Vinny Dotolo | Award-Winning Chef and Co-Owner of Jon & Vinny’s

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Vinny Dotolo (1:01)

Yeah, I imagine that it inspires people to constantly, you know, get out there and make their own. But it's, it's great.

SPEAKER_1 (1:08)

You know, podcasting, I feel like it's one of those formats that, you know, it's, it's tough to tell like what a person's like on like a Twitter, for example, or on social media. Right?

Vinny Dotolo (1:16)

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_1 (1:17)

So when you, when you hear someone speak, it's, it's like, oh, that's who they are.

Vinny Dotolo (1:21)

Yeah. Those little short bits of, of a, of a idea maybe sort of, you know, taken out of context. And, and, and I think, yeah, social media can be, I kind of like lean towards not being on it.

SPEAKER_1 (1:37)

Yeah. I feel like you're pretty off of social media. Yeah. I was trying to like search and see one photo on Instagram. Yeah.

Vinny Dotolo (1:43)

Now I do.

I mean, in a deep way, I sort of just, I, I sort of value the privacy more than I do, sort of wanting to be out there showing everybody everything I do. And then like I'd, I'd prefer to talk about like what I'm doing with somebody I know, or with somebody I don't know. Rather than then, I saw you do this and I saw you were there. And it started, it started to just, it felt weird to me. It felt weird to me that people knew so much about what I was doing, but I thought they knew. Exactly. So I was showing you that little thing, but like that was just a minor part of the story. Just like visually it was cooler. You know, I actually really love, I love Instagram for what it sort of originated as, was like just visual content. I think that that part's cool, but I don't need to see people laying at a beach or whatever.

SPEAKER_1 (2:34)

Yeah, for sure. I feel like these days I just consume certain things. And like, if you're really into like watches, for example, or cars.

Vinny Dotolo (2:42)

Yeah, it's great.

SPEAKER_1 (2:42)

Yeah, because the algorithm just like feeds you that stuff.

Vinny Dotolo (2:45)

Which is great. I don't even know if I see probably 90% of the people I even follow anymore. I just see like my interest more. So it's like mostly art. Yep. Some food I kind of actually, I'm so deeply interested in food, but I'm also, I just don't need to see endless pictures of food.

SPEAKER_1 (3:05)

Sometimes you just need to break.

Vinny Dotolo (3:06)

I think the one that always gets me is like, I cannot be on social media on Thanksgiving Day. It's like, come on, everybody knows what this looks like, you know?

SPEAKER_1 (3:14)

It's like that and like for the 4th of July with all the fireworks.

Vinny Dotolo (3:18)

But I love when you find somebody that has gone somewhere far in a way that you may have never even heard about or imagined, and then you discover this thing and it's, you know, something that's right up your alley. So that part I really love in the visual aspect. Like I said, photography, art, I love that.

SPEAKER_1 (3:35)

Have you always just been into that?

Vinny Dotolo (3:37)

Yeah, I've always kind of been into that side of things, just out of a personal interest, you know. Sometimes we try to tie it into work, but, you know, we're not all the same. So we all kind of visualize things a little bit differently. But from my perspective, I try to bring that quality to it.

SPEAKER_1 (4:00)

Yeah, it seems like there's this correlation between art and food. Like a lot of chefs these days, maybe not like three decades ago, four decades ago, but these days have like this artistic side or interest in art. Right. Like, do you think? Where do you think? I mean, I know at some point food went from being just like this thing that we eat, right? Just to live to being like an artistic form of, you know, expression in a way.