Hi everyone, welcome to potluck food talks. I'm here with my friend Phil and we're going
to talk about our new league of underground kitchen battles.
Yeah, who have you recruited yet?
I have a few warriors ready to get into a Killing Night Cage fight.
Wait, are we going to do this like we're two like boxing brokers and we're putting like
our guys up against each other like a sort of tech and tag tournament sort of thing?
Well, I think that that could be a way. I think it's important that the competitors
have like people at their corners like holding money in their hands, you know, and screaming.
Also have sort of like breaks, you know, sort of like like rounds and then they go into
that corner, they have somebody massaging their shoulders and be like, you're going
to dice that fucking apple finder, man, like, don't let him intimidate you with his chip
or not.
Do you like like kitchen competitions in general?
Dude, as if have you do we know each other for like 15 years or like?
I know, I know you, I know you love Iron Chef as I do, but there is much more than that.
You know, there is also like this kind of Master Chef, Top Chef, Bocuse d'Or and all
of this kind of competition, the Culinary Olympics. There's a lot, you know, like the
MOF in France, this kind of things.
Oh my God. Okay, I can already see, you know what, just as a listener, as a listener thing,
I think we wanted to talk about something else, right? But I think that this is a topic
now. I think this is the topic now, because I'm getting really excited. Honestly, I love
the, I love cooking competitions. And actually, in the last couple of weeks, I've fallen into
another black hole of watching cooking competitions.
Oh, really?
Yeah. I've, I had a sort of break from watching anything cooking related. I don't really know
why, because why wouldn't I? And like you said, you know, Iron Chef, all that sort of
stuff. But like lately, I've been watching this new Netflix show called Culinary Wars.
It's set in Korea, and it's a super cool program.
I'll have to watch it. I haven't seen it.
You have to watch it because honestly, like the level is different. It's really, really
good. And it's not just sort of like casual competitors. A lot of the competitors that
they put up there are like seasoned, Michelin star chefs in Korea. And they're putting them
up against each other.
This is so cool. It's like the new Korean Iron Chef somehow.
Kind of like that. Yeah, kind of like that. So you have like two teams, you've got like
a black spoon team and a white spoon team. The white spoons are like the even more seasoned
chefs, but even the like black spoons, which are like the juniors, right? They have their
own restaurants and they have recognition. Some of them have like, you know, they've
worked in like Michelin star restaurants, etc. And the level is really, really cool. Like
it's really, really good. Obviously, it's kind of produced in a sort of Iron Chefy sort
of way. It's very dramatic. But I really like I found myself watching this and being like,
ah, that's really interesting. That's really smart. I cool. And kind of like being like
anxious, also kind of looking at what they have to do. It's really cool. I can highly
recommend it.
I never saw final final table on Netflix, but you know, Jess competed there. Jess Lurigo.
Yeah, I know she did. I've also not watched it. Actually, I've also not seen it yet. I
should really give it a go.
And what about other competitions? Well, I remember when I was a culinary student, I
would follow the Bocuse d'Or. But that's like a very specific competition. Do you know
like about the format and the rules?
I mean, not in detail, honestly. I mean, but like, you know, last episode, we were talking
about the Olympics a little bit. And Bocuse d'Or is really like the Olympics and cooking.
Yeah, like they have this very specific format where you have to prepare things and this
special trays. And well, I know the preparation is very difficult. Thomas Keller started being
like, I don't know exactly what role, but like a very executive role of the preparation
for the American team. And I know that I don't know if they won, but they made it to the
top three. I think this competition is always won by Scandinavians. Be Danish, Norwegian,
Swedish. These are the ones that always win the, all the, all the prizes. What's the name
of the chef from Geranium?
Rasmus Kofford.
Rasmus Kofford. You know, that guy, he won first bronze, then silver, and then gold.
Like, I don't know in how many years, but he has all of the three Bocuse d'Or statues,
you know, all of the three colors.
It's really crazy.
And the preparation for that, you have to build like a special preparation kitchen and
train there like the Olympics, you know, like for a whole year or even years to get ready
for that competition. It's not something that you just can't just show up there and do whatever
you want. I remember back then when I was following this competition and Mario Sandoval,
which is like a Michelin star chef from Madrid, back then he was like a newcomer, someone
who was emerging. And he went to the Bocuse d'Or. Back then the big topic was Spanish
avant-garde. So he brought the Spanish avant-garde techniques to that context. And it was like
a super fail. You know, he was on the bottom hundred.
Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing, though. It's like, it's a very specific thing.
It's not just like cooking in general. It has to be a very specific style that you have
to form in with very, very specific, very French techniques, a lot of classic aspects,
you know, finicky little delicate things. It's very intense. It's very, very intense,
but it's definitely very French. Any other competitions?
Yeah. I mean, you know, you mentioned the moths earlier, you know. Oh, yeah. Yeah. What's
it stand for? Meliure ouvrière de France. Best craftsman
in France. Yeah. I mean, for anybody who doesn't know
what that is, it's a prize in France that can be awarded to many different craftsmen.
Yeah. Like a hair, a hair cutter or a gardener or whatever.
Arpinteria, et cetera, you know. Any craftsman.
Yeah. Sommelier, I think also. And but most well known for me anyway is the
chef's one is when you have, when you have these French chefs that have the French flag
on their, on the collar of their jacket, that means that they're a moth. And it's a very
rigorous exam. I think you can take part two times or three times maximum. And then afterwards
you're disqualified. Oh, no, no, no. I think that's not like that
because there is a documentary called the Kings of Pastry where they follow their role
to one competitor to the pastry MOF. And there was this character, you know, this guy that
was there that he has competed like for 20 years and he loses every year and he goes
again every year, which is very memorable. Really? Because I remember it differently
because I was trying to segue to that, to that documentary. And I remember, I don't
know, I'd have to watch it again. Maybe maybe I'm wrong. I thought that there was a part
where this guy he had competed because you can only compete. I think you have to leave
a couple of years in between. And he was, he was there and it was his last time. And
he was sort of like, well, if I can't make it now, then I'm not going to be able to compete
again. But maybe it was because he was like too old. I don't know.
Okay. Maybe I got it wrong. It's also possible. I don't know. It could be one or the other.
I don't know. But anyway, yeah, this documentary Kings of Pastry. Amazing documentary.
Fucking amazing. Yeah. Like also the, for me, my favorite is this, this guy that breaks
his sculptor, but he still presents something, you know, like that was very emotional for me to watch.
Absolutely. That was like one of the coolest parts of the whole thing, because just to
elaborate, they make these, they have to present all these techniques, right? But they make these
like a lab, this elaborate chocolate statue. All right. Which as you can imagine, even if
you have never worked with chocolate, which is a fucking nightmare, might I ask, I'm sorry, like,
do you not think that working with chocolate is just absolutely crazy? Absolutely. Yeah. I agree.
100%. And so he made this like big chocolate sculpture, right? And this is a man who was a
seasoned veteran of his craft, right? He doesn't really have anything to prove. He's already like
a great chocolatier in France. And he makes this chocolate sculpture and something happens and the
sculpture breaks and this man just breaks down in tears. Yeah. Was it chocolate or was it sugar?
I'm not sure. I don't know why I remember it. One or the other. I thought it was chocolate.
But still, like also like sculptures with be it sugar or chocolate, both are very, very, very
difficult. Absolutely. And I remember like, yeah, yeah, it was, it was chocolate. Now that I remember,
but I remember like also it was stunningly beautiful. It was really something. It really
looked like modern art. That's like something you could see in a museum and it was really beautiful.
And, and then just falls down and breaks into a million pieces in the middle of the contest.
Yeah. And the guy starts crying, you know, like he really breaks down. It was really emotional
seeing like a, you know, a man like that, you know, being so emotional with his craft and,
and yeah, it's, it was really, really beautiful. Like you said, and then he still goes and presents
it, you know, in a way. Yeah. But also like the, so that the, as you mentioned, the, the people that
have this French flag colors, these are the ones that have won that contest and it's, it's illegal
to wear that without having that. So you can't be a fake. You can get like a big fine if you're
walking around with that color and not being a winner of the, of the prize. Yeah. So in the,
in the music, all of the judges in that contest have the color and sometimes even like a medal
and they're walking around with this medal, very, very chauvinistic French, you know, like,
and this guy breaks his culture and one of them takes a medal out and he puts it on the table,
like, and just watches him like, you want to go for it? And the guy goes like this adrenaline rush
and he started just like preparing something to present it, you know, like just to finish the race.
He actually wins it, doesn't he? He gets it. Yeah. He gets it. I mean, spoilers, but, um,
but yeah, like that's really cool because like at that point, you know, that's exactly the thing is
sort of like, well, he could have given up, but he doesn't, he like, he could just like give into
frustration when his like work shatters and be sort of like, well, now everything's ruined.
Everything's fucked, but no, he kept going. He kept fucking persevering. They pulled it together
and he won in the end. He got what he wanted to. I think for our underground kitchen battle league,
we should have like a slogan. I was thinking about the important thing is not competing, but
humiliating your rival. What do you think about that? That's the slogan? No. What? That's the
slogan for the show? No, it doesn't. No, that shouldn't work. Okay. We can think of something
else as well. We need to find something catchier, you know? So we had this idea when we were walking
and on Copenhagen, the idea was to find a venue where we can build like very simple, like just
minimum viable equipment, a table, some induction, heat, cutting board, not much more than that.
Maybe an oven, maybe not, maybe something else. It depends on what we find for each edition.
Getting two Shaolin chefs, get some sponsors, buy some ingredients, put them in and doing like an
iron chef thing, but more like on a bootstrap kind of environment. Yeah, like a rap battle for chefs.
Yeah, I like that. I like that idea. I've also like recently fallen down these like really cheesy
cooking shows, like these Asian cooking shows. They're like a soap, they're like a telenovela,
but like centered around like restaurants and kitchens. And they're so fucking funny sometimes,
you know, but like at the same time, there's like these like details in there where I'm kind of like,
hey, that's actually kind of good, right? Like cooking wise, just I'm watching this thing right
now called La Grande Maison Tokyo. It's about this, like the plot is so funny. It's about this chef
who had two mission, like this Japanese chef who had two mission stars in Paris. And then he
supposedly, right, poisoned somebody with peanuts who has a peanut allergy, right? But obviously,
you're kind of thinking, ah, somebody must have set him up. And he gets disgraced. And now he tries
to get back like years later to open a restaurant in Tokyo, but nobody wants to work with it. And
it's just fucking hilarious. I think we should really go back to the original topic we were
going to talk about on this episode, which was breakfast. We went a little bit off topic on this
one. Sorry, I'm just so, I'm just so passionate about cooking shows. So I think the interesting
thing about breakfast is that they have their own category because you could exchange like dinner
and lunch, you know, like you could have same thing you had for lunch, for dinner and vice versa. But
breakfast, it's its own thing. And most restaurants don't offer breakfast and most chefs are not
trained in how to do breakfast at a professional level. And there is a lot to that. I remember
when El Budi closed and there was all of this speculation about what they would do. Now it's
a museum or even, they even did like an Airbnb thing experience. I don't know. But at some point,
they mentioned, yeah, maybe we could open just for a season and do only breakfast. And I said like,
wow, that's crazy. You know, like that's crazy. El Budi making only breakfast. Have you worked
in breakfast? Well, not really. I mean, as I am the head chef of a hotel, I do manage breakfast
and occasionally have worked in the breakfast service there.
I mean, depends like I, I really, you know, like breakfast is a sort of thing where back in the
day, I would have as a young chef said, or like, why would I do breakfast, you know, like that seems
like, I don't know, you know, this seems, it seems kind of shitty, you know, working on that station
or whatever. Nowadays, I'm like, I think being a breakfast chef is a really nice job, honestly,
like I, especially like if you, if I look at the breakfast in where I'm working, we don't feel the
need to follow any like rules, what sort of like, oh, you have to have this, you have to do it like
this on every other hotel. It's like this, right? So we don't have the little like ratios with the
fucking cocktail sausages and stuff. Although, to be fair, if I'm at a hotel, I'm like, for visiting,
I love those fucking sausages, but I don't want to cook them. I don't want to cook them.
I don't want to take care of them. So there, it's kind of like, well, it can be whatever, you know,
and what do you do for breakfast? You make a nice buffet, you have nice bread from a nice local bakery,
beautiful sourdough local grain, you have fruits, you have nice pastries, you know, make some nice
cinnamon rolls, make some Belgian muesli, make this, make that, make that, you know, it's omelets and
omelet well made, you know, it's great. What do you do? You make some nice pancakes, you know, like
some oat pancakes, some freshly baked waffles. It's all nice stuff. It doesn't have to be shitty,
you know. And on top of that, I think the working hours are pretty great. I honestly, if I could make
a switch to starting work at six o'clock in the morning and finishing at, you know, two thirty,
three o'clock, I would fucking take it. I would love that. But is it really six o'clock? I remember
I worked at the breakfast station in a hotel when I was living in Alicante. And I remember I had to,
well, both things that were really a problem was if you didn't wake up. And I remember this is
something very natural to happen if you're like 20 years old, that, you know, the clock doesn't
sound, you don't wake up, you're already like an hour late, the dining room or the breakfast room
is full of guests and you're like, that's the way your day starts. That's horrible. An absolute
nightmare, you know. Yeah. I remember having at least one or two of those. Yeah. And then I also
worked like in a breakfast, it was like a cafeteria in Berlin. And I would do the prep for the breakfast.
They would have like this takeaway couscous salads and this kind of things that I would do all the
preps for that. And same thing. I had to wake up at 4 a.m. And yeah, the cool thing is, as you say,
like it's one or two o'clock and you're done and you have the rest of the day for yourself.
But yeah, well, it's a different lifestyle. Yeah, for sure. I would rather work in a bakery,
you know, like I think it's more like a control environment. Yeah, absolutely. You know, like
there are not so many variables and I think it's very rewarding to work with doughs and bread.
No, 100%. I 100% agree with you. Like the thing with what makes restaurants and kitchens so
stressful is these little time pressure pockets of tickets coming in and services coming in and like
and you have to constantly chase and chase and chase and chase like with a bakery, you know,
because I mean, I was like running a small bakery for a while. I remember. Yes. Was it in Scotland?
In England, Central England. Okay. Yeah, in Lincolnshire. And it was a very nice pace
because I was working in a way where I was fermenting the bread overnight. So I would always
come in in the morning, early in the morning, right, to bake the bread. I had the commitment
that I wanted all the bread that I sell to be baked freshly before it got delivered as close
to the delivery time as possible. So I wanted ideally when the bread gets delivered to be still
warm from the oven, right? That was my, my, my goal. So that would mean I would start as early
as I had to, to bake all the bread, which would ever fit in my oven. And then I would start making
the dough for the next day, which meant I could take as long as I fucking needed to, right? Like
I would give the dough the time it needed. Um, let the process kind of go drink coffee, listen to
music, shape the dough, put it in the baskets, put them in the fridge and they were ready to go for
the next day. And I knew exactly, I had exactly what I needed for that day. And I would only bake
what I had sold, right? Cause I didn't want any excess bread and fucking hell, that was a really
nice way of working where I'm not sort of like, Oh my God, Oh, I have, I have a walk in a foreign
and walk in five and fuck do I have an efficient. I mean, I'm a trained baker and I also, since I
was responsible for operations while in Bolivia, I, I remember, I don't know, it was the longest,
the longest days without having a day off that I work. And I did that voluntarily, but I remember
I worked like six weeks or something like that without having a single day off. And I would work
in the bakery every day and we would do all kinds of things like croissants, this Danish, cinnamon
rolls, different kinds of breads and the whole process of preparing everything, smelling the
dough, smelling the freshly baked bread. I think that's just pure magic. You know, I love that shit.
Absolutely. It was like, I actually really miss it. I remember there was this one bread that I
used to bake, which was a Danish rye bread. Right. And I made it in a very specific way where I would
like take all grains, rye kernels and barley and stuff and roast them really, really dark in the
oven and then put them in water to soak and the water would absorb all this great flavor. So you
make like a green tea, right? It's a really dark caramelized grain infusion. And then I would use
that water to mix the dough and put all the grain into it. Right. And then ferment it with sour
dough, dark rye flour and you know, and all these like toasted grains and seeds, pumpkin seeds,
linseeds, et cetera. And when that bread would like come out of the oven, this like dark,
multi-caramelized seed flavor. Oh my God. It was like, honestly, that is like one of the
nicest smells in the world. You know, something that I just remembered, you know what I heard
about the other day, which I've never heard about before. There are, I don't know if you ever go to
like saunas or something. Ah, sauna. Okay. Yeah. There are saunas that are filled with the smell
of freshly baked bread. They're called bread saunas. Oh, wow. That's crazy. How nice is that?
Are you in there like an 80 degree sauna feeling like a loaf of bread that's just being baked?
And it's just kind of like, you know, how relaxing does that sound? I don't know why you remind me
of one of Anthony Bourdain's episodes where he goes to Russia and they're in this sauna and then
they jump into this water inside of ice. Oh yeah. You know, like in a hole and then they go out and
they're drinking vodka and eating smoked mackerel and sardines. Sounds amazing. Honestly. Yeah. Yeah.
So I mean, you know, I honestly think that like my perception of breakfast has shifted a lot.
You know, there's also, you know, really nice like also brunch. I mean, we hated on brunch the other
day. Did I mention this place the last time? Annalise? I think I did. No. Yeah, I did. I
already mentioned them. You did. Yeah. I also mentioned Simona here in San Sebastian is a
super nice breakfast and brunch place. Yeah. Well, okay. That's not, that's not included,
but like, for example, you know, like I like places that just do it right. You know, like there's a
place in London. I mean, obviously English breakfast is very, very famous and often it's really
trashy, but there was this one place. What was it called? Something Cafe that is very famous for
its full English breakfast. And like, it's just so nice to go there. Also, like in London, breakfast
places were booming when I was there. You know, you had a place called, what was it called? Duck. I
think it was just called duck egg and you would get breakfast, but cook with duck eggs. Okay. Right.
So duck egg, obviously larger than a regular egg with a much bigger yolk, which is crucial. And for
people who are not familiar with it, it might sound a little bit crazy in the UK, pretty normal,
honestly, duck eggs, really, really tasty. Then you get a eggs Benedict with a duck egg with like
an egg yolk. That's as big as a regular egg. It's fucking nice. I love duck egg is. Yeah, me too.
Me too. Really nice. I remember a place I was in New York and it was a Japanese breakfast place.
And I went there just to have breakfast. So, and you had like, yeah, you had fish. I remember having
like a, it was rice with like a liquid egg yolk and uni. And you would mix the whole thing.
That was really, really nice. And then there's yeah, like smoked fish and some pickles and stuff.
Like very similar to, there was also like a miso soup somewhere. Super nice. Super, super nice.
I do like, I think a miso soup is honestly one of the best breakfasts you can have.
I'm a big fan of soups for breakfast. Honestly, I think like my ideal breakfast would be like a,
like a intensely flavored chicken soup. Oh, nice. With vegetables and stuff like that,
maybe even some cabbage probably. Right. But I also have a very sentimental connection to miso soup.
Me and my friend, Jan, who was a star, not the young that you know, who was a star in Ryugin
when I was in Tokyo, we went for a trip to Mount Fuji. And we had this idea that we would climb
Mount Fuji at night to then see the sunrise in the morning. And as we were walking up this mountain,
right in the evening, the sun was setting, all these people were walking past us with like big
parkas on like big jackets and like fucking hiking sticks. And we were just there like jeans and,
and trainers. And we were sort of like, look at these guys, like, what the fuck, you know, it's
like, it's like 18 degrees. It's not cold, like whatever. And we sort of like, man, they're just,
I don't know, whatever. The further we got, the more we realized that we were being really fucking
stupid. Also because we, because it was getting colder and colder. We also hadn't packed any food.
We had packed a rucksack. We hadn't packed any water either. We had packed two like cartons,
you know, like milk cartons, but filled with cheap sake from the supermarket for 7-Eleven.
And I think like maybe two onigiri or something like that. Long story short, we got almost to the
very top and it started storming like absolute crazy. The temperatures dropped like nuts and we
had to hide in like a little cave that was on the side of the mountain together with like other people.
And we were super far away from everything. And it was actually a little bit of a precarious
situation. Like it wasn't actually funny. We were caught on the mountain. We were super underdressed.
We had really underestimated the dangers of the mountain, which for Germans is really silly to do
because mountains can be really, really dangerous. But anyway, we kind of waited the storm out.
And it was like four o'clock in the morning and we started climbing back down and found a little inn
that took us in and gave us a miso soup, you know, and that miso soup, honestly, it was one of the
most in that moment, one of the most delicious things I had ever eaten in my entire life.
It hit me in a way that I still remember to this day. And ever since then, when I eat a miso soup,
I just remember this like life-giving, life-saving, warm sort of nourishing quality of it.
And so, yeah, I think a miso soup is a really good start to the day.
Also Latin American breakfasts, I think they're super amazing.
Like having tacos for breakfast or in Venezuela arepas or having this,
you know, the national dish of Venezuela is something called pabellón, which is the like pulled beef
with like a black bean stew, white rice, fried plantains, and I'm missing something, rice,
beans, meat, plantains. That's it. Yeah. And there are even empanadas that have this whole thing
as a filling. There's this amazing place in Barcelona called La Poderosa, the powerful one,
and they do this margarita. Margarita is an island in Venezuela and they do margarita-style
empanadas that are just killers, you know, like the best ones I've had outside of Venezuela.
Fuck, that sounds so good. That's also good. I love these like Latin American meals with like
rice, beans, plantain, and like protein. I remember when I was in Costa Rica, I was eating
cassado every single day. And I honestly, I think I never felt healthier. Cassado with fish,
cassado with meat. It was super, super nice. I remember when I was like, that was good. But
when I was in Mexico, for example, Mexican breakfast was a little bit tricky for me, honestly.
I remember my friend, Adelise, came to visit in Mexico City and she wanted to go to this like
famous breakfast place. So we went and it was pork in salsa verde, which was like really heavy,
really fatty, really spicy. And then I ordered these like eggs with beans and they came as this like
canal of sort of like bean puree with eggs kind of like mixed into it. It was like really strange.
And I remember eating it and being sort of like, it was like eight o'clock in the morning. And I
was like, man, I'm ready to go back to bed. I cannot do anything after this. Like I'm super done.
What about Chinese breakfast? Dim sum? Oh man, I could have that every day, you know,
like having dumplings and tea for breakfast. Yeah. It's just like a dream. Absolutely. Absolutely.
I mean, that's the thing also, like dumplings, dim sum, I could eat every single day.
I don't know how long I would have to eat dim sum for before I say I've had enough, you know,
but this is like, it's the perfect meal, you know, I think like a good noodle soup where you have
everything. You have broth, you have noodles, you have a little bit of protein, whatever. You have
an egg. I could eat that every day. No problem. That's it for this week's episode of potluck
food talks. If you like what we're doing, make sure to subscribe to the podcast so you never
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