Phillip Frankland Lee founded Scratch Restaurants with wife Margarita Kallas-Lee in Los Angeles. They initially ran Scratch|Bar and The Gadarene Swine. That’s when I met the couple, who later relocated to Austin, Texas. Scratch Restaurants now operates 13 Sushi by Scratch Restaurants locations across the U.S., Pasta|Bar in Encino, and Shokunin ATX in Austin. They also co-founded NADC Burger (Not A Damn Chance) with Neen Williams, a professional skateboarder, ambitious home cook, and spice blend company owner. I met Neen when NADC Burger opened a branch in L.A.’s Westwood Village. Learn how Phillip and Neen first connected and their natural progression with NADC Burger.

Josh Lurie: Let’s start with Neen. What’s the connection between skateboarders and restaurants? For example, Tony Hawk has Chick & Hawk down in Encinitas and Don Nguyen has Burger She Wrote in L.A.

Neen Williams: To support our performance, you’ve got to eat tons of food throughout the day. A lot of us are really into food. We actually do a lot of home cooking. People wouldn’t necessarily think that. We grew up without too much money, so a lot of times we just go to the grocery store and make food.

JL: What are your go-to dishes at home?

Neen: It depends. I make Neapolitan and New York style pizza. I make my dough, all that stuff. I like making a lot of Hispanic cuisine, like carnitas and barbacoa under the ground. I like making steaks and chicken, lots of rice, Thai food, all of that.

Phillip Frankland Lee: He’s too humble to say it, but not everybody cooks at home like he does. I grew up skateboarding and, yeah, there’s one dude in your group who makes the burgers after the skate sessions. We bonded over skating and cooking. We were talking about cooking and he was like, “Oh, I cook.” And I’m like, “Cute.” He’s like, “Let me show you what I have.” He showed me a 10-foot masonry hearth in his backyard that looks exactly like what I had at Scratch|Bar. I love Tony Hawk. I don’t know if he’s on the line, but Neen is. I was a skater. My little brother, Lennon, used to say, “If you can skate, if you can put a basketball in a hoop, you can work the line.” It’s a hand-eye coordination rhythm. Skaters make some of our best cooks, because there’s the repetition element and never giving up and striving to get better. It’s not good enough to just land a trick.

Neen: Trying to make things perfect.

Phillip: It has to be perfect, and you gotta fucking look cool doing it. And when you’re working the line, too many people just try to get food out, but skaters try to make it look fucking cool.

Neen: This burger is gonna smack every single time. I seasoned it just right, I got that nice crust on it. It’s gonna be bomb. I was always very passionate about cooking. Most of what I would watch on TV and cable were cooking shows. That’s where I first saw Phillip, actually. I would watch “Chopped” and all that stuff, because I just loved cooking. Then I would go to restaurants and eat kra pao at a Thai restaurant, and then make it at home and try to imitate those flavors that I tasted at that restaurant. That’s kind of how I got my cooking background, by trying to imitate flavors that I’ve had before.

JL: When you were traveling to skate professionally. How would you find restaurants on the road?

Phillip: People like me would hit him up. That’s how we became friends. I saw you were skating in Austin, like, “Yo, come through my spot.” Because I saw him on TV. He saw me on TV. For some reason I feel like I’d be friends with that dude.

JL: What year was this?

Phillip: Early ‘21.

Neen: Normally, before I would go to a spot, I would use my social media and would write, “Hey, I’m going to Austin, Texas. Where should I eat?” And homies would send DMs to me like, “Try this spot.” I’d try it. Because I feel like the community, we all have our favorite spots. If you’re gonna share a spot, you like this spot, so I’m gonna trust you. I’m gonna look at it, and I’m gonna go try that spot. Phillip hit me up, and he was like, “Hey, come try my spot.” And I was like, “What is it?” He’s like, “Sushi.” And I was like, “Okay, I’ll roll over.” I didn’t know what it was gonna be. I just thought it was gonna be sushi, California rolls or something. And I went, and it’s like a 17-course omakase, a little hidden gem that was very high, elevated sushi, and I was blown away.

JL: Did it take much convincing to you for you to become a restaurateur with Phillip?

Neen: No, it just happened organically.

Phillip: It was never a plan. This was never supposed to exist.

JL: How did it happen?

Neen: We literally just started making burgers on the weekends, as friends. Like, “Hey, you like burgers, I like burgers, let’s make a burger.” So we figured out the burger that was our perfect burger, using the spices from my spice rub company, figuring out the right one. From the pickles to the sauce, the toppings, the bun, the meat-to-bun ratio. Then we just started doing pop-ups around town, at comedy shows and skate parks.

Phillip: Just free pop-ups. We were giving burgers away for free. We cooked whole pigs. We’d cook venison. We’d cook steaks. We were always hanging and cooking.

Neen: Cooking together. That’s what we would do for fun.

Phillip: We found it fun to go show up to a skate park and bring enough food to serve 50 free burgers. So we did that. We’d show up to breweries and skate parks and comedy shows and just say, “Free burgers,” till we ran out. That was something we did for fun with no “I gotta fucking open a burger spot” plan. I’m busy. He’s busy. It was just a thing to do.

Neen: We would hit each other up and be like, “Hey, what are you gonna do this weekend?” “Maybe go to this comedy show.” “Want to make burgers?” “Yeah, let’s do it.” Then we’d meet up. We’d go to the store, buy some meat, buy all the ingredients, go to one of his restaurants, and then just prep off to the corner, while everything was in service. Then we would do like 50 burgers and give them away to the people, because we just love to cook. It was like, “Oh, this is fun.”

JL: You’ve got burgers and sushi now. At one point, you and your wife Margarita had a vegan restaurant.

Phillip: We did.

JL: What was the evolution from that to this?

Phillip: That was 12 years ago, so it’s been quite a bit. The main thing is I’ve always liked concepts. I’m a musician. I like when albums have a point of view. I like concept albums in general. And I think that we don’t open restaurants, we open concepts. With Scratch|Bar, the concept was everything from scratch, 20+ courses. The concept for The Gadarene Swine was, how can I do this with taking away the crutch of meat? 12 years before Eleven Madison Park. From there, I wanted to make sushi, so I opened a Japanese restaurant, making nigiri. Frankland’s Crab & Company, which was short-lived, turned into Pasta|Bar. We literally were like, “Hey, there’s no good pasta around here. Want to make pasta?” Pasta|Bar.

Neen: That kind of reminds me of the burger. There were a few good burger spots around us in Austin, but we wanted to make the burger that we grew up to, that we love. You know? Let’s just start making burgers and see what happens.

JL: Did you totally agree all the way along about what makes a great burger? That this is the type of burger or style to go with?

Neen: Oh, yeah. I mean, he’s from L.A. I lived here for 13 years, so realistically, I grew up on a lot of the burgers out here in L.A. Some of my favorite burger spots are out here. So we both kind of grew up on the same burgers. He does like a different burger than I do, but we came together and created the burger that we both love.

Phillip: I ate at In-N-Out when I landed last night.

JL: Of course.

Phillip: Have to. I mean, In-N-Out is a big, big, big inspiration for this concept.

JL: This might open too big of a door for right now. But you had a restaurant on La Cienega, you had restaurants in Studio City and Encino. Now you’re leading this huge group around the country. What were the driving factors that enabled you and your team to go national?

Phillip: Happenstance. I mean, that’s truly what it is. We didn’t go out and raise money. I guess I did say I wanted 100 world class restaurants by the time I’m 50 – I have said those things – but I said that without any plan.

Neen: But I think you got to manifest stuff, right? Put it into action?

Phillip: Yeah, and that’s really the case. “I want more restaurants.” Somebody hits me up in Seattle. “Hey, I have an empty space.” Like with New York, I just knew that one day somebody would come to us with the right space, and they did. That happened in Chicago. That’s how we got this space here. We rarely go and look at this point… Our company is run by a bunch of chefs who have aged out of the kitchen. Other than legal and finances, every other position in the company is run by a chef.

Neen: It’s just a small, tight crew too. No corporates, just us.

JL: So you still don’t have any outside investors?

Neen: No, it’s just us. Grassroots. Mom and Pop. Pop and pop.

JL: In terms amplifying what you envision, and making it happen, what has the Joe Rogan podcast appearance meant to you and your business?

Phillip: I’ve only been on “The Joe Rogan Experience” once, and it’s kind of hard to say what impact that had, because I went on a year after he had already made us the hardest reservation on planet Earth. People see a huge bump from the show, because they go from obscurity into the limelight. He said to me, if I would agree to stay in Austin for another month, he would guarantee I’m sold out by promoting the restaurant and paying for any seats he didn’t sell. When he made that post about me making the best sushi on planet Earth, by the next morning, we had 25,000 people on the wait list. It did become the hardest reservation on planet Earth for well over a year. That was six years ago. When I went on the show, I’d already seen the biggest pop you could ever pop in the world. It was awesome.

JL: You and your brother Lennon Silvers Lee are both talented, accomplished chefs. Was it a given that you would both become chefs, or did you consider other things?

Phillip: I wanted to be a rock star. I wanted to play music. I was a high school dropout. I was a touring musician. When I dropped out of high school, I told my parents, if the band doesn’t work out, I’m gonna go to sushi school. I never ended up going to sushi school, but I always wanted to be a chef. That was one of the things I was very passionate about. My brother, no. He just needed a job, was my dishwasher, and really didn’t fall in love with it until I put him into sushi. Fast forward six years, he now has a Michelin star making sushi.

Neen: Crushing it.