinking that way instead of thinking positively and you think about things that happened where the the guy who told like how many how many people that had cancer uh it was like geez hundreds that had cancer and they didn't have cancer and he put them all through chemo and all this part of it geez and some of them lost their lives and some of them i mean think about stuff like that yeah that's terrible yeah so it's been really fun um

what's next for you and uh where can we find you man what you got going on uh next um i just fly everywhere i kiss babies and and shake hands and uh like i said my tv show is coming out i got some other stuff so don't Will that be on Netflix US or Korea only?

We're in the U.S., everything I do is in the U.S.

But this one, we're looking at a network right now.

So it'll be out soon.

And, you know, people can find me, Real Chef Rush, Chef Rush, Instagram, YouTube, Chef Rush, yada, yada, yada.

Or just hanging out.

Yeah, we'll link it all below.

This is from an onchef.

I appreciate it.

Thanks for watching, guys.

Check them out.

See you next time.