We caught up with Salt Hank’s owner, Henry Laporte that is known for his restaurant that serves primarily one dish, the French Dip! We wanted to know how we went to making culinary videos to starting his restaurant and how he keeps it all together as a business owner.

ATHLEISURE MAG: What was the dish that made you fall in love with food?

HENRY LAPORTE: I love it, starting off hot! It’s kind of an easy answer – salami! Pretty much after my first bite of salami nothing else has been the same sense then. I would say that and I would also say that I remember my first rib eye as well. I think that I was about 6 when I had my first bite of salami and it changed the entire trajectory of my life! I mean salami and cured meats!

AM: That’s such a great combo. What is there not to love?

HL: It’s the salt, fat, all the nitrates – it’s all there!

AM: How did you take your love for food and decide that you were going to take it beyond a passion, but to make it into a business?

HL: Honestly, I think that once I had those moments of clarity and the fact that it was all I actually cared about, and it’s the thing that made me the happiest in my entire world, when I was eating these insanely delicious bites of food, I don’t know if there was ever an other path for me. It never really struck me to go and explore another business or real estate – it was just food! I didn’t care about anything else. I knew that I would be in the food space.

AM: Once you realized that this would be your business. How did you go about growing it and then using TurboTax Business as a means to streamline that?

HL: In the beginning, it was me and I was a broadcast/journalism student in college. I would borrow the equipment from the equipment room and film myself making food videos. That quickly when TikTok blew up, turned into an actual thing that was gaining some traction. Once I started getting offered money, brand deals and things like that, it turned into a thing where I needed an LLC and I needed to file for taxes which is something that I had no clue how to do at the time! Thankfully, TurboTax made it incredibly easy at that time. I was still doing it on my own, I didn’t have a bookkeeper at that time, but once things snowballed at that time to a bigger situation, I hired somebody who was an absolute genius at those sorts of things. They are great and are integral to the entire operation of what I’m doing and I think there is a lot to be said to how TurboTax Experts for Business can help young entrepreneurs to pave their way through that entire complicated field of taxes.

AM: What have you learned in terms of someone who is thinking of taking their idea or passion and making it into their business as you have done?

HL: Make sure you truly love it and are doing it for the right reasons. Don’t just take something that looks shiny and chase it because you are comparing your life to somebody else’s. Don’t do it for the transactional residual effect. Do it because you viscerally care about it.

AM: You’re known for your French Dip Sandwich. Why did this inspire you to create a restaurant where it is the primary item on the menu?

HL: This version of the French Dip that we are doing now is one that I have been in love with for 6 or 7 years now. It’s a recipe that I have been developing for that entire time. It’s also a very prep heavy recipe. We’re basically making French Onion Soup in the back with the house made jus and the house made carmelized onions and all of that. Then that is all added to the traditional French Dip. So it is very prep heavy and once we realized – I mean, we always wanted a limited menu. People really fell in love with the French Dip. What was the point to do anything else and it was about just mastering this! We wanted to make it as good as we possibly could and to keep the quality as high as we could as well. We do not want to stray from that!

AM: What about some food hot takes or trends? Do you have any that you want to share or that we should keep an eye out for?

HL: Honestly, I’m somewhat scared to give my hot takes as I hate to get in trouble! If you don’t have sharp knives, then you actually don’t care about cooking!

AM: Agreed!

HL: I don’t like beets!

AM: Oh we love beets!

HL: I know, that’s why it’s a hot take! Everyone loves them and I really get the looks from people when I say I don’t!

AM: We can agree on the knives though!

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PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY | PG 215 Ed Anderson | PG 216 Hector Gomez