Evan LeRoy is the co-owner and pitmaster of LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue in Austin, Texas. A Michelin star recipient in the MICHELIN Guide Texas 2024, number two on Texas Monthly's Top 50 BBQ Joints in 2025, and 2025 James Beard Award Semifinalist for Best Chef Texas, LeRoy has spent nearly a decade redefining Texas barbecue through whole-animal butchery, locally sourced meats, and a cooking philosophy that refuses to treat barbecue as a fixed menu. His debut cookbook, New School Barbecue: Recipes for Next-Level Smoking and Grilling from Austin's LeRoy and Lewis, co-authored with Paula Forbes, is out May 12, 2026.

In this episode, he gets direct about the one thing most chefs with new recognition do not want to admit: the star changed everything, and not all of it in ways that are easy to manage.

What earning and retaining a Michelin star actually does to a barbecue operation in terms of volume, scrutiny, and internal pressure

Why Texas barbecue's dominance as the national formula is creating a copycat monoculture that is hurting the genre

The complete brisket process from trimming for airflow to Dalmatian rub ratios, wood selection, wrapping decisions, and the overnight heated rest

André Natera and Evan LeRoy cover the ways success can quietly destabilize priorities, how portioning precision and pricing realities shift under heightened expectations, and the three-year process behind translating LeRoy and Lewis's restaurant technique into nearly 100 home-cook-friendly recipes for the cookbook. The episode closes with how LeRoy steps away from the pressure and what he is watching in the broader BBQ landscape.

New School Barbecue is available wherever books are sold, out May 12, 2026.

This episode is sponsored by Rational USA. Learn more at https://rationalusa.com

Guest

• Evan LeRoy on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/evanleroybbq/

Standard Links Block

• Lead Like a Chef App → https://studio.com/apps/andre/leadlikeachef
• Subscribe on Substack → https://chefspsa.substack.com/
• Shop Chef's PSA Merch → https://shop.chefspsa.com/
• Visit Chef's PSA Website → https://chefspsa.com/

Phillip Frankland Lee is the co-owner and executive chef of Scratch Restaurants Group, the Michelin-starred hospitality company he operates with his wife and executive pastry chef Margarita Kallas-Lee. The group includes Sushi by Scratch Restaurants, Pasta|Bar, NADC Burger, and Shokunin. Lee is a Top Chef Season 13 competitor, San Pellegrino Young Chef 2015 finalist, Zagat 30 Under 30 honoree, and Food Network record holder for most consecutive competition wins. This is his third appearance on Chef's PSA.

His argument is direct: you can open a restaurant for $10,000 or less, break even in 60 days, and scale that model to 32 locations if you keep the footprint small, the staff lean, and every concept focused on one core product.

How taking over already-permitted spaces eliminates the buildout cost that kills most restaurant openings

Why small tasting-menu formats scale better than large casual concepts and how the math actually works

Where chef inspiration ends and outright copying begins, and why that line matters more now than ever

André Natera and Phillip Frankland Lee cover the organic growth of NADC Burger from free pop-ups to multiple locations, the conversion of a Pasta|Bar location into a 22-seat boutique steakhouse, Lee's open world RPG framework for handling adversity, hard lessons from sharks and risky partnerships, and the detailed debate on homage versus originality in culinary culture. The episode closes with a preview of his upcoming podcast Fire the Board and new Austin-area concepts.

Guest

• Phillip Frankland Lee on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/phillipfranklandlee/

Links

• Lead Like a Chef App → ⁠https://studio.com/apps/andre/leadlikeachef⁠
• Subscribe on Substack → https://chefspsa.substack.com/
• Shop Chef's PSA Merch → https://shop.chefspsa.com/
• Visit Chef's PSA Website → https://chefspsa.com/

Chef Josh Sutcliff is the Corporate Executive Chef and Partner at 55 Seventy, a private members club for wine lovers with locations in Dallas and Houston. A Le Cordon Bleu graduate, CultureMap Dallas Rising Star Chef of the Year, and Zagat 30 Under 30 honoree, his career includes chef de cuisine at FT33, executive chef at Mirador, and stints at The Joule and Knox Bistro.

He started washing dishes at 13. Federal agents had just arrested his father. His family was living in a camper. The kitchen gave him stability when nothing else did, and the chaotic, pirate-energy environment he found there never stopped feeling like home.

Why consistency and station setup reveal more about a cook than talent ever will

How to map a chef career by starting at the end goal and working backward, not forward

What the shift from chef to business thinker actually requires when you are scaling new openings

André Natera and Josh Sutcliff cover the sports mindset that shaped his approach to kitchen teams, what makes young cooks succeed or stall, his systems for onboarding and standardized recipes, and the long game of reputation and networking in a small industry. The episode closes with the transition from day-to-day cooking to corporate executive chef and what that demands from a leader.

Guest

• Josh Sutcliff on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/jsutcliff/

Links

• Subscribe on Substack → https://chefspsa.substack.com/
• Lead Like a Chef App https://studio.com/apps/andre/leadlikeachef
• Shop Chef's PSA Merch → https://shop.chefspsa.com/
• Visit Chef's PSA Website → https://chefspsa.com/