Boka Restaurant Group cofounder Kevin Boehm comes full-circle
Stream the full conversation with Kevin Boehm on the Extra Serving podcast above.
Kevin Boehm, cofounder of Boka Restaurant Group, has experienced the highs and lows of the restaurant industry. His award-winning restaurants range from the Michelin-starred Boka to Girl & The Goat with Chef Stephanie Izard.
Still, in his early days in the industry, he fought addiction and mental health issues and eventually hit rock bottom. Bohem details those highs and lows in “The Bottomless Cup: A Memoir of Secrets, Restaurants, and Forgiveness.”
There have been huge changes in how the industry treats addiction, mental health, and balance. And Kevin has had a front-row seat to those changes as he’s evolved, too.
“It doesn’t have to be impossible all the time,” Boehm told Nation’s Restaurant News. “I think generationally, that’s the way we used to think that if you’re not working ninety hours and selling your soul and have, you know, burn scars all the way up your arm, that you’re not doing enough. I don’t buy into that.”
On NRN’s Extra Serving podcast, Boehm discusses how far the industry has come, what the dining public still doesn’t understand about the restaurant industry, and why now was the right time for his memoir.
The conversation closed with a full-circle moment for Boehm. Back in 1999, he opened his restaurant 6 Degrees in Nashville with a bang, but it closed soon after, and “it knocked me into a tailspin,” Boehm said. But this summer the Boka Restaurant Group opened three concepts in Nashville.
Bohem described the experience as “especially lovely because so many people came in that came to my restaurant 27 years before.”
