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Gaynell Suchanek
Marcus: Yeah. So, I'm a big fan of Roosters. As a matter of fact, we were just talking and I told you, we have been kind of tracking Roosters since before you even started when John Fry mentioned ... John Fry of Five, which is where I think you worked at, when he mentioned that you were going to do kind of a Latin Food taco restaurant downtown, our ears perked up. Because my wife and I have a running joke that we could pretty much eat Mexican food every meal for a week, and not be tired of it.
Marcus: Yeah. But it's great to have you here. So, going back, one of the things, if you've listened to this before, you know, we want to understand the person behind the business. So, why don't you tell us where you're from, where'd you go to high school, college. What did you major in, if you went to college? Are you married? Give us some of the back story of who Frankie is.
Frankie: Okay. I grew up in Foley, Alabama not far from here, Bolling County. The last city before you get to Gulf Shores. So, sometimes I claim Gulf Shores, because it sounds a little bit better I think; the beach. But, I grew up on a farm, and grew up kind of an only child. I had two older half-brothers, they were gone by the time I was seven. So, after that it was just me on the farm. We lived in a house next to my grandparent's house, so I spent a lot of time with my grandparents. My parents both worked really hard. My mom worked in a factory building airplane parts. And my dad was a farmer/welder. And the welding shop was on the farm too, so I grew up a kid getting to ... Almost a little bit Andy Griffith-ish. Out fishing at the pond and catching crawfish in the ditch, and shooting at birds, and running around with a bee-bee gun. And playing in the dirt.
My grandparents, like I said, lived ... Their the ones that bought the land and started the farm. And then my dad built a house on the land. So, they came from just a salt of the earth, old school background. They, both of grandparents, farmed. So, my grandma was out tin the field every day. But, yet she still found time to come in at 11:00, start making lunch, and lunch was 12:00 on the dot, Monday through Friday. Saturday was a wild card. Lunch was kind of a little bit loose. Sunday was church. Eat at church, come home, maybe have a late lunch. But, Monday through Friday was ... During the summer, they also had a black berry patch. Like a you pick, we pick kind of thing. So, as a kid, my summers were spent getting up, going over there, picking blackberries for money.Going in having a snack, of fresh blackberries and milk with sugar. Or homemade apple pie-
Frankie: Yeah. It was definitely ... Now that I'm older, I'm 38 now ... And now that I'm older and I look back, at the time it's like you're growing up, you don't really think about how you're growing up. But in hindsight, looking back, I'm just like, I wish I could give that life to my kids. We're from Mobile. We have nice life. But, it's not that. It's not that like-
Marcus: There's no recreating that. But, I just think it's so cool that you can look back ... I mean, you have to think about the influence that that's had on your life, and all the things that you've done in the restaurant industry, and then now owning your own restaurant.
Frankie: Well, she started my love of, I guess, Latin food. She, actually her dad, my great-grandfather, worked for United Fruit and she actually grew up bouncing between Boston, Massachusetts, which is where he was from and Columbia, Costa Rica, Panama. She would spend part of the year living with him down in these Central American and South American countries. There's an old photo that we found at my grandparents house of a car that he was in that he had shot by guerrilla fighters, from the 50s. It's got bullet holes down the side.But, like I said, I grew up on the farm with her in Foley. And she would cook plantains.
Marcus: Which in case you don't know and you're listening to this, that's not a southern delicacy to the United States, that is a southern southern delicacy to Latin and South America.
Frankie: And so, that ... I got away from ... I spent a lot time in my late teens/early 20s just kind of ... And going back to the college thing, I did not go to college. I graduated high school and that was it as far as school goes. But, I spent a lot of time just kind of not knowing what I was going to do. I didn't really have a passion for food at that time, honestly I played music and just kind of traveled around, and didn't have any direction. But, then I got in the restaurant business, and that's when I really started to ... And I fell in love with the restaurant business, and fell in love with food, became ... I think you're kind of a foodie.I guess as kind of a foodie I love to go into restaurants. I love trying different stuff, and experiencing new tastes and cuisines. And that's when I started to be reflective about how I grew up. And started to realize how cool it was that we ate our own cows, we at our own pigs, we ate our own chickens. My dad had a wooden block in the back yard that he cut the chicken's heads off with. If we wanted chicken, we didn't go to the store, my dad went literally to the backyard to the barn, grabbed chicken, cut the head off. As a kid I was like, chasing it around the yard, because they flop around and stuff. And we would pull the feathers off. And if we wanted fish, we went fishing.So, it was just, in hindsight, I think it was a cool way to grow up.
Marcus: I mean, that's kind of a ... I don't know. That's an introspective question to ask in a podcast like this. But, I just think ... Often times I wonder if, now looking back, you can see where that effected you. But, was there as thread between the two points that you just weren't really aware of, and then all of a sudden it kind of blossomed on the other side?
Frankie: Possibly, yeah. I mean, life is funny. Things change. You know, in that line that you were just talking about, there's also passion for baseball when I was a kid. Huge baseball fan. And then as I became a teenager, I got real into music. I grew up in the 90s, so Nirvana.
Frankie: Grew my hair long, started playing guitar, got real into music, real into guitar. And then, just kind of, life ... You have ebbs and flows of what you're interested in. And so, definitely now that I'm doing this, and interested in food and different types of cuisines, and restaurants, and how restaurants operate I kind of just move that passion from thing to thing. Of course, I still like baseball. I still like to play guitar, but now my passion is restaurants and food.
Frankie: No. I was like a bar manager of sorts. I started out a bartender, and I guess towards the end I was somewhat of a bar manager, I guess. But, the line goes from working your basic dish washing/bussing jobs, in the late teens/early 20s. Jobs I didn't care about. I'd work as a dish washer for a few weeks, quit, whatever. I was partying and whatever. And then I did a lot of traveling. And I didn't really ... I did some construction jobs. I didn't really know what I was doing. And then, in my mid-20s is when I met my now wife. And I moved in with her in Mobile. And she was living on Stocking Street. If anybody knows, that's in midtown, like where the old recycling center used to be, off Government. And Stocking Street is right next to the old La Pizzeria. Anybody that knows Mobile, has probably heard about it, or knew about it. It was there for a long time. It was little neighborhood place.Well, she happened to know the chef there or something like that. And I moved in with her, and she was like, I can get you a job maybe at this place. And I went, and got a job as a ... I had minor restaurant experience, so they hired me as a waiter. And that was ... I think a lot of people ... I didn't go to college, like I said earlier. And so, I didn't have any real direction. I wasn't like I was the kind of guy that was like, oh I'm going to right out of high school go to college, and then I know exactly what I'm going to do when I graduate.
Frankie: Like, my brother knew he was going to be an Air Force pilot, since we was five years old. And he became that. That was not me. I didn't know what I was going to do. So, anyway, I started working there, decided, you know what, this is a lot better than construction. It's indoors, it's in the air conditioning. It's year round food and wine, and cool people work in restaurants. It's fun. And the pace ... I'd done retail before, and retail is just so boring. It can just-
Frankie: Yeah. And so with the restaurant business, it's fast paced. A night can fly by. And also, the money is pretty good, waiting tables. It was more of a high end type place, Italian place. So, started to really get into it then. And worked with an older waiter who was real into wine, he started teaching me about wine, and cocktails and stuff. Which I didn't know anything about. And I knew I liked to drink, but that's all I knew. So, teach me about wine and cocktails. And then the owner, Todd Henson, y'all might know him. I learned a lot from him, I think.He instilled in me the idea that no matter what you do in life, if you're going to be a waiter, be the best waiter you can be. Yeah, you might want to be a musician, or an actor, or artist, whatever. But, while you're waiting tables, why not just be ... If you're going to do something do it the best you possibly can, you know? I've worked with waiters over the years who have that mentality, and some who, they hate it. And they come to work, and it's like you're just wasting your life. If you're going to live your life, live it to the fullest, even if it means you're mopping a floor. Find a way to have fun doing it. And so, that's when I kind of got into, maybe this is something I can actually do.And then I kept working there for years, ended up actually leaving there to move to Austin, Texas with my wife. We lived there, and I worked in a restaurant there too. And she got home sick, we both kind of got home sick, so we decided to move back. And actually started working back at La Pizzeria. And became a manager, kind of. That was my first little taste of any kind of responsibility as far as managing the staff or anything like that. And I was horrible at it at first. I think over the years, I've definitely gotten better at that. But, at the beginning, it's just like ... It's hard to manage people when you're young and if you've never had any training to do it.
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