Daniel Shemtob: Snibbs, Hospitality and Matzo Pizza

Hospitality is front and center in everything chef and restaurateur Daniel Shemtob does.

The all-star winner of Food Network’s “The Great Food Truck Race” with The Lime Truck and the chef behind Downtown LA’s Hatch Yakitori, Shemtob is also co-founder of Snibbs, the world’s most comfortable non-slip shoe.

After a painful fall in the kitchen, about two weeks before opening Hatch, Shemtob partnered with renowned orthopedic surgeon Jason Snibbe (LA Lakers, Clippers and The Kardashians) and entrepreneur Haik Zadoyan, his high school best friend, to create Snibbs.

“I herniated and slipped my L5 and L4 disc, which is pretty much the lowest part of your vertebrae,” Shemtob told the Journal. “I’m 23, 24 years old, and I’m watching someone else open my line, which, as a chef, is a very difficult thing to do.”

Shemtob went down a rabbit hole of wondering, ‘Why isn’t anyone making good footwear? Why isn’t there anything that actually speaks to the worker, to the chef?’

Snibbs footwear was born!

“I knew I could make it look cool, but I wanted to make it good for you, which is why I partnered with Dr. Snibbe, who I named the company after,” he said. “There was an element of making it good for you and making you feel good in the footwear.”

It took five years to make the first shoe; two years for the second.

“We had three separate groups of consultants from Nike, Jordan, Adidas,” Shemtob said. “We had two different factories [and] two trips to China to make this shoe that we’re really proud of.”

He added, “I think the element of perfecting the product is the reason why we’ve done so well.”

While there are nuances, whether you are developing a recipe or a great pair of shoes, you start with a product and then you reiterate, perfect, test and reiterate again.

“It took me about two to three years to write the menu for Hatch,” Shemtob said. “It was a labor of love, and there was a lot of making small changes [to sauces and recipes].”

Shemtob added, “The only downside to footwear is you have to wait somewhere between 20 and 40 days every time you make a change.”

Outstanding service sets a restaurant apart, and that is something that has translated well to Snibbs.

“Because we’re hospitality people … whenever customers need something, we go above and beyond,” he said.

Shemtob, who started The Lime Truck in 2010, a week before his 21st birthday, has always loved experimenting with food.

“We were so inconsistent and so not professional that we couldn’t make the same menu twice, so we used it as a strength,” Shemtob told the Journal. “We did a brand new menu every day on the food truck, which was pretty prolific at the time.

“We would do dishes from $3 to $100, and that led us to win the Best New Restaurant [in Orange County], which was the only food truck ever to have won that.”

They knew they were onto something.

“We opened our first fast casual restaurant, TLT, in Westwood,” he said. “I had a knack for fast casual, for food trucks, and I wanted to try California fine dining, … and that’s when I opened Hatch.”

Shemtob’s passion for cooking, which he says came from the love of food in his Iranian Jewish home, has always endured.

“I had this epiphany this past weekend, when we had an impromptu [barbecue]” he said. “I just moved to a new home and we wanted to have some people over.”

Normally he would have prepared a couple of items in advance.

“You want to host, and not just be cooking the whole time; everything I do [is] from scratch, so it takes a while,” he said. “I realized … I get almost as much joy from cooking as I do with being with my guests and being with my friends.”

Instead of rushing the cooking, so that he could host better, he enjoyed the process.

“I was like, ‘You know what, I’m doing exactly what I was supposed to do,” he said. This is my way of showing love to my friends and family.”

One of Shemtob’s first memories of cooking was at age six or seven, when he made matzo pizza for his family during Passover.

He took some matzo, and put tomato sauce, olives, cheese and mushrooms on it. Then put it in the toaster.

“I was about to eat it, and my dad’s like, ‘Hey, what’s that?’ And I was like, Oh, it’s matzo pizza.’ And he’s like, ‘That looks really good; let me have a bite.’”

Shemtob’s father, mother and brother all wanted one.

“Seeing their excitement and that I pleased this household of foodies on one of my first tries [was amazing],” he said. “I don’t know if they were just humoring me, but I think they liked it.”

Learn more at Snibbs.co and Danielshemtob.com and follow @snibbsfootwear  on @daniel.shemtobInstagram.

For the full conversation, listen to the podcast:

Debra Eckerling is a writer for the Jewish Journal and the host of “Taste Buds with Deb.” Subscribe on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform. Email Debra: tastebuds@jewishjournal.com.