Contemporary Authors

• Shake Shack: Recipes & Stories - 2017 Clarkson Potter, New York, NY

• Food GPS - https://foodgps.com/interview-mark-rosati-shake-shack-culinary-director/

  Globe-trotting Shake Shack Culinary Director Mark Rosati was recently in L.A. to promote the release of the Shake Shack: Recipes & Stories, which he co-wrote with CEO Randy Garutti and Dorothy Kalins, and to preview breakfast service at the company’s LAX outpost. Learn more about how the Connecticut native came to be employee #2 at a tiny Madison Square Park burger stand, an opportunity that’s led to worldwide adventures and collaborations.
  Josh Lurie: How did your opportunity with Shake Shack come about for you?
  Mark Rosati: It was not my first choice, to be honest. I worked for Danny Meyer for three years prior to joining Shake Shack. I was a cook at Gramercy Tavern. I started out with the original chef, Tom Colicchio, and did a year and a half with him. I loved Gramercy Tavern. It was my favorite restaurant in all of New York. On special occasions, I would go to eat in the tavern in the front and do fine dining in the back. That restaurant was so exciting, so seasonal, that it inspired me to want to learn how to cook. I never went to school. I read a lot of books. I bought Tom’s book – Think Like a Chef – still one of my favorites. I met him at a food and wine event. I started hitting him with questions, like, “How do you guys make your steak in the tavern? I’m buying that same steak and it’s not tasting like yours. What’s wrong?” He said, “If you ever want to watch us cook one day, here’s my card. Come on in, man.”
  That was the most exciting moment of my life because I’m finally in my favorite restaurant, in the kitchen, next to these line cooks. I’ll never forget one guy pulling a sirloin out of the oven, adding a little bit of butter – it started foaming and melting – and he added a little bit of garlic and thyme. That smell, that sight, and the cook having burns and cuts on his arms, and tattoos, I was like, “Wow, I want to do that!” I trailed off and on for a few years. I wasn’t serious about it. I was like, “I get to hang in a cool kitchen and learn how to cook wild mushrooms.” It started to become like a fever. I was doing stuff that I’d only read about, like cleaning bone marrow, cleaning sweetbreads, really boutique-y stuff that I couldn’t easily find. I was like, “This is great exposure.” The next thing I know, I’m offered a job. I absolutely took it.
  Everything I learned was at Gramercy Tavern. Three years with Mike Anthony and Tom Colicchio, a year-and-a-half with each. I had a good grounding in the kitchen. Now I wanted to learn front of the house. The only restaurant available in our entire company, which was all fine dining, was Shake Shack. I was like, “Oh no. I can’t do this. This is a step back. All my fine dining buddies are going to think I’m the laughing stock of the town.” The only option was that, and it was for management, which I was grossly under-qualified for at the time. I figured, at least I’ll go for the interview. When I looked inside the shack, I saw it was the same meat we were using at Gramercy, the same thoughtful technique for cooking the ingredients. It wasn’t just throw it on the grill, smash it down and walk away. There was a lot of training and procedure, but the most important thing was the hospitality that Danny Meyer’s really known for, that he does better than anyone else. It was very much alive in the culture of the staff and how they talked and worked with the guests. It’s just like all our other restaurants, just more simplistic. I said, “I’ll do this for maybe a year. I’ll learn and they I’ll move on.” Funny thing, at the time, I was offered a job as a server at Per Se. Same thing. I said, “I don’t know how to serve. I want to learn.” They said, “We would never hire you, but you work for Danny Meyer so that stands for something. We’ll train you.” I called her and said, “I’m so sorry, but I’m taking a management job at Shake Shack.” I was ready for her to start laughing and she said, “You know, I’d do the same thing.” She said, “I think we do service incredibly well. If you ever want to learn the steps of service, then think about Per Se. Danny Meyer management, you’ll learn from the best in the business. Best of luck.” That’s when I started thinking, maybe this is the right choice. 10 years later, here we are.
  JL: How many Shake Shack locations were there at that point?
  MR: Just the one [in Madison Square Park]. When they hired me, they said, “Maybe one day we open another one, because we’re really busy, but we really don’t know. There are really no plans.” They were very honest with me, and at one point, I thought they were starting to move away from that idea because more fine-dining restaurants were opening at that time. We had a few more under construction, like Maialino. Again, I’ll learn for the summer and move onwards. Then our CEO Randy found another location on the Upper West Side. We didn’t think it would be busy. We actually thought that it was about the park. People come here in the summer to get a beer and burger in the park and enjoy life. It’s pretty magical. This one’s going to be indoors. How are we going to make a shack indoors? It’s not going to work. We worked really long and hard to try and take the shack aesthetic and plop it in the middle of a building. We used a lot of reclaimed wood. Bring in trees in a modern way. We still thought it would not be busy. When we opened up, the neighborhood came out and did not go away. The next thing we knew, that Shack was doing better business than the original. That was when we thought we had something.
  JL: What were your expectations when you signed on with Shake Shack, and now what your expectations going forward?
  I just wanted to learn management and people skills. The magic of this company and Danny Meyer, I walked into Gramercy Tavern with no skill set whatsoever, but they saw that I wanted it and that I would do whatever it took to improve myself. They said yes. Shake Shack was the same. I had no management skills and they said, “You have drive, and that goes a long way. We’ll teach you. Just keep bringing your passion to us.” I think that says a lot about this company. If you want to learn and are willing to put the work in, we don’t care if you don’t have the most beautiful resume in the world in this business. We’ll teach you. I really just walked in because I wanted to learn a new skill, but the culture and the people became very exciting to me. 10 years went by faster than any other thing I can remember in my life, any other job, it’s just flown by. It’s kind of shocking. I look at photos from when I started and think, “This job has aged me, but by god am I having fun.” Now we’d gone from one Shack and thinking, “Does it work in New York?” to opening in Miami, that was our fourth Shack, and saying, “Does it work out of state?” It does. As we’ve gone and opened more, we’ve gained more confidence in who we are as a company. Now that we’ve started to put the infrastructure in place, we have an amazing team. I was employee #2 for Shake Shack Enterprises. Now we have a team of 100. They’re all wonderful people that come from different backgrounds that are just inspired by what we do. They want to take a chance with us. It’s make us bigger and better. As we keep growing, in Los Angeles, we’re going to open another one in downtown next year. We’re opening at LAX in a few weeks. All fun things, and it gives us a chance to further grow our roots in this city, but at the same time, build our reputation and go to a brand new city or country and cook our style of burgers and bring our hospitality. For myself, I can’t see when my end with Shake Shack will come because there’s so many more challenges. Again, I feel we have developed who we are, but there are so many ways to continue to refine it and change it and morph it and just keep growing.
  At this point, are you still with the company to cook or are you more in it to travel?

  At this point, are you still with the company to cook or are you more in it to travel?
  MR: I almost feel like they’re intertwined at this point. Going to a new city is still very exciting, because part of what we do is try and localize our menu and try to be inspired by what’s around us. Take it in, absorb it, and if we can, reflect a little bit of that back through Shake Shack.
  For instance, L.A. Two years before we opened up, I came out here on a long weekend, because I had not been here in a long time. Through my travels elsewhere, I met so many wonderful chefs like Michael Cimarusti, Jon & Vinny of Animal, or Nancy Silverton, and a lot of them would say, “We love Shake Shack. When we go to a city that has it, we go.” I remember one time, I saw Jon & Vinny in Philadelphia, and they said, “Right off the plane, we didn’t go for cheese steak. We go for Shake Shack.” I said, “Dude, that’s amazing. Thank you. I’ve got to get out to your city and eat your food.” That’s what precipitated that trip. I ate so much food over three days. The first place I went off the plane was Son of a Gun and I had the legendary chicken sandwich. It blew my mind. The last meal: chi SPACCA. Now I’m full and going to chi SPACCA. Nancy Silverton was there that day at the bar. I got to meet her. The chef – Ryan [DeNicola] – was such a wonderful person. He was telling me about all his favorite restaurants. I feel a kinship. When we started to come out to L.A. to work on the menu, I had a list of this many people I wanted to work with that I had long admired. I wanted this Shake Shack to feel like someone in Los Angeles opening up a great burger stand inspired by Los Angeles, but at the same time, reflecting our roots and being who we are as a roadside stand from New York. IT was a hard bridge for us to gap. I feel like we did a successful job. The first shack we ever built that was white. We worked with people like SQIRL and Nicole Rucker from Cofax and Compartes Chocolate. I felt we built a very special shack that feels L.A. I think that’s exciting.
  When I’m traveling, my mind is still very much on Shake Shack. Even when it’s on vacation, I’m still thinking, if we open a Shake Shack in this city, how would it be different? It helps me, as I go to a new city, get under the layer of it, and not be on the very top, where it’s touristy. My mind is trained to right away get to all the local stuff, where if I lived there for four years, I would know about, after I’ve gone through, “I’m a tourist, I’m a local, what would I find?” I find I’ve developed a way to understanding cities right off the plane. It’s healthy. If you want to travel, cooking and traveling for me are one in the same. Traveling for myself, I still want to go to all the great restaurants and understand them. Working for Shake Shack, I want to figure out how to create food that’s inspired by that city. It’s kind of an interesting way of doing it, but I think they’re very much interconnected for me now.
  JL: When Shake Shack adds a dish or drink to the menu, who’s part of the decision making process, and what is the process?
  MR: The process starts with a trip out to that city. Usually myself, or I have two other people on my team, that might make the trip. It’s two or three days eating around, drinking a lot of alcohol, trying to find local beer, whatever’s unique to that city, that I can’t get anywhere else, that’s top of the list. We start to internalize it. What would we like to have on the menu? We just start reaching to people.
  Here, I reached out to Jessica at SQIRL. “Your jam is legendary, but you were the first person to have me eat crispy rice for breakfast.” My friend ordered it, and he said, “You’re got to get this crispy rice dish.” “You get the crispy rice dish. I’m getting breakfast. I’m getting eggs.” I took a bite because he forced it on me and I said, “I’m a jerk. This is the best. Thank you.” I was completely blown away by her vision, her ethos, that I needed her on the menu. I reached out to her and said, “I would be so honored if we could work together in some way.” We started to talk about what that might look like.
  After it starts to conceptualize together, then I present it to a few people on our team. Our CEO, Randy, our head of marketing, our head of operations. I just want all the thinkers in the company to weigh in from their different departments, to take a look at the idea. I know myself. I get easily excited about anything. I start getting tunnel vision. “This is the greatest thing ever.” I just want to make sure everyone else feels the same way. If they do, then when we tell the story, they just have that buy-in. I feel like the ingredient or menu item or vineyard or brewery we’re using, if everybody has the same passion I do, I know we have gold. Again, they’ll be that much more excited to work on their end to help bring it to life.
  JL: How did you decide what would end up on the breakfast menu?
  MR: We kind of wanted to take our savory menu, like our burgers, and create sister items to that. The first thing we thought, “How great would it be to take a freshly-ground sausage patty and smash and griddle that like we do with our burgers? Have that same crust.” Then the potato bun, we’re synonymous with that, but we didn’t let that stop us. We got in bagels, Bays English muffins, everything we could get our hands on, to really feel confident we were serving the best breakfast sandwich we could. I came up with a lot of different sauces and toppings, but at the end of the day, we realized an egg cooked well and perfectly melted cheese on a buttery bun, doesn’t need anything else. We offer condiments on the side, because I know some people want ketchup on a breakfast sandwich. We want you to have that. We looked at the Shack burger. We start off with a great burger itself. As long as the heart of it’s good – we’re using cage-free eggs here, we’re using all-natural sausage, the bacon’s all natural; it’s double-smoked for us by Niman Ranch – we have some really good base ingredients we’re starting out with, so if we keep it simple and layer it – one of my favorite things to do is intentionally put cheese between the egg and the sausage so it stays molten and the juice of the sausage keeps it massaging the cheese. Bite into it and it’s creamy. Again, we try and make simple done really well. At the end of the day, if you want to add Shack sauce or mustard or ketchup, and just dunk it in there, it’s going to be awesome, of course, but if you’re a purist and think, “I just want egg and cheese on a bun, nothing else, how’s it going to taste?” We want to be confident it’s going to be a good experience.
  JL: What are your three favorite burger collaborations that you’ve done with chefs around the world?
  MR: That’s a good question. What I love about them all, when they’re done at the height of the collaboration cycle, you see Shake Shack and you see the chef at the same time in the burger and taste both. All of the burgers we’ve done with chefs – and we’ve been very fortunate to work with some of the best chefs in the world – they’re all special and unique and hit that hole.
  When we had this big party a few years ago for our 10th anniversary at Madison Square Park, I invited five friends to come down and cook burgers with us. We created mayhem in New York City. We sold 1000 burgers a day, six-hour waits. We had Daniel Boulud because what he’s done for burgers before we even started at DB Bistro with that truffle short rib stuffed burger, it rekindled everyone’s love affair with burgers. After that was David Chang, chef Andrew Zimmern, and Daniel Humm. That was our actual anniversary day. We were born at Eleven Madison Park. When Shake Shack started, we were in their dining room grinding beef, making the sauces, making the toppings. Every was made from scratch in that kitchen and wheeled out in a cart across the street every day to open up. We had to have Eleven Madison Park because that’s our home. The last chef was April Bloomfield. She was very special to me. We opened the same year, Spotted Pig and Shake Shack in 2004. Talk about two very iconic, defining hamburgers in America. Two very different styles, both starting the same year. Our blend is different. Her blend is different. Our architecture is different from ours. We griddle ours. She grills hers. If you come to New York City – forget I work at Shake Shack – if you ask me where to get burgers, you have to get Shake Shack, Spotted Pig, and I would throw Minetta Tavern in there. There’s just so much variety and difference. That’s the lexicon of burgers in New York, and that’s also influenced the world. Her burger was April, super simple. There’s bacon. There’s cheese. It’s rich and it’s yummy. To work with someone who has created and done so much with burgers from the same time we’ve been around, that’s an honor.
  My three favorites? David Chang. The burger that he originally wanted to do was going to either going to be a shrimp burger or mushroom burger. He didn’t want to do pork because everyone knew he would do a pork burger. “I know these other chefs, they’re going to do pork. I want to do something different.” I brought burger meat anyways. I brought cheese, I brought sauce, I brought bacon. He wanted to do a shrimp burger, and one of his guys said, “Why don’t we cold smoke the shrimp burger and put that on top of a burger? That’s the bacon. It’s bringing richness, umami, and smoke.” All of a sudden, everyone in the kitchen became children and became all excited. “Go next door to the Noodle Bar and get the pickles.” “We’ve got some onions downstairs. Go get it.” It was a pure collaboration born out of the process, in the moment.
  Sat Bains in London, a two-star Michelin chef in Nottingham, he’s from Nottingham, home to Sherwood Forest and Robin Hood. He created a burger inspired by the forest. This is pretty wild. He used blue cheese from where cows were grazing in the Sherwood Forest. He made a smoked aioli taking oak from the forest and using it to smoke the aioli. He took pine from the forest and make pine needle salt to season the patty. He went foraging and found porcinis and made mushroom ketchup. It tasted like the forest, but at the end of the day, ketchup, mayonnaise, pickled shallots, blue cheese, it tasted like a simple cheeseburger, but there was a little something extra. There was simplicity in Shake Shack, but this beautiful umami like sauvage thing going on there. The genius of Sat Bains.
  JL: What about the third burger?
  MR: Kind of in that same vein, I would say in L.A., Jon & Vinny. They helped us when we came here and let us do pop-ups with them. We wanted to return the favor. Our opening year was super successful. They gave us a home and gave us so much love coming out here that we wanted to return the favor. We brought them out to New York last year and had them do their sandwich – that famous chicken sandwich that I fell in love with on my first trip out here – on our chicken and our bun using their slaw and aioli to get a total Son of a Gun/Shake Shack mash-up. It was then, it was us, just celebrating our love of L.A. with two influential, amazing chefs. I’ll always love that one.
  JL: When you do travel, how do you decide where to eat?
  MR: It’s personal. I feel like I want to eat something I can only get in that city that’s very iconic. If I’m coming here, I feel like I want to get a French dip. Then there are so many wonderful chefs doing eccentric stuff. That is beautiful too. I just want to find something I can’t get in New York, first and foremost, and I also want to try everything else. Burgers and pizza. I’m a big fan of that stuff. First, I want to feel like this is the only place in the world where I can be sitting here having this experience. That’s what I crave.

• New York Press - http://www.nypress.com/local-news/20170104/meet-the-chef-shake-shacks-mark-rosati

  meet the chef: Shake Shack’s Mark Rosati
  Published Jan 4, 2017 at 12:48 pm (Updated Jan 4, 2017)

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  You’ve been traveling a lot—is it for business or fun?
  Business, but it’s been fun too! We just opened our first location in Tokyo a few weeks ago. We’ve been doing a lot expanding, but still very much have our hands in every single location, so I’ve been spending a lot of time on planes.

  Does Shake Shack change its menu abroad or between cities?
  We do. One part of our menu that changes in every single location worldwide and domestically is our frozen custard. We always create concretes that are locally inspired by the neighborhood. We like to hold up a mirror to that neighborhood and reflect back some of their history and culinary heritage through the voice and style of Shake Shack.
  Every now and then we’ll be so inspired by a city that we’ll create a burger for it. Right now we only have two: one in Texas, and one in Los Angeles. So you have to go to those cities to get those burgers—they have a really strong culinary connection to those cities.

  How did you get started in the culinary business?
  It actually kind of found me. When I moved to New York City over 20 years ago, I couldn’t help but be inspired by the restaurant scene in the city.
  I fell in love with Gramercy Tavern. But I met the chef at Gramercy Tavern and started asking him about all of these dishes at the restaurant. He said to me, “If you ever want to come watch us cook one night, here’s my card.” And I came in that Sunday. I always cooked at home, read books, watched cooking shows, but actually getting into that kitchen to see all of that cooking theory come to life got me hooked. I worked for free there for a two months because I had no culinary background. I eventually did three years in that kitchen, learned every culinary station, and then a few years at other restaurants, but after that I wanted to keep growing, maybe get into management, but the only restaurant in our company at that time that had a management position open was Shake Shack, and I did not want it. I was like “What about the other restaurants—what about Blue Smoke!? Those guys barbeque and drink bourbon all day, that’s me!” But I begrudgingly said yes to the Shake Shack Interview, and after going through it and saw that there was still that same high-quality meat and produce from Gramercy, and that there was still that same great Danny Meyer comradery and culture as there are at all of his restaurants. So I went into it thinking I’d try it out for a year, and I’m coming up on my ten year anniversary—so that’s how quickly time moves at the Shack.

  What’s one of your signature items at Shake Shack?
  One of my personal favorites is the first new burger we added to the menu since the inception of Shake Shack. It was about 5 years ago, at first we were hesitant to add anything—things were going really well, and it was like, if it’s not broken don’t fix it. But we also wanted to have some fun and wanted to work with bacon. But we didn’t want to just add bacon to the menu and have people throwing it on their Shack Burgers; we wanted to really make a statement with it, like we do with everything on the menu. So we created a burger based around all of the textures, flavors, and smokiness of bacon: The Smoke Shack burger.
  But we needed something that would cut the heaviness of the burger, make it feel light and really clean the palate, so I thought back to my childhood. I grew up Italian-American, and one of the dishes my family would make on Sundays was a pork chop with cherry peppers. The cherry peppers had a great acidity, tanginess, and heat that would cut through the richness.
  So I chopped them up and put them on the burger. And while it is all about the smokiness and the bacon, I think those cherry peppers really end up stealing the show.
  Check out what Mark and the Shake Shack team are bringing to the table at the Art of Food: www.artoffoodny.com

• Fast Company - https://www.fastcompany.com/3047020/how-two-shake-shack-executives-talked-their-way-into-their-dream-jobs

  06.24.15innovation agents
  How Two Shake Shack Executives Talked Their Way Into Their Dream Jobs
  Randy Garutti and Mark Rosati scored jobs in Danny Meyer’s hard-to-crack restaurant operation. Here’s what you can learn from their tactics.

  Shake Shack culinary director Mark Rosati (Photo: Stephen Lovekin, Getty Images for NYCWFF)

  By Rob Brunner5 minute Read
  Have you ever wondered how people actually land amazing gigs–like, say, working for revered New York restaurateur Danny Meyer? Shake Shack executives Randy Garutti and Mark Rosati–both of whom are featured in Fast Company’s in-depth look at the hit burger chain–each talked their way into plum jobs with Meyer’s operation, and their success offers some potentially useful guidance. Garutti, now Shake Shack’s CEO, started his career with Meyer as the general manager of now-closed Indian-fusion restaurant Tabla. And Shake Shack culinary director Mark Rosati got hired as a cook in Meyer’s Gramercy Tavern, one of New York’s top kitchens. How did they do it? Here are their stories.
  Put Passion Before Paycheck
  As a young New Yorker, Mark Rosati loved to eat out, saving up money for meals at high-end spots like Babbo and Meyer’s Gramercy Tavern, where he usually sat at the bar. “I started to get more of the bug about getting into the business,” he recalls, “because I became obsessed with how food was prepared. I could not understand how my chicken at home tasted horrible, but the same chicken at the restaurant was crispy and well-seasoned. I had friends who worked in the business, and I would pepper them with questions. I was buying a lot of books, watching a lot of TV shows, cooking for friends and family.”
  At one point, Rosati attended a food-and-wine festival where then Gramercy Tavern chef Tom Colicchio–not yet a household name but still one of New York’s leading chefs–was making an appearance. “I just started gushing,” Rosati says. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, I love the food. And, like, that sirloin dish: How long do you cook those onions? Because mine don’t taste like that.’ He’s like, ‘Whoa. Here’s my card. If you want to ever come in and watch us cook, it’ll probably answer a lot of your questions.’”
  I said, ‘I think I want in on this,’” Rosati recalls. “And they actually laughed.
  Rosati jumped at the chance to spend time in such a high-end kitchen. “I still remember everything I saw and smelled,” he says. “When I walked over to the side of the kitchen where the guy was cooking meat, he pulled the sirloin out of the oven and he put a big old chunk of butter in the pan that started to melt and foam. He threw in fresh thyme and started basting that sirloin with that. And the smell of all those ingredients together, right there I was like, ‘I need this. I think I want to be in here.’”
  Rosati went back, and went back again. They started giving him small jobs. “So I said, ‘I think I want in on this,’” he recalls. “And they actually laughed, like, ‘I don’t know, man. You kind of know what’s happening here, but I don’t know if you’ve ever felt the pressure.’ I was like, ‘I can do it!’”
  To prove himself, Rosati offered to work for free. It was tough, unglamorous labor, mostly doing prep work. But he stuck with it. “I worked with the a.m. crew that works on Monday through Friday. I was in at 6:30, out at 5. And every job they would give me . . . some were pretty crazy. One time I had to cut, like, two five-liter buckets of onions. They had to be perfectly quarter-inch diced. And my hand was literally in a claw. I couldn’t even move my eyes. But I was still smiling. The chef comes over and looks and goes, ‘Huh.’ Pulls an onion and says, ‘This one’s too small, this one’s too big. This is going to burn, this is going to be raw.’ The job wasn’t done. I had to keep going, but I was still like, this is kind of cool.”
  He continued to volunteer for two long months. Finally, they offered him a paying job, and Rosati found himself working at one of New York’s most-acclaimed restaurants.

  Randy Garutti, chief executive officer of Shake Shack, left, and Danny Meyer, founder of Union Square Hospitality GroupPhoto: Scott Eells, Bloomberg via Getty Images
  Persistence Can Trump Experience
  A New York-area native, Randy Garutti went to the Cornell School of Hotel Administration, then got a series of restaurant-management jobs in places like Aspen and Maui. But he came back to the east coast regularly to visit his family, and at one point he decided he needed to meet Danny Meyer, who at the time had just two restaurants, Union Square Café and Gramercy Tavern. “I called and called and called, and I couldn’t get past his assistant,” Garutti recalls. “I couldn’t meet with him.”
  I remember Danny saying, ‘OK, kid, what do you want?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know, sir.’
  But finally the persistence paid off, and Meyer agreed to give him a few minutes. A very few. “His assistant said, ‘He’s opening two restaurants, he does not have time, he has 10 minutes.” The meeting took place in the construction site of what would become Eleven Madison Park, which Meyer created. “I remember Danny sitting in front of me saying, ‘OK, kid, what do you want?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know, sir. You’re supposed to be a great guy; I just want to know how you do it.’ And we hit it off.” The 10-minute meeting stretched into three-quarters of an hour.
  That informational get-together didn’t lead directly to a job. Garutti went to Seattle to work at the restaurant Canlis, eventually getting promoted to general manager. But after a year and a half in Seattle, he wanted to move back to New York, and he called Meyer. This time, it was much easier to get through. Meyer put Garutti in touch with his business partner, and that led to an official interview. “So I come across country, I’m interviewing at Tabla and Eleven Madison,” says Garutti, who was then in his mid-20s. “And they tell me, ‘You’re a good kid, but you’re not ready to run a restaurant in New York.’” That was that, Garutti thought, and he flew back to Seattle.
  But that very night, he got a call. “They say, ‘We want you to come back and think about interviewing to be the GM of Tabla,’” Garutti recalls. “I think they decided they wanted to change it up a little bit. Danny basically said, ‘You’re not ready, but we think you can do it and we’re going to give you a shot. So I got the job.”

• AJC.com - http://atlantarestaurants.blog.ajc.com/2014/09/30/mark-rosati-shake-shacks-culinary-director/

  Mark Rosati: Shake Shack’s Culinary Director

  alampasona
  September 30, 2014 Uncategorized.
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  Today Shake Shack opens in the Buckhead Atlanta development, drawing in New York transplants and burger lovers alike. For fans of the burger, hot dog, and custard menu, Mark Rosati has a dream job. As Culinary Director, he visited Atlanta in April to work on creating the Buckhead location’s menu. He tasted his way across Atlanta, visiting more than 20 places over the course of just two days. Rosati works with local purveyors in each city to bring a few exclusive menu items, and Atlantans can expect to see H&F Bakery’s pecan pie and Cacao’s chocolate in two of Shake Shack’s custards. Rosati is full of energy and passion, and it radiated throughout our talk as he shared his culinary adventures in the city, his inspiration for the menu, and why he’s raving about Atlanta.

  Seriously? 20 places in two days?
  Believe it or not, yes! I think I might have hit all four corners of the city. Atlanta has an exciting dining scene and I wished I had more time to explore. Everywhere I did go, I loved. I went back to New York and raved to all my friends about how great it is.
  What was your strategy for researching Atlanta’s spots?

  With every city that we open, I visit anywhere from one day to one week to just explore and eat. That is what gives me the deep down understanding of the city. I find a lot of times that what I hear is big in a city’s culinary scene is not what the locals actually eat. I would only know that from being on the ground in the city.
  How did Atlanta surprise you?
  I was surprised how varied the cuisine was. There were a lot of takes that elevate classic cooking, like this rabbit dish I had at Miller Union. Not only is it elevated cooking with Southern influence, but it was a different kind of local flair. I wanted to see both the pinnacle of the local fine dining and the pinnacle of the local comfort food. If I can find something local and unique that I can’t get anywhere else in the world, I fall in love with it.
  Name three things that stood out to you here:
  Being a New Yorker, I take my black and white cookies seriously. Star Provisions was probably the best I ever had. And the Westside Provisions District had a great vibe. If I lived in Atlanta, that’s where I would hang out. Next time my goal is to go to Bacchanalia.
  I noticed that chefs have their own takes on pimento cheese and bacon brittles. After my first night, I had dozens of bags of different bacon brittles from chefs around town. The bacon here is just so smoky and sweet.
  Ann’s Snack Bar is this roadside shack, similar to what we model ourselves after. Their world famous burger is called the “ghetto burger.” It took one hour to wait for it, but when I finally took a bite, it was distinct and unique. It would be worth a 2-hour wait.
  How are you able to stay in shape while eating at so many places?
  (laughs) This is the worst shape I’ve been in two years. Last year we opened in four new international cities: London, Istanbul, Saudi Arabia and Moscow. So I had to do what I did in Atlanta in all four of these cities. I like to eat rich and decadent foods, but I believe everything in moderation. I generally eat healthy, like a simple roasted chicken or fish. I believe if you use great ingredients then it is easy to eat well.

  Mark Rosati and Shake Shack’s CEO Randy Garutti,
  Once you did all the research, what inspired the menu?
  The two main foods I associate with Atlanta are peaches and pecans. So we blended together H & F Bakery’s pecan pie and custard for the “Pecan Pie O’ My” custard. And I also wanted to pay homage to The Varsity’s peach pie, and there is something so comforting about a milkshake and burger. The “Peachtree” milkshake blends our caramel sauce with peaches. It’s the only shake exclusive to Atlanta. We also sweetened Shake Shack’s exclusive tea, because sweet tea is such a part of the South’s lifestyle.
  The “Campfire S’mores” custard uses Cacao’s chocolate. Why Cacao?
  When I visited Cacao, I fell in love with it. Everything from the baked goods to the different types of chocolate, the company had a complete vision from start to finish. So this was a twist on s’mores using our chocolate custard, Cacao’s chocolate, marshmallows and graham crackers. We also partnered with Camp Twin Lakes, and five percent of sales of Campfire Smore’s custard sold will benefit the local charity.
  What strikes you most about Atlanta’s culinary scene?
  Atlanta is the type of city that a chef can have a vision, and they can actually try to execute it. Because there are styles and ideas in cooking, an aspiring chef can open a restaurant and take a risk. It’s harder to be unique in other cities. You need to have a vision that is a proven factor because there is a lot of money on the line. I find Atlanta really encouraging for chefs that are looking for an audience that is going to be receptive to new culinary ideas.
  Once Shake Shack gets under way, what can we expect at Atlanta’s restaurant?
  Eventually we want to work with local craft brewers. We really want to reflect the local community and that is why each Shake Shack’s design looks different. Our goal is for the menu to feel like someone from Atlanta came and opened their own burger restaurant. We want it to have an essence of this city. It’s a difficult thing to do, but we have fun trying.

• Observer - http://observer.com/2014/03/the-iceman-cometh/

  The Iceman Cometh
  Shake Shack’s Mark Rosati is taking over the world, one custard at a time
  By Andrew Russeth • 03/27/14 8:30am

  Mark Rosati. (Courtesy Shake Shack)
  One extremely cold afternoon in February, Mark Rosati, Shake Shack’s culinary director, was sitting in the restaurant’s Battery Park branch talking about how well its frozen custard had been selling on even some of the most glacial days of this very frigid winter past. He had discussed the matter with colleagues.

  “The theory is: Sometimes the custard is actually warmer than it is outside, so it warms you up,” he said. “Ours we serve at about 18 degrees. Last night, you could warm up eating custard. That’s actually the theory in Moscow too.”
  Yes, Shake Shack, which was just a single, seasonal outpost in Madison Square Park when Mr. Rosati joined eight years ago, the quirkiest restaurant in Danny Meyer’s ever-expanding Union Square Hospitality Group, now has a branch in Moscow. There are also Shacks in Turkey, the United Kingdom and throughout the Middle East, plus locations in Florida, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. New York City has nine. The Madison Square Park location now sells about 150 pounds of custard on a good day, of which there should be many very soon, now that the weather is finally starting to turn.
  Mr. Rosati now creates the food for a veritable empire. He is a burger baron, a hot dog duke and a custard king—probably the largest producer of frozen custard in the five boroughs.

  Like Cincinnatus or Spider-Man, he did not seek this power. He had been working as a cook at Mr. Meyer’s Gramercy Tavern for three years when he decided he wanted to learn management. The only opening in the group at the time was Shake Shack—not exactly his first choice. But he went.
  Mr. Rosati had at least been a fan for some time, waiting in line to eat there before heading to Gramercy. He still remembers the first time he had the custard. “I think it was Fluffernutter custard,” he said. (It’s based on the peanut-butter-and-marshmallow crème sandwich.) “I said, ‘Can I have that made into a milkshake? And they were like, ‘Yes!’ And then I fell in love.”
  If you have been to any Meyer restaurant, you know that his employees are schooled in Midwestern nice, but Mr. Rosati makes those people look like brutes. He oozes the warm dedication of a Mormon missionary. He also pretty much resembles one. I want his job.

  “Last year, I spent more time abroad than I did back at home,” he told me happily. He traveled to all the new international Shacks to develop special recipes. Dubai got a honey almond cake custard that he assured me will arrive stateside later this year. An Istanbul location got a special concrete (custard and treats whipped together) with baklava, banana and cinnamon caramel sauce, which sounds like pretty much the most delicious thing ever conceived. In London, chef Fergus Henderson’s St. John Bakery makes for the Shack a “walnut brownie and a brown-sugar biscuit, and they’re killer.”
  There are now Shake Shacks near every major media publication in New York, which can’t hurt their public profile, even if it contributes to the weight fluctuations of Manhattan journalists. The New Republic has Madison Square Park; Newsweek and the Daily News have Battery Park; even TheBrooklyn Paper has Fulton Mall. TheNew York Times, the Post and Condé Nast all have the benefit of the Shack’s Times Square outpost. The custards never disappoint. But are there any Mr. Rosati felt didn’t work?
  “I always remember this one: raspberry jalapeño,” he said. “That was a while back. I was trying to figure out what my voice was. … I think one time I had a raspberry jalapeño cocktail. I thought: Wouldn’t that be delicious? The problem was, while it did taste good, it was hard to dial in the heat at a pleasurable level but for it to still have a little bite to it.” That one hasn’t returned. “With my flavors, I never want to shock anyone,” he said. “I want to give them a nice warm embrace.”

  A forthcoming Shake Shack in Atlanta would seem to offer plenty of opportunities for just that, with all of the pleasures that Southern cooking affords. His friends have been telling him “homespun memories, of sitting on their grandfather’s porch, and he would open a bottle of Coca-Cola and open a bag of salty peanuts and pour it in there and then eat the peanuts.”
  Excuse me?
  “I had never heard of it either!” Mr. Rosati said. “But I started asking people, and they were like, ‘Yeah, yeah, we do that. And I was like, ‘That’s awesome! Can that work in a custard? Can we do like a salty peanut Coca-Cola custard? I’ve played around with that one extensively. That’s not the easiest one to develop, because there are so many different parts.”
  Mr. Rosati estimates he has crafted about 300 custard flavors. He sends about 70 to the Shacks in any given year and tries to introduce 10 new ones annually.
  “At the end of the day, our basic custard is just a blank canvas,” he said.

• Bloomberg - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-27/shake-shack-s-head-chef-found-the-perfect-burger-in-a-supermarket

  Shake Shack’s Head Chef Found the Perfect Burger in a Supermarket
  Mark Rosati fell in love with a patty from a U.K. store. He has tips for finding great ones in New York, too
  By Richard Vines
  ‎September‎ ‎27‎, ‎2017‎ ‎2‎:‎01‎ ‎AM‎ ‎CEST

  Mark Rosati of Shake Shack puts British burgers to the test. Photographer: Richard Vines/Bloomberg
  You might expect to find the best burgers in restaurants where chefs have spent years discovering the finest breeds to produce the best combination of cuts—with the optimum fat content and the ideal texture to create the perfect patty.

  Or you could just go to the store and buy one.

  As upscale burger chains face an increasingly competitive landscape, U.K. supermarkets are working to produce the ultimate burger, employing leading chefs and sourcing great beef to create enticing, ready-to-cook patties. But how are they doing?

  We asked one of the biggest cheeses in the burger world, Shake Shack Culinary Director Mark Rosati, to put them to the test in a blind tasting at the Shake Shack outlet in London’s Covent Garden. He tasted five store-bought patties and discovered one worthy of the highest accolades.

  You can find a good burger in a few specialty places in New York: Greene Grape, Meat Hook and Fleishers, Rosati said. Of the last, he said: “Those guys take a lot of pride in sourcing animals locally, and they are dry-aging those cuts in house themselves.”
  Would grocery-store burgers fly in New York City? “Most New Yorkers will not go out and buy hamburgers at a store,” Rosati said as his chefs got cooking. “They will rather go to a restaurant.”
  Here’s what he had to say about the British burgers, scored and listed in descending order.
  Heston from Waitrose: The Ultimate Beef Burger £4.99 ($6.70)/250 grams: 10/10
  This supermarket burger is as close as you could come to going to a butcher, Rosati said.

  The winner of our taste test.Photographer: Waitrose
  It was created by chef Heston Blumenthal, who holds three Michelin stars at the Fat Duck. He has said it includes three different cuts of beef—chuck, brisket and aged fore rib—blended and aligned so the grain sits vertically. The meat is all British beef, simply seasoned with salt and pepper.
  Rosati liked that the burger had a distinctive shape and texture—as if someone had formed the patty with their own two hands. “This looks good, very natural,” he said. “You can see the different peaks and valleys in the meat as it’s cooked. The sides have all these little angular parts.”
  The burger’s look and taste held up after cooking, too. “You can see the juice and the fat coming out, which is something I look for,” he said. “It’s a nice beef smell. We are getting some interesting beef notes to it.”
  He added: “That’s a great burger. That’s a 10 right there. It's such a wonderful flavor.”
  Marks & Spencer: BBQ Grill Ultimate Steak Burgers £4/340 grams: 7/10
  Rosati liked the appearance, aroma and taste, but it wasn’t perfect: “It is pretty respectable,” he said. “It’s not going to be a game changer by any stretch of the imagination. But that delivers on what a burger should be. It has a nice beefy flavor, and I like the texture. It’s nice and soft. I just wish it were a little more juicy.”
  Co-op: Irresistible Hereford Beef Burgers £3.19/340 grams: 6/10
  “If I had friends coming over to my house and I wanted to impress them with a burger, this one might not quite do it,” Rosati said. The meat fibers were a little too compressed and compact, and the taste wasn’t robust.
  “It is not my favorite texture,” he said. “There’s pepper throughout the patty, but behind the pepper, the beef is really one dimensional.”
  Sainsbury’s: Taste the Difference British Beef Steak Burgers £2.50/340 grams: 5/10
  Uh-oh. “It feels a little mass produced,” Rosati said. “The way it’s formed, the meat fibers, how it’s ground. There’s not a lot of juice coming out.”
  It didn’t get better from there. “There’s a little funkiness to it, especially at the end of the bite, almost like maybe an aged flavor,” he said. “There’s way too much stuff going on.”
  Iceland: Luxury Ultimate 5oz Steak Burgers £2/284 grams: 4/10

  Rosati was not impressed.Photographer: Iceland
  These are the least expensive and contain a special ingredient: miso powder for extra flavor. Rosati was not impressed. “There’s no real juice coming out,” he said. “It’s on the dry side and tastes very seasoned. I am getting different flavors, and what I am looking for is delicious, pure meat. It’s more of a meatloaf flavor, texture going on. It’s not hitting the hamburger experience. “
  Richard Vines is chief food critic at Bloomberg. Follow him on Twitter @richardvines and Instagram @richard.vines.

• New York City Wine & Food Festival Website - https://nycwff.org/personality/mark-rosati/

  Mark Rosati
  Shake Shack

  Biography
  Born and raised in Connecticut, Shake Shack Culinary Director, Mark Rosati, grew up enjoying many of the state’s legendary roadside seafood and burger “shacks.” From an early age, he had a strong interest in food and a yearning to create.
  In 1995, it was Mark’s creative mindset and restless spirit that drove him to New York City to pursue a Film and Television degree from New York University. Life in the big city was an eye-opener. Instead of hitting the local bars each night, Mark would explore different neighborhoods and sample their varying cuisines. It was during one of these delectable missions that he met Chef Tom Colicchio at Gramercy Tavern—a fortuitous meeting that truly set his culinary career in motion.
  Mark swapped the production studio for the kitchen when in 2003 he accepted an entry-level position at Gramercy Tavern. During his tenure, he worked his way through every station in the kitchen, climbing the ranks and honing his culinary chops along the way.
  In 2007, Mark’s desire to gain front-of-house experience led him to Shake Shack. He joined the original Madison Square Park location as a Manager, and quickly found that Shake Shack’s fine dining heritage and casual atmosphere were the perfect mix for his background and personality. He helped open the Upper West Side Shack in the fall of 2008 as a Manager—but he was always tinkering in the kitchen with new recipes, many of which became menu items and specials over the years.
  By the summer of 2010, it was clear that Mark’s true calling was menu development, and he was named Shake Shack’s Culinary Development Manager. Mark’s simple yet sophisticated approach to making refined, delicious comfort food has had a tremendous impact on Shake Shack’s menu in both the United States and abroad.
  In 2013, Mark was promoted to his current position of Culinary Director, where he continues to push the envelope and redefine what’s possible for a fine casual restaurant by creating award-winning dishes.
  Follow Mark’s culinary pursuits on Instagram: @mark_rosati
  READ LESS

Shake Shack: Recipes & Stories

264.14 (Apr. 3, 2017): p68+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
* Shake Shack: Recipes & Stories
Randy Garutti and Mark Rosati. Clarkson Potter, $26 (240p) ISBN 978-0-553-45981-4
Garutti and Rosati, respectively the CEO and culinary director of Shake Shack, unveil a must-read chronicle for fans of Danny Meyer's famous eatery. This origin story is also a treatise on restaurant management, with chapters on corporate culture, the marketing efforts behind opening a new location, and a who's who covering every aspect of the operation, including the hot dog supplier, the furniture maker, and their graphic designer. Among the several behind-the-scenes tales is a whopper on how a million-dollar mistake involving French fries ultimately provided invaluable lessons in creating a superior fried chicken sandwich. The 70 recipes cover burgers, dogs, crinkle-cut fries, and shakes in their many varieties. Recreating a Shack burger is one part achievable (smash-cook them on a cast iron griddle) and one part impossible (butcher Pat LaFrieda's top secret beef blend). Still, the fun is in the trying, especially with various guest chef burgers such as David Chang's Momofuko shrimp stack, with beef and shrimp patties dressed in a sauce of mayo, ketchup, and miso paste, as well as the Shack's elusive peanut butter bacon burger. Peanut butter is also integral in the healthy dog biscuit recipe. The authors' choice to include a pumpkin spice shake over their epic peanut butter frozen concoction can only be attributed to brain freeze. (May)

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Shake Shack: Recipes & Stories." Publishers Weekly, 3 Apr. 2017, p. 68+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A489813765/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=454a9033. Accessed 10 Dec. 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A489813765

• Eater
  https://www.eater.com/2017/5/10/15609808/shake-shack-cookbook-preview
  Word count: 555

  Inside Shake Shack’s First Cookbook
  1
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  Take a peek at the beloved burger chain's first collection of recipes
  by Daniela Galarza May 10, 2017, 2:55pm EDT

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  “It’s kind of this amazing accident that happened,” marvels Randy Garutti, CEO of Shack Shack, the burger chain restaurateur Danny Meyer founded as a kiosk in a NYC park in 2004. In a week, Shake Shack’s rapid growth and popularity manifests with its first cookbook hitting bookstores: Shake Shack: Recipes & Stories, written by Garutti, along with culinary director Mark Rosati, and author Dorothy Kalins, is just as fun as the restaurant — which has 131 locations and plans to open 24 more this year.
  Related
  It’s Shake Shack’s World, You’re Just Eating In It
  Cruising past the cover, it looks almost like a yearbook — though not as literally as Big Gay Ice Cream’s 2015 book — with stories about Meyer’s inspiration for the first Shack, his initial resistance to expansion, business insights he learned along the way, and those first back-of-the-envelope-style menu plans. Rosati shares almost all of the company’s recipes, though unfortunately he isn’t giving away any real secrets here. The processes have been adapted for the home cook, and Garutti told Eater that only “six people” in the world know the real recipe for Shake Shack’s signature sauce.
  The recipe in the book for Shack sauce is a mixture of Hellman’s, Dijon, Heinz, pickle juice, salt, and pepper. “We make our own from scratch,” Garutti says, but when he and Rosati first started testing recipes for the book they came to the conclusion that these weren’t recipes “most people would want to make at home,” because they were labor-intensive, “messy,” and time-consuming.
  “We didn’t want this to sit on your shelf, we wanted to put out something you would actually reference,” Garutti says. Ultimately the authors decided to adapt recipes using easier-to-find ingredients like store-bought mayonnaise rather than ask people to make their own mayonnaise from scratch. Because of that, the book is for super fans and those who want to learn how to mimic Shack’s taste without having to buy any fancy equipment.
  Organized by menu item, each major category — burgers, chicken sandwiches, fries, concretes — gets its own “Anatomy” section. This is where some of Shake Shack’s secrets are revealed, such as hints about the Pat LaFrieda burger blend, the brand of chocolate sprinkles used in chocolate concretes, and the type of salt that seasons those crinkle cut fries.
  When asked if they make Shake Shack recipes at home, Garutti says he’s “a grill burger guy” and prefers to go to a Shack for his griddle top fix. But Rosati says, “I do actually. These days my idea is just using great meat, a great bun, and cooking it properly. In terms of the toppings and what I put on there, I leave it up to [my guests]. I just like to put ton a different stuff on my table, different sauces, condiments, and let them build their burger. I want everyone to have fun with it.”
  Shake Shack: Recipes & Stories will be released on May 16 and is available for pre-order now.

• Chicago Tribune
  http://www.chicagotribune.com/dining/recipes/ct-food-0607-shake-shack-cookbook-20170518-story.html
  Word count: 533

  We tried Shake Shack burger recipe from new cookbook: How's it taste?

  The ShackBurger we prepared in the Tribune test kitchen tasted a lot like the fresh one we ordered in from a nearby Shake Shake. The vanilla shake, though, was not as thick and creamy as the restaurant version. (Food styling by Lisa Schumacher.) (Michael Tercha/Chicago Tribune)

  Nick KindelspergerContact Reporter
  Chicago Tribune

  Does anyone need a cookbook for a hamburger? That's the question behind "Shake Shack: Recipes & Stories," the brand new cookbook by the wildly successful New York-based restaurant chain. Considering just about every American has at one time or another flipped a beef patty, this seems like a stretch. But if, like me, you've a serious fan of Shake Shack's ultra-beefy burger, you might pick up this book in hopes of uncovering any secrets.
  Shake Shack doesn't reveal all of its cards. The company's much-loved ShackSauce is apparently behind lock and key, so the one given is seriously labeled "close enough." You also won't find the exact blend of beef that goes into the patties, though a number of suggestions are given.
  Even with these caveats, the book walks through the basic process of how each burger is made, including the method for smashing the burger on the griddle, a method, that should be noted, was decidedly out of fashion when Shake Shack opened in the early millennium. And while you won't get the exact blend, the book does a good job of walking through what each cut adds to the flavor of the final beef patty.
  Of course, there's only one way to decide whether the recipe given is close to a burger you'd find at Shake Shack, and that's to have our test kitchen cook one according to the book and then compare it to the original.

  And the consensus?
  Honestly, the two burgers really did taste similar. We chose the beef blend of 80 percent chuck and 20 percent short rib, which the book claimed would result in a "richer blend." Each bite was remarkably beefy, with a nice sear from the smashing technique. Even the not-quite Shack-Sauce tasted remarkably like the real deal.
  Shake Shack has two locations in Chicago, with a third on the way (not to mention the outlet in suburban Skokie). But if you live farther away or want to re-create those burgers in the comfort of your own home, this book is a must order.
  We can't say the same about the shakes. We also tested the vanilla shake recipe, but that didn't go nearly as well. The two tasted almost nothing alike.

  Whether or not you'll care about the story behind the first Shake Shack location in Manhattan's Madison Square Park probably depends on if you lived in New York around that time. As a former resident, the initial hype of the restaurant was real. I used to work across the street, and as a newly hired employee, I was given the task of standing in the insane line on a number of occasions to buy burgers for the higher-ups.
  nkindelsperger@chicagotribune.com