Google Tootsie's Cabaret (if, of course, you are over the age of 18) and scroll through one of the venue’s many internet ratings, including our own.
Three words pop up over and over again: lemon pepper wings.
“A case of wings is about 40 pounds. I would literally have to order close to 200 cases a week,” says Chef Sean Talley, the former executive chef of the Miami gentlemen’s club. In case you don’t have a calculator handy, that’s around 8,000 pounds of chicken wings a week.
In his nine year run at the head of the Tootsie’s kitchen, Talley has earned a bit of a cult following when it comes to his food—catching folks off guard with the quality of his menu. Simply put: people don’t expect good food in a strip club.
Or at least they didn’t until Talley came along.
The chef, born and raised in South Florida, has been in the industry for about 16 years. His first job was as a bus boy at Rainforest Cafe at the Aventura Mall. He would help out in the kitchen every now and then when things got busy. Then he bounced around from P. F. Chang’s to Shula's Steak House to the Loews Hotel before the opportunity at Tootsie’s came up.
“[My boss] looked over my resume and he was like, Can you really do what it says on this paper?” Talley, confidently, said yes and the job was his.
The Tootsie's menu he took over was bleak and tiny—mainly cheap and quick drunk food.
At first Talley studied the crowd and tried to guess what might do well. It was a process or trial and error before he landed on his two MVPS: The lobster tail and the lemon pepper wings.
Wings are tricky—one of those universally beloved foods that is easy to do poorly, but difficult to do well. “I find it hard to believe that people can mess up wings, but you’d be surprised,” Talley says. He credits his best-selling item to attention to detail. The wings must be washed, the oil has to be at the right temperature—the seasoning applied at just the right moment.
The reasoning behind the lemon pepper seasoning was a business savvy one: “The taste from it makes you want to keep drinking.”
Talley's hard work has paid off. In addition to a legion of anonymous online commenters, the chef has some famous fans.
“Obviously Rick Ross has been there. He loves the wings,” Talley says. Ross has since developed a well-known love affair with wings (especially the lemon pepper variety) and owns multiple Wing Stop locations.
The celebs are almost too many to remember. Scottie Pippen, Floyd Mayweather, Amber Rose and more. “Drake has been there several times,” Talley says. After his New Year’s Eve performance at E11even, Drizzy and his crew stopped by and ordered just about everything on the menu, including many wings.
Sadly, Talley has moved on from Tootsie’s. He left the position in January after a nine year run. But his fanbase need not fret. Talley is on his way to bigger and better things: his own restaurant.
In about two weeks he will be opening Chef Sean’s T.R.A.P. Kitchen in Miami Gardens (3251 N.W. 183rd Street). More good news: it’s only three miles away from Tootsie’s.
“I wanted to branch out on my own eventually,” he says. “I had a lot of people that weren’t fans of adult clubs that wanted the food but couldn’t come there. I always wanted to cater to those people as well.
But will Chef Talley be bringing his lemon pepper wings with him to his new location? “Oh, absolutely. It’s a must.”
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