Gordon and Marcus worked side-by-side for the next few years, and Marcus says he was "one of the best cooks I have ever seen work a line."

Coincidentally, Marcus and Gordon weren't the only Houston chefs to meet in California.

"I stayed with [Gordon] while I was in San Francisco for about two weeks. That's where I met Matt Marcus -- Matt was working at Cyrus -- and Roy Shvartzapel, who is at Common Bond now; Roy was the head pastry chef and baker [at Cyrus]. It was cool. That was where I got to really talk to him," Naderi says. "I got to know him really well. He was really into Mad Men. He watched every episode and I was like, 'Man can you change the channel?' I think his response was, "Bro you're living at my place for the week. Shut up!'"

Gordon left Cyrus for Houston a year before Marcus and became the executive chef at Tony's. He was only 25 and surrounded by older, more experienced chefs.

"Well, when I moved back to Houston, I figured that with my experience and my resume that I could get chef jobs, so I was mainly looking at sous chef jobs," Gordon told Pham. "This situation ended up being the best because when they actually hired me here as an entry level, he could see that I had experience, and I think that was when they were planning on opening up a third restaurant and they thought that I could maybe be the guy there, so they bring me in, train me here and then just send me over that way, but they ended up just wanting to keep me here."

Marcus returned to Houston shortly thereafter and was reunited with Gordon at Tony's.

"That kitchen had been there for as long as Grant had been alive, and he was a master and commander of the whole kitchen," Marcus says. "Every single cook in there gave him the respect that he deserves and he had complete control of his kitchen and I was always impressed with that because there were some cooks who had started working there at the same age of Grant and now they have been there 25 years."

But age didn't seem to be a factor for Gordon.

"I started at the bottom, and I was not given anything," Gordon told Pham. "I had to earn it. I had to earn the respect of the kitchen. I had to earn the respect of waiters. I had to earn it...We have some amazing people that work here [Tony's], incredibly talented people. And I'm lucky and grateful for that because they make me look good - they make us all look good."