What Goes On in the World of High End Country Clubs? Aidan Murphy, GM of Old Warson Country Club

About this episode

Vance interviews Aidan Murphy, outgoing general manager of Old Warson Country Club in St. Louis (retiring after 14 years as GM and 18 years as executive chef before that), tracing his path from a working-class Dublin upbringing during "the Troubles," through dishwashing and hotel kitchens in Ireland, an apprenticeship in Switzerland (where he met his American wife), to becoming one of 62 certified Master Chefs in the U.S., and finally into club management. The conversation is a deep dive into the craft of cooking (recipes as scaffolding versus taste/feel as the real skill, the "employee meal test" for whether a cook has heart, learning to like cilantro and garlic), the sociology of high-end country clubs (dispelling the "stuffy/snobby" stereotype — members are ordinary people with more money who form genuine long-term community, illustrated by widows and widowers returning to the club after losing a spouse), and the management skill of translating a chef's blunt kitchen authority into a GM's softer, service-oriented demeanor. Aidan is candid about the demands of the profession (holidays worked every year, split shifts, "a young man's business"), his own management philosophy (support your department heads, don't micromanage, learn people's names), and his transition to retirement in St. Louis near his kids and grandkids, with his own son now working as a sous chef at the same club. The episode closes with a shared reflection that everyone, at every level, is really in customer service — the difference is scale and stakes.

Key moments

• Cold open with the "glass of pee" service-philosophy story — deliberately absurd example of "if a member asks for it and we can do it, we do it," setting the class/service dynamic tone for the whole episode.
• ~20%: The Troubles in Ireland discussed matter-of-factly — car bombs in Dublin, sectarian walls in Belfast still standing — contrasted with Vance's abstraction of it from Hollywood movies.
• ~24%: The "cooking from the heart" philosophy — testing new cooks by having them cook employee meals, because how they treat coworkers reveals whether they'll care about paying guests.
• ~27%: Reading Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking" destroyed some of Aidan's intuitive passion by reducing cooking to pure chemistry — but ultimately made him a better cook once he reconciled science with feel.
• ~46%: The chicken-stock example — recipes are baselines, but real skill is adjusting to variable ingredients by taste, not formula.
• ~55%: "If a member comes in and asks for a glass of pee, you start drinking water" — recurring service-philosophy anecdote, repeated as a closing summary of his approach to member requests.
• ~68%: Transition from executive chef to GM — Aidan failing his first Master Chef exam, being humbled, and using that humility to learn to "lower his voice" and manage people rather than command a kitchen.
• ~80%: Description of country club membership as "like a big family" — widows/widowers returning to the club community after losing a spouse; staff realizing wealthy members are "actually very human and actually very caring."
• ~90%: The blunt one-liner on what actually distinguishes a country club from a neighborhood pool: "There's more money there. Very simple."

Notable quotes

“If a member comes in and asks for a glass of pee, you start drinking water. That's the way you gotta think about it. If somebody wants something, if we have it and we can do it, we're gonna do it.”

“They're just going through life... it's a higher end. There's just more money there. Very simple.”

“I've been there for 32 years. Their husbands die, their wives die, and they come back to the club to hang out with their friends... it's like a big family.”