Adam Torres and Jarad McCarroll discuss Ocean Club.
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Show Notes:
The allure of St. Barths lies in its intimate, exclusive atmosphere. How does the Ocean Club cater to both a discerning clientele seeking high-end service and a vibrant, engaging dining environment that makes them feel welcome and included? In this episode, Adam Torres and Jarad McCarroll, Co-Founder of Ocean Club St Barths, explore Ocean Club St Barths and the upcoming expansion to open Ocean Club Montauk.
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About Jarad McCarroll
South African-born Jarad fell in love with food from an early age. At 22 years old he began pursuing his passion. Chasing his dream, Jarad left South Africa to study in Switzerland under Chef Patrick Diethelm. In Lucerne, Jarad was awarded a coveted gold medal in the Zagg international cooking competition.
After graduating as Valedictorian, Jarad accepted an offer at The Ritz, London, working and studying under Chef John Williams. Here Jarad earned another prestigious award – Annual Award of Excellence – and was invited to cook at the Young National Chef of the Year who named him a finalist. True to his impeccable reputation and sought-after talent, Jarad continued working for highly reputable chefs, such as Nuno Mendes at Chiltern Firehouse, Mark Kempson at Kitchen W8 and Barry Fitzgerald at the Harwood Arms.
About Ocean Club St Barths
The Ocean Club St Barths provides an exclusive, experience-focused service within a chic and calming interior insightfully conceived and developed by award-winning design studio Hirsch Bedner Associates. The Ocean Club is an extension of its clients’ villas on land and yachts at sea and sits in a prime location within the Prada and Dolce & Gabbana building on Rue de la République, Gustavia’s main street. With stunning panoramic views over the marina from the second floor, the Ocean Club provides services and experiences that make it a truly irresistible proposition.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today my guest is Jared McCarroll. He’s co founder of Ocean Club St.
Barts. Jared, welcome to the show. Thanks, Adam. Great to be here with you. I’m excited to spend the next, sort of A couple a couple minutes sharing some stuff with you. All right, Jared. So normally I start with the mission matters minute, but I’m going to break form. I need you to hold up your laptop and I need people to see your backdrop and where we’re at in St.
Bart’s because this place is ridiculous. Before we start talking about it, I just want people to see this. Look at this. Oh my gosh, how do I get my podcast studio there? Like for the people driving in your car, they can’t, they’re like, ah, I can’t see what everybody’s looking at. I want you to understand we’re looking at this amazing, when I say backdrop, I mean first off, tell us about the location in St.
Bart’s let’s go there. You’re going to be able to describe it better than myself. Yeah. So what, cause I mean, this is the ocean club, St. Bart’s it’s For me, it’s one of the most incredible locations I’ve stumbled across. This is Gustavia, which is the main, sort of, the heart of St. Barts and it’s where all the action happens.
And where we are now is a space which kind of sat empty for a couple years and it’s situated right above Dolce Gabbana in Prada. Overlooking the harbour, you’ve got all the mega yachts and the super yachts there and, you know, it’s it’s definitely, we are 100 percent blessed. Yeah. If you didn’t catch that overlooking the, the mega yachts and the super yachts, and we know Dolce Gabbana, we know they choose terrible real estate locations, right?
So, yeah, right. So you’re in the heart of it all. You are it’s amazing. And if you, if anybody driving in the car wants to see what we’re talking about. Then check out the YouTube channel and you’ll see the video too. But all right, I had to break form on that. I rarely do that, but I want everybody to see where you are at and just to see the location.
So now back on track for the normally scheduled interview we’ll start, we’ll start this interview or continue it the way that we always do with what we call our mission matters minute. So, Jared, at Mission Matters, our goal is to amplify stories and to get them out there for business owners, entrepreneurs, executives, and experts, stories that we feel need to be heard and need to be seen.
So that’s our mission. Jared, what mission matters to you? So, our mission and the Ocean Club St. Barts mission is to build a world class hospitality brand. You know, we have this incredible occasion. We have another location coming and it’s to build a brand of hospitality, which is love and respect and that finds a place for you to feel comfortable and at home on really just to elevate people’s experiences and offer something unique.
So we’re blessed, man. So speaking of brands and speaking and getting the words out, I understand you were just featured on a recent housewives of New York episode. Like, like, tell me a little bit about that. That is definitely not, not exactly exactly what our brand is about, but it was a lot of fun.
It was I had the goals over for cooking lesson. We prepared some some snacks and a few little my micro cats and then I filleted a fish for them. In front of them and I got them to do a few things and then they sat down and enjoyed the beautiful occasion, have enjoyed the view and had some lunch with us.
So it was definitely fun and entertaining and pretty loud as well. Not going to lie. That’s awesome. And I had to bring that up cause I heard about it and I’m like, man, that that’s fun. And I, and I understand that the that the location in what you’re building. So part, part of what I want to talk about today with you is of course the expansion.
Now you’re going to be opening up and ocean clubs and Montauk as well, right? Yeah. So our second location will be ocean club Montauk. Another iconic sort of venue unbelievable space and Montauk is, is pretty beautiful and exclusive in its own right. And I feel like Montauk and St. Bart’s are two sort of locations which are kind of iconic of New York and they call it the end of the world.
It’s, this is a beautiful, intimate, small restaurant. It’s about 65 seats. The one in Montauk is about 184. So it’s like three times the size with a big open kitchen, big sort of, everything is the same designers, same sort of style, same style of food with a big open grill. And you’ll have a chef’s table on the other side where you can sort of interact with the, with the kitchen.
And, you know, like, like you said, it’s like people, people want experiences and they want to eat, touch and feel. You know, and I’m looking to create more than just a meal, but to create an experience and offer something quite unique. So tell us about really about St. Barts and your, your vision for Ocean Club there and how this, how this all came about, like, how did all this get launched?
Well, sometimes you get lucky, you know, we, we had this incredible location. And we, we built it out to kind of be an extension of a yacht or your villa. I mean, if you, if you’re in Miami or in New York, you’re in all of these places that like you go to these sort of clubs to be sort of exclusive in St.
Barts. You kind of at the top of your game and you’re part of an exclusive club when you’re here already So like our goal was to to elevate the hospitality and elevate the food and service to a standard where it felt like it was almost A tailored service. So like the bar here is completely open.
The kitchen is completely open and exposed There’s no sort of Walls or barriers between the people that are working and and yourself as a guest and it’s really just a space where we can You know, like I said, it’s unbelievable location and our goal is to find a service and A style which kind of elevates that and just like pays a tribute to this this beautiful location that we have Yeah.
Had you always, like, was this always part of your vision or roadmap to open up a place there? Or like, how did you get to that point? Like, was there an aha moment? Was it a conversation over a glass of wine? Like, give me the moment, because I find this stuff, like, very interesting. So, I mean, I was always looking to open my own space, as anyone who had this big sort of vision of what I would like to achieve.
And I was the executive chef of Hotel at 20 which is a small sort of five star real estate hotel just on the other side of the island. And I was there for about four years, actually rebranded and redesigned their restaurants, and it was called Jaro Delta 20 for about a year and a half. And then sort of COVID happened and we sort of split ways and I was searching for something new and something different.
And then we stumbled across the space. And we were like, Oh my gosh, this is incredible. And then I was I was cooking. I was at that time. I was a private chef trying to just provide for my family and trying to find ways while I was cooking. Building the next sort of chapter of my life. And I stumbled across somebody who said, okay I like what you’re doing and I think it’s an interesting concept and we’ll, we’ll invest and we’ll give you the money.
So it was like, it happened like this. It was just part of my part. Yeah. So it was you know, sometimes you get lucky and it was a great beginning and St. Both’s I realize is very transient. It’s very small. And it’s, it’s tough to get recognized. It takes a while because, you know, if you’re in New York, there’s a huge mass of people, this is a, this is an eight mile long Island.
Yeah, it’s a tiny island with like 35 different restaurants on it, like six, you know, I don’t know how many hotels and everything is really high end and high quality. So we, we, this little independent sort of restaurant that sort of popped up and we’re like, this is our goals. We’re ambitious. We’re hungry.
We want to create this and it was like, and then we, like, it wasn’t as it didn’t take off with exactly the way that we anticipated, but you realize that building something of quality takes time. And. You know, just have to persevere through the beginning days and start to just build it day by day and make sure that you focus on the product.
And then offering something that’s elevated and delicious and a guest experience. That’s, that’s pretty cool. Yeah. What keeps you and what kept you, I should say as well. And I, and the reason I asked this question, by the way, a lot of business owners, entrepreneurs, like people that watch this, I mean, I like to say this, another name for this podcast could be the keep it real podcast because we’re out of a lot of entrepreneurs watch this.
So I get all the stories and listen to this. So like, what kept you strong? Like during that transitionary period of like what’s next in COVID in the middle of all this, cause everybody was going through their own thing, like what kept you strong at that time? You know, I heard this amazing quotes, like in order for us to define what success is, we need to have a, or in order for us to be successful, we need to have a definition of success.
And then, you know, somebody told me once that success is the progressive realization of a dream, you know? So it’s like, first of all, we need to have this dream. Now I’ve always had a vision of what I want to accomplish. I always sort of being plugged into that dream and I kind of see it, I feel it, and it’s like, if you have this dream and you, you believe in it, then like the ups and downs, the kind of.
It’s it’s okay because the down days you’ll have updates down days, but at the end, you know that you’re heading in the direction I think it’s like when people don’t have a dream and they don’t have a vision They kind of get lost in the sort of day to day. How do you I mean? How do you hit a target that you cannot see?
It’s kind of impossible to throw something at something like I missed it, but there’s no target so I think when you have a dream and you and you kind of understand that you’re working towards this and you You know, even when it’s difficult you just continue to take the steps and do the work and believe in that vision You it kind of gets you through, but if you don’t know where you’re heading, those, those dark days can kind of seem harder.
Yeah. Amazing. So I want to jump in around a little bit here. So when we, for everybody watching this, like when I did the warm up call, we always schedule a, you know, a time for me to talk with guests before we bring them on the show and kind of figure out the content, things like that. And what, what points we want to hit.
And Jared was explaining to me like the culinary experience and I don’t claim to be, I’m a foodie wannabe, like I don’t always know what I mean, I just I just like food. I’m a want to be and Jared’s explaining like the culinary experience and everything else. And this is how I learned. And so I’m looking at your Instagram and you’re describing like the dishes, whether I don’t, I’m probably going to butcher the names, but I know one looks like an island.
One looks like a tree. Talk to me about all of like, what went into that and kind of some of your concepts for this. Cause it was, it’s quite amazing when I, when I checked it out and by the way, everybody go check out Jared’s Instagram as well. Real quick, before you answer Jared, what’s your Instagram again?
Cause I just follow you. I don’t remember the handle. It’s Jared underscore McCarroll. Wonderful. So easy. There you go. Go check this out. So that when Jared’s also explaining this, you can look at it too. And you’re going to be, you’re going to be amazed. So again, go back to like the culinary experience part of this.
First of all, I appreciate that. I mean, you know, for me being a chef is sort of an artist and like, as a, your, your plate is your canvas. So I have a few signature dishes, which I’ve had for a couple of years and sort of like built them up. Always start with something and then I try and develop and develop and develop it until you kind of have this sort of idea So there’s a couple dishes that don’t change.
One of them is our island So it’s actually like the shape of saint barts and it’s like different it’s different textures of onions So we have like caramelized onion, which is like this slowly cooked leonase Or what do we call it and like we cook it for like two three hours until all the sugar is sort of caramelized And it’s completely soft then you have like pickled onions on top.
Then we put some bacon jam You Crispy shallots, you got some chive all around it. And then we took, we take an onion consomme, which is made by using a very powerful vegetable stock and infusing it with like roasted onions for like 12 to 14 hours. So there’s only like five things on the plate, but like everything sort of mellows together.
And, you know, working on this island for like the last six years, you realize that it’s tiny, nothing grows on it. And you kind of have to, you kind of have to think on your feet. So like I’ve had to use. Ingredients like the onion, which is the island and then the tree of life, which is the broccoli dish So it’s like different textures of broccoli You got broccoli couscous with pumpkin seeds and sweet lemon and artichoke soil as your soil And then you got shiitake mushrooms as your birds and like lemondale as your sun and it’s like it’s a pretty visual tree of life and it’s completely vegan.
It’s completely from the earth. So Those are like two of the main ones. We have a beef and beetroot dish where like I take this smoky beetroot ketchup. And it’s like a little bit acidic. Tastes like an incredible barbecue sauce. And then I have a red snapper tartare, which I’ve also sort of, has been like one of my signatures and it’s like taking a red snapper and then we salt it slightly.
And by salting it, it changes the whole texture to the fish and becomes a little bit more sticky. And then we put it into a ring. It’s got about 8 grams of caviar. We have like 9 dots of some sweet lemon. We have a candied lemon on top. And then I pour a horseradish cream and a dill oil on the plate.
And this kind of separates and makes this like white and very dark green sort of color. And then I finish it with the crispy fish scales. Which is like when I’m like people look at me like what are you serving? It’s like no, it’s the fish scales So it’s a technique. I learned some geranium And it’s literally like taking the scales you wash them and then you deep fry and dehydrate them and like it’s got very Little flavor, but the little text that it adds to the dish are really quite cool Yeah, but it you know, it’s it’s a progress and yeah, I love I love what I do.
I’m extremely passionate about cooking and sharing experiences with my guests. It’s like these sort of stories, when I go to the table and I’m like, I’m pouring the onion consommé and telling them how we make it, you know, it really elevates the experience. I knew when I asked you that question, you’re going to make me hungry again.
Every time it had to be done. I that’s, that’s me sacrificing for the audience right there. Like hat had to be done, but it looks so I, I was looking at this and and I say this kind of in just, but not really. But so the expansion of Montauk, are you bringing the island there? Do you have some other things up your sleeve?
Is it not? Is it not? Like, I’m not putting you on the hook here, but what can you tell me about that side of things? I mean, it’s kind of hard to bring an island. That’s what I thought. I was going to, yeah, look, Montauk is a, is a different beast. It’s like, this is a small, intimate, refined restaurant. Of course, it’s going to be like a machine.
It’s like 184 seats, 500 covers a night, you know, like getting everyone in and like, you know, creating like this, this sort of like ambience of like, like a theater kind of thing. So. We will have the same quality of food. Yeah, maybe months of steps will be slightly less because we cannot have people waiting 45 minutes for an entree for a starter.
So we will be bringing some of the dishes, but I will have to think of ways that I can refine them and make it easier to execute so that we can offer the same sort of experience. Yeah, yeah, I, I just had to throw that out there because I was like, no, he’s not gonna, I knew you weren’t gonna be able to, but I was trying to get, I’m trying to get a little, some teasers here about what, what you have planned.
And then my, for my own self my own self interest which this is me saying it, not Jared. I’m like, man, when’s the LA version coming? I know you haven’t even opened Montauk, like Montauk first, I understand, but if I get to cast a vote, if my opinion matters, which it probably doesn’t, Jared, then I’m voting on LA next.
Okay. Okay. Yeah. I mean, ideally we’ll see, you know, we, the most important thing is to, to build these businesses strong. Ocean club, first ocean club Montauk, second full teams get, you know, creates a love. I mean, for me, this form of hospitality that I’m trying to build in this, this brand is about appreciation.
And Appreciating our guests, but also appreciating our staff. Like how do we, how do we build them? How do we get them to the next level? Because if we appreciate and praise our staff, they arrive at work feeling important and like that, that the job that they’re doing matters and that we care about them and our our work, then they will fit the surely, you know, pass it on to the guests and offer that to the guest experience.
So Who knows? Maybe I’ll be in your neck of the woods in a couple, in a year or two. You know, it’s everything is open and you know, we’ll take this brand where we can find beautiful occasions and beautiful people. So for sure, I’ll never say no. All right. Amazing. And now I do actually want you to go a little bit further in that in that thought process of the staff and the culture that you’re trying to create to obviously create that high level of service that you’re doing at St.
Barts. And really not even just service, but that experience that you’re creating, because obviously not no one person does it by themselves. Like what goes into that? Like, how do you pull that off? Yeah, I mean, we are, the St. Barth, Ocean Club St. Barth’s success is not because of me, it’s because of the people that are working inside the space.
So for me, it’s, it’s building leadership and like making people feel important, giving them the care. I mean, I give leadership training and I, in the training I’m talking about. It doesn’t matter what your, what your title is right now, you can lead without a title. It’s one of the books. One of my books by Robert Sharmi, he talks about being a leader without a title.
It’s a great book. Mm-Hmm, . And it’s the same. It’s like if you just come to work and you feel important, and like we know what we want to achieve and this is our goal. We want to be the best restaurant in the Caribbean. And if we come to work acting like that and feeling important like we are already that.
Then, you know, it makes it so much more enjoyable. We have a sense of pride around what we’re doing. We have a sense of love about the food that we’re serving and, you know, the experience that we’re guests. And, you know, for me, the most important thing is to teach people to be present. Like when you are here be with your guests like interact with them, you know like that’s how that’s where the tips are like if you’re just gonna go through the motions be like Oh, what’s your order and then leave and then deliver the food and that’s that’s not hospitality for me That’s okay.
That’s you know, some sort of cafe in the middle of nowhere where you’re just paying You’re just doing it for the money. Whereas like, yeah, we’re trying to create a culture where it’s your job is important. Your interaction with the guests is important. And it’s about the details, how you get greeted at the door, how you get sat at the table, what’s your first call, the last course, what’s the bread offering.
And all these sort of details added together and all the people that you’re experiencing through your time here sort of makes it that much more. Yeah, I think, I think that’s great. And being present or being there while you’re there, like that’s a, I mean, I, I feel like all, all business can learn so much from hospitality.
Like I’ve, I didn’t get to, like, I just see it. Cause it was on all different businesses. If we all did that, like, what would the experience be like? Right. The customer journey, it may be a different product. But it’s still that experience people want. Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s not even in your business, in your day to day life.
Like we, we’re as humans, we’re always looking to the next thing. We like in a rush, like everyone’s rushing from here to there and rush, rush, rush. Like calm, be present, like enjoy the moments. Like, you know, be here. Like when you’re with your guests, be with your guests. Don’t be with your boyfriend two hours later at the pub or wherever.
It’s like, and then when you’re at the pub, you want to be there. It’s, it’s an incessant need to kind of, you know, the next moment’s going to be better. Like learn to enjoy the present moment because that’s where life is. Did you all, did you always have that kind of philosophy or is this part of the island?
I don’t want to say island lifestyle, but I know my my, my family, so my dad’s from Puerto Rico. So I come from a island lineage. Is that part of the, did the island kind of lifestyle kind of rub off on you as well? Or has that always been something that you kind of strive for your philosophy? I had some difficult experiences in my life and it’s kind of I wouldn’t say it comes from the island.
It’s something from when I was younger and sort of did some self help and development and sort of some research into it. And last year was when you sort of own a business, you can kind of go through some highs and ups and downs. And, you know, I realized that instead of focusing on what I didn’t want, I started to focus on what I wanted and my shift in energy was just like incredible.
And then I started to read more and it’s It’s just a philosophy that I kind of bring and I would like to install into my children and into my staff as well It’s just like like We we also as I think as humans, we’re always looking for a reason to be happy It’s like what’s gonna make us happy what’s gonna you know Like our happiness as well when we achieve this or when my business does this If we keep on placing our happiness and our emotional states on something at the end of something It’s always going to be at the end of something.
You don’t need you don’t need. You Permission to be happy now. Just enjoy the sort of, you know, life is the journey and you must, and that’s where I think it’s about enjoying the journey and not waiting for the destination. It’s great. I think the great words and and things for us to strive to buy.
I love it. It’s a great philosophy. And I think, I think for me, it’s, it’s interesting when you talk about being present. I always say my favorite part about what I do is these interviews because I’m literally, I can’t, it’s almost my meditation at this point, Jared, because everything else kind of goes out the window.
And in this case, it’s just me and you. So I love it. I love the connection of meditation. So I don’t have to drop names or anything like that. that book. Come on, St. Bart’s got mega yachts behind you. Yachts. I feel like there’s billionaires or celebrities going through those doors. Like, like, what, what’s that all about?
Like got, gotta be some things happening over there. Yeah. I mean, you know, we’re blessed. Like we had an event with Feadship and the Feadship is a mega yacht builder or super yacht builder and one of, one of the sort of highest in the world. And they they, one of our exclusive partners and we hosted an event on like the 30th of December and during that peak sort of period, like the 26th of December, the 6th of January, like the sea is just filled with mega yachts and super yachts.
It’s ridiculous. So I think we had around like 15 to 20 billionaires in this space. So like the net worth in the building. Was just like, you know, mind boggling, you know, you know, they say that show me your five best friends. That’s a, and then their net worth is what kind of what you’ll be in the next five years.
Like these are my five best friends. No, it was, it’s great to be to be able to, to offer an experience to everyone and to offer an experience to, you know, some people who work on the island and who, who are, you know, these sort of pioneers of industry and have reached the pinnacle of what they do. And it’s it’s brilliant to have that sort of diversity between the two.
Yeah, that’s fun. It’s amazing. I love it. I love the story. And that’s one of the reasons why I was happy and excited to invite you on the show. That being said, Jared, if somebody wants to learn more about what you’re doing, follow your journey. Like, how did they get information? Like, what do they do to connect?
So we have a, our website is OceanClubStBarts. com. Otherwise you can find us on Instagram, OceanClubStBarts. So you can look at my Instagram. And then there’s email addresses there. There’s contact numbers there. But if you, if you Google Ocean Club St. Barts, there’s a few sort of things that sort of come up.
Then we’d be happy to hear from you. I mean, you know, we’re, we have an amazing space. We have an amazing location. We have some incredible staff members. And I feel like we were passionate about what we do and what we’re trying to achieve. And we love to welcome all sorts of people and all sorts of walks of life to our beautiful space.
Amazing. And for everybody watching this, just so you know, we’ll put the links to that to the website, all that other good stuff in the show notes so that you can just click on the link and head right on over. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t hit the subscribe button yet, hit it now.
Guess what? This is your personalized invitation. Hit that subscribe button. We have many more mission based individuals and great stories that we’re bringing to you. We don’t want you to miss anything. So definitely hit that subscribe button. And if you’re a long term listener, and if you haven’t left us a review yet, come on, stop, leave that review, get that done already.
All right. You’ve been listening to us long enough and we really do appreciate it. Jared, again, really appreciate you coming on the show, man. I appreciate all you’re doing. So thank you so much. Appreciate your time
