There is one thing that seems to be common in many restaurants I visit or in libraries of chefs that I have seen. They all seem to have the book Where Chefs Eat which is written by food, drink and restaurant writer Joe Warwick. Who doesn’t want to go and eat in the places where chefs eat? He is of course an authority when it comes to food and restaurants. After all, he was involved in the birth of the World's 50 Best Restaurants list which today has become a household name in the world of gastronomy. Taking inspiration from el Bulli, which used to provide customers with a list of places to eat in the area, the book reveals the places where chefs like to eat (though as he himself says, the breakfast places are not something chefs are good at recommending). "The reality is that the fancier the chef or the fancier the restaurant is, they normally crave for something that is simple and delicious. Of course, when they travel they like to go and visit their peers but that is not where … [Read more...]
Magnus Ek: ‘The pace of innovation in food is incredible and is becoming faster’
Swedish chef Magnus Ek is a pioneer in many ways. He started using edible plants and foraging for food more than 20 years ago when it was still unheard of at the time. He did it without much fanfare and you could say that he is one of the early pioneers of the new Nordic cuisine. He is conscious of the fact that the ecosystem surrounding food is set to change but he cannot tell the direction it will go. "If I look at the kitchen of 20 years ago to how it looks now, it is completely different. The pace of invention and innovation has been incredible. And the curve is building really fast," he says. Magnus Ek opened his restaurant Oaxen Krog in Sweden more than 20 years ago at a time when foraging what not what restaurants did. Today, he still forages almost every day. He actually says he has more time for it now than in the past because things have become easier. “It used to be very difficult to find the vegetables I needed in summer. I used to have to go to different farms and … [Read more...]
Anne Sophie Pic and David Sinapian: Putting human resources at the centre of their business
More and more professionals such as lawyers and engineers are showing an interest in gastronomy says David Sinapian, CEO of Anne-Sophie Pic and president of Les Grandes Tables du Monde. "We have found that staff that do not necessarily have culinary training are not only interested but also capable of following their dreams. They want to be creative and do something different," David told Food and Wine Gazette after his presentation at the congress organised by the collective of chefs from Wallonia, Generation W. "What matters most is their motivation and not their training. We have also found that diversity is extremely important for our business. What people might lack in technical skills can be compensated by other skills such as management skills," he said. David took over the family business with his wife Anne Sophie Pic more than 20 years ago. Since then, they have grown the Pic group to include not only the three Michelin star restaurant (they got the three Michelin … [Read more...]
David Chang on GELINAZ! “It is stressful but it is a small price to pay for hanging around with friends”
David Chang has done it all. He exploded to the scene in 2004 with his first Momfuku Noodle bar in East Village. Since then he has turned street food into haute cuisine winning all type of accolades in the process. He won the Outstanding Chef of the year at the James Beard award, opened one restaurant after another in different cities and countries becoming a highly successful restauranteur in the process. He’s written best selling books, reinvented how a culinary magazine should look like with Lucky Peach (now defunct) and is also a television personality. In a few words, he is a big figure in the world of gastronomy and that is not just in a literal sense. So why take part in events like GELINAZ! which are bound to cause him lots of stress? Why head to Austria for the GELINAZ! DOES UPPER AUSTRIA event when he does not even know most of the chefs that are taking part in the event? “I have not done a GELINAZ! event for some time because I have been busy. But there are two reasons … [Read more...]
Manu Buffara: ‘You need to know your land, your food, your culture, then you can cook with your soul’
For Brazilian chef Manoella Buffara of Restaurant Manu story-telling comes naturally. After all, she was studying to become a journalist before she decided to embark on her career as a chef. And that is a very good thing for Brazil. Cooking in her home town Curitiba where there was nothing as she herself says, she has taken a gamble that her story will attract not only people from her home town but also world travellers. But she clearly knows what she is doing from the flour she prepares for the restaurant to her journey through the kitchens of René Redzepi and Grant Achatz. Mention Brazil and the first chef that comes to mind is Alex Atala. It was he who discovered 'Manu' as she is known and it was he who encouraged her to go out and tell the story to the world. And what a story it is. A chef with a communications' background, she is spreading her story using not only travel but also social media. "I loved journalism before I experienced the kitchen. But then I discovered … [Read more...]
Heinz Reitbauer: GELINAZ! was a great opportunity to show the world what Austria has to offer
A quiet revolution has been going on in Austria in the world of food and that is being led by chef Heinz Reitbauer who has slowly but surely climbed up the rankings of the World's 5o Best Restaurants list to reach 10th place with his Vienna restaurant Steirereck which is housed in a monolithic glass cube. "We cannot imagine how important for Austria it is that GELINAZ! came to our country. It gives us a chance to show to a lot of people, to chefs and the whole world the products we have, the current state of gastronomy in Austria and what we are thinking about Austrian food. We have been working with our producers to build something for many years and now we have the chance to showcase it," Reitbauer told Food and Wine Gazette in an interview. "The quality of the products and the standard of cooking is very high wherever you go," says the most representative chef of Austria at the moment. "Maybe our wines are known better than our cuisine because you can nearly always find … [Read more...]
Q&A with Enrico Crippa: Innovation is simpler than tradition in cooking
In the second part of our interview with Enrico Crippa, we fire some quick questions and get spontaneous responses from one of Italy's most talented chefs. Read on to discover what the chef of one of the most acclaimed restaurants in Italy, Piazza Duomo has to say about innovation, tradition, upcoming Italian chefs and his best meal ever among others. What is the best dish you have ever created? The salad. When someone tastes it, they become really enthusiastic. The most curious thing is that this is a dish created by a chef but there is no cooking involved. What do you like to eat at home? Pasta or rice because can be done very quickly, gives me energy, I can eat it before I do sport. Do you cook at home? Yes from time to time. I cook as much as I go out to eat. What is something that is in a professional kitchen and which should be in a domestic home? I would say it is a chiller. It is a piece of equipment that brings down the temperature very quickly and … [Read more...]
Enrico Crippa: “I am no longer afraid of the moments when I am not creative”
It is not unusual for chefs today to be inspired by art. At the highest levels, food can also be considered as the highest expression of art and Enrico Crippa, the Italian chef of Alba based restaurant Piazza Duomo takes it to the next level. While his primary focus has always been the quality of the produce he uses, the visual aspect is also something he attaches a lot of importance to. He even goes as far as to say that food could be even more artistic than a work of art. “I can make a dish which you can see, turn, touch but once you taste it and eat it, it is gone for ever and only a memory remains. The experience ends once you have eaten it. It is actually more complete than any other form of art. When you look at a sculpture or a painting it is physically there so you can see it, return back to it after a day or two and experience it again maybe seeing something different. But even a simple plate of spaghetti may look the same but when you eat it, it will be different. So a … [Read more...]
Vilhjalmur Sigurdarson: The Icelandic brutalist chef in Belgium
When Vilhjalmur Sigurdarson left Iceland on a one way ticket to Belgium little did he imagine that he would be settling in the small city or village of Ypres, known more for the battle field that was World War 1 than for a dining destination. But as a young chef, you cannot say he was not determined. After an experience at Texture in London, he had returned to his home country, Iceland, thinking he would settle there but after three weeks he realised that he needed to leave the island. “In London, I came to experience exceptional produce. It was everywhere and the quality was like nothing I had seen before,” the young Icelandic chef told Food and Wine Gazette. “I realised that this was not possible in Iceland. I wanted to leave as soon as possible.” He had a list of restaurants in mind that he wanted to work in to gain experience, What he was looking for was not the what or the how the restaurant worked but rather the why. That has remained his philosophy till this day. He … [Read more...]
A perfect meal: Enrico Crippa reflects on collaboration dinner with Zaiyu Hasegawa
Enrico Crippa is a perfectionist who loves to set the bar extremely high. Before the four hands dinner with Zaiyu Hasegawa, he comes to show us the dishes that will be prepared for the dinner. That will allow the photographers attending the event to enjoy the dinner without the stress of having to take photos during the dinner. In passing he tells Andrea Petrini, of GELINAZ! fame that he is extremely pleased with the menu and how the dishes that Zaiyu and he had prepared have blended well. “Coming from you, that is something,” Andrea tells him. Reflecting on the first four hands dinner that he ever hosted at Piazza Duomo in Alba, Enrico Crippa tells me he felt a sense of liberation when the dinner finished because he felt it had gone very well. “When I arrived home, I started thinking how simple it ended up being, how easy it was to work with Zaiyu and how easy it was to blend the two cuisines together.” Enrico says that seeing the menu together and looking at the dishes as … [Read more...]