Gabriel Ornelas On Building Community

JR: Vespertine. I’ve been talking about Vespertine since in April of 2024.

GO: In Culver City.

JR: It is my it restaurant. It is my it meal. It is the one that I can’t stop thinking about that makes me shiver every time I think about it.

GO: Yeah. It was such a memorable experience, and I think that’s ultimately what I talk about this business is all about. Everyone’s trying to capture a memory within you so you take it with you. But that episode that we did with Jordan Khan, the chef, that affected me in a way to really … He’d never done a podcast before. And so I felt really honored that he chose us to do his first and his team felt like we were going to do him justice in a way of explaining his process, explaining why he does what he does, and also some of the challenges that he’s been through. He’s quite private in a lot of ways. And so to be able to offer up a space that I think he felt quite comfortable, and I think he opened up a lot when talking about his transformation as an individual, which ultimately has affected his food.

JR: How do people get comfortable with you to start telling you things like-

GO: I should ask you that question.

JR: Well, we’re friends.

GO: We’ve known each other for a long time.

JR: But I think that there is something about people to talk to you and making them feel comfortable so that they know that you’re not judging them by the things that they say, or that they can be vulnerable, they can be introspective, and you allow them to go into themselves.

GO: I think as I’ve gone on this journey of creating this podcast, but also I always say the Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours, I’ve spent the last 15 years traveling the world talking to incredible people. And I felt like that gave me the right, in a way to be able to do this. But I think a lot about what makes Oprah Winfrey, what makes Larry King, what makes some of the icons past generation and this generation great conversationalists? I don’t think of myself as an interviewer. It’s truly On The Pass and what we do is … I think Nina Oduro had wrote something and said, “It’s a look into a chat over coffee or a fireside chat with Gabriel and his friends.” I just was on with Laurent, the president of Relais Châteaux, and he was a little bit not nervous, but I think every journalist, sometimes he says, there’s some similar questions or it’s very, answer this question, answer this question, answer this question.

JR: Tick, tick, tick, tick.

GO: Yeah. Exactly. And for me, I’m like, what’s going to make this conversation the best? And I said, “Laurent, you and I need to have a 30 to 40 minute conversation about who we are as individuals.” I learned about his family, I learned about being in the hotel business. He asked me about what’s exciting me right now. And just even in that 30 to 40 minutes, he said, “All right, I feel good about this now.”