Chef Anthony Lamas is in prep mode this week. The James Beard Award nominee and owner of restaurant Seviche is gearing up to serve thousands of wings, sliders and more for the 2024 Bourbon and Beyond festival in Louisville.
Lamas spoke to LPM’s William Padmore and J. Tyler Franklin.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
William Padmore: From your beginnings to right now, you’ve succeeded, by standard metrics. You have your own restaurant, you have countless numbers of awards. At this chapter in your career, what does success mean to you and what does it look like?
Anthony Lamas: I think in the beginning, TV was misleading with chefs. It was good and bad. The good was it made chefs more popular. People wanted to get out and eat. People started investing in remodeling their kitchens at home. It brought small farmers back, because people wanted these artisanal products, and people are sourcing better and eating better. So I think in the beginning it was like it was easy to kind of get an ego, you know, you get a James Beard Award or nominations, but once that all settles, what's most important is being able to pay my staff. Being able to pay my bills. It's the people that come in, day in and day out.
Those national awards were great in the beginning, and it brings people [in] when they come to visit, but really, it's the people of Louisville that support us. So, success, to me, is being able to stay consistent and make the people of Louisville happy.
J. Tyler Franklin: So now that you've somewhat established yourself here, do you feel like you want to stay with the restaurant? Is the restaurant what you're drawn to, or are you interested in maybe being a private chef or Jack Harlow, if he asked you to go on tour with him?
Anthony Lamas: I've been doing this for about 35 years, so I'm, when is the end for me? Is it three years? Is it five years? Is it seven years? It's funny that you asked that question, because I have been thinking, you know, maybe consulting? Stepping back, not being in the kitchen so long, and on my feet. I’m getting old, you know, I'm going to be 56 in November. I try to leave around seven or eight now and be able to see my boy before he goes to bed, and then see him in the morning before he goes to school. For years, I didn't. I still will always be involved with food, I just don't know where I'll be in five years.
William Padmore: What's the deal with Jack Harlow? How do you know Jack Harlow? What's the history behind that?
Anthony Lamas: I met him right before he blew up. My son at the time, I think he was 17, said, ‘Hey, you know this young artist had reached out and they want to see if we can do a little birthday party here.’ And his manager reached out, and I had done a party for one of these other bands that this manager had. And I said, ‘Absolutely.’
So I didn't really know him that well, I knew his name through my kids, and so when he came in, I introduced myself, Hey, how are you? You know, my son is a big fan, blah, blah, you know. And he was just coming up…And so I just, I sent out scallops, ceviche, chicken empanadas, different things, and he was just loving it. And the more that he's dined here, he has some favorites and things like that, but we've done all his album release parties. We've done all his birthdays. I mean, the last, like six years, Derby parties. It's great. We love it. The staff loves it.
J. Tyler Franklin: What's been the most rewarding part of working with Bourbon and Beyond and other large scale festivals?
Anthony Lamas: It's an amazing experience. I want to experience it someday [in the audience], but I'm working it, so I can’t.
So, you think about [serving] 1,500 people, if we have say, little mini beef sliders, they're gonna grab two or three. So it's not just 1,500, it's times three. So we're going through, you know, 40,000 wings. And it's a big operation. I have a staff of 25 people. We have to set up a kitchen. But to learn all that, and to be organized and to stay calm and focused, you know, it's taught me a lot. So it's another part of being a chef that I kind of grew into…Am I having fun? No, I'm focused on being Chef Anthony Lamas, but it is, indeed, it's cool to hear all these musicians and songs that you grew up with.
