Hi everyone.
Welcome to potluck food talks.
I'm Eric and I'm here with my man, Gil Walter, and we're going to talk about pursuit of excellence
and cooking and the culinary worlds.
Eric, what's the first thing you think about when you hear that expression?
I'm, I don't know.
I think it is the, the really kind of that sentiment that I feel is very unique to our
profession.
And it's definitely one of the biggest reasons why I started cooking in the first place.
I wanted to, like I've spoken to Xander about it before.
I wanted to do something where I could strive to be a little bit better every day.
And yeah, and I spent most of my career doing that sometimes in a very unhealthy way.
And sometimes in a really, really fulfilling way.
Actually, I think it's one of the things that makes this job what it is and why people want
to do it.
Is this constant delving into what you're doing.
For me it comes to mind.
Well, there, there is this book from Charlie Trotter is called lessons in excellence, which
I recommend very much.
He has lessons in excellence, lessons in service and lessons in wine service.
The last one I didn't read, but I don't remember in which one of them he says that he looks
for people that have a religious approach to work.
Okay.
And, and that also brings to me when I listened to the episode where Xander interviews you
and you're telling about how you started cooking and you said that Buddhism and Zen philosophy
really caught your attention and you saw something about it and cooking because everything was
so like volatile that you cook something and then it's gone.
And I don't know.
I think like all of these things are like, like puzzle pieces of a larger picture when
we talk about this.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
And I think it's almost like when you meet people that have the same passion and that
see the same beauty in what you're doing.
It's almost like you meet a brother from another mother, you know, it's almost like you, you
meet somebody from like a secret cult because there's people that cook and that's totally
fine.
You know, I'm cooking for feeding people is a very noble pursuit, but you know, you have
that in every, in everything, you know, you have people who make music and they can play
an instrument pretty well and then you have people that seal it, you know, that really
seal it with their whole being.
And it's just a little bit different.
And when you come across people like that, it's very inspiring.
Yeah.
And I guess it has also to do when, when you see something properly executed, you know,
it's like an aesthetic experience, right?
You enjoy the beauty of it.
It's like, yeah, nice, you know, like, you know, and if it's not, it's that opposite
like fucking bullshit.
I hate this shit.
You know, I don't want to see this like this.
And that's why chefs are such maniacs because you get this emotional contrast of beauty
and ugliness in your work.
If something is not beautiful, then it's ugly and you don't want it to be ugly.
Yeah, totally.
No, absolutely.
Absolutely right.
It just reminds me of a conversation I had with somebody that I worked with not too long
ago that I was trying to explain to how it feels like if you have a really bad service.
And she was kind of like, well, you know, but like bad days happen and like you have
to be able to go home and switch off.
And I was like, no, you don't understand.
Like, of course, like you're right.
But the feeling that I have when, when a service goes bad and you send things out that you
don't feel all right, it crushes me.
It really, really crushes me.
It's like, like, like if you're a surgeon and somebody died in your operation table,
you know, like it's like that you, you, you, you have your shoulders for at least a few
days.
That's an intense comparison, man.
But you're right.
It does feel like that.
And I guess that's just, that's, that's just what comes with being really passionate about
something.
I don't know, for me, it was never about sort of like, you know, this feeling of this feeling
of failure that you have.
It was never about anything else but me, you know, like I feel like I let myself down and
I, I felt like where did all my time and effort go?
If it resulted in this all day long, I'm trying to chase, I'm trying to chase the dragon and
try to, you know, make my deadline and, and then I get there and it gets fucked up.
And then, right, other people are involved also, right?
Sometimes you fuck up, sometimes other people fuck up and then all your hard work results
in something that's mediocre because of other people, which then becomes a really difficult
situation.
Also, how do you deal with that?
Right?
Because it's one thing if you shift the party and you work with other people, it can be
like, oh fuck, you know.
On my side, the social, the fish was perfect, the sauce was perfect, blah, blah, blah.
But the ultimately fucked up the garnish.
So fuck that guy, right?
But if you're, you know, a sous chef or a head chef, it's your responsibility to keep
everybody together.
So if somebody fucks up, of course it's, you know, their problem, but also what could you
have done to improve that?
It's a, it's a very complex scenario.
I also think about repetition, you know, like if you, if you think about the person of excellence,
repetition is like an absolute concept that is binded to it, you know?
Yeah.
Because doing the same thing every day and enjoying the beauty of it every time and not
only every day, but many times a day, you know, like every time, like a very beautiful
plate.
So I think I am working in restaurants for a while, but I remember resetting your mind,
you know, like every time you have the same plate again and you need to start doing the
same thing again, learning how to look at it as if you were doing it for the first time
and learning how to cook or plate as if it was for your most beloved one person.
Like having that kind of resetting and having a blank mind when you're doing this kind of
things.
It was also key for me to keep that mood, you know, like ongoing.
I think what you said there is such a beautiful like way of thinking about it.
It's like, you know, seeing the beauty in the stuff every day and multiple times a day.
If you manage to do that, and if you practice that, because it's a practice, right?
Unless you're like a very, you know, special sort of person, then you have to practice
that.
You have to get yourself into that mode.
And then you can take that even further where you try to see the beauty in all the things
that you're doing.
If it's peeling a mushroom, you know, if it's, you know, peeling the apple, if it's making
a potato puree, if, you know, it's cleaning the fish, you know, like simple things, picking
herbs, you can step back and enjoy the beauty and the enjoyment of what you're doing.
And also in trying to do it excellently in every single thing that you're doing.
And that is where I feel like the religious aspect comes in.
If you approach it religiously, because that's, you know, like what I'm saying is not easily
done, I would say, but if you manage to do that, how incredibly fulfilling that must
be, you know, and sometimes, sometimes we manage to do that.
And I 100% believe that the end result of what we're doing, of the work that we're
doing, is then impacted in such a positive way.
And that's obviously, we're all human and we can't always do this because we have bad
days and somebody, some crackhead shouted at us on the train on our way to work.
And you know, I don't know.
I think it's also key like to have like a proper environment to develop this talent
and this approach to cooking is that the whole kitchen has to be designed for something like
that.
You know, if you're like you're saying peeling some baby carrots really carefully, and then
I don't know, like you have a ticket with a room service and the owner of the restaurant
comes in and asks you to do something that has nothing to do with your job.
And then the whole thing becomes a mess.
It's just counterproductive for everything, you know, like not just for your mental health,
but also for the quality of the restaurant, also for the whole team working as an engine,
like for many, many things.
I think that that's something that has to be taken into consideration from the very
beginning, from the very foundational conceptualization of a place.
That's very, very true.
I think so many people forget that.
So many people who run restaurants and operate restaurants, not going to say any names, they
forget that and they don't understand that.
And they think like, hey, we can just, it's fine, right?
Like it's okay.
You can just do this quick room service ticket.
And it's like, yeah, yeah, sure.
I can.
And yeah, it's okay.
We just do this.
It's okay.
We just do that.
It's okay.
We can do that.
If you just do it one hour earlier, it's like, yeah, what's an hour?
What's an hour?
An hour is a lot, you know?
And things need to, we need to set things into motion.
We really need to think about what are the steps we want?
Do we want more or do we want better?
Yeah.
And also, do you want to have like a super large rotation of staff?
People coming and leaving every three months or do you want people to stay for years working
for you?
I say like, if you have that as a goal from the very beginning, then you need to think
differently of all of these things where we're just saying, you know, like if you want people
to stay for a few years working with you.
Absolutely.
One person that I think of when it comes to pursuit of excellence is somebody that I've
not worked with.
But I've been following him for a long time and he's recently got his third mission in
star as we talked about him earlier, Daniel Calvert from Cezanne in Tokyo.
That for me is really like, I've been following this guy since he was in Hong Kong.
He had one star at a restaurant called Bellon where he was doing like fairly classic French
cooking with, you know, like a lot of like local influence, like he was making like drunk
and chicken and stuff like that.
And he then moved on to Tokyo, opened Cezanne straight away, got two mission in stars and
now he's got his third one.
And that is really a kitchen where, you know, like per se and you know, the French laundry
and Cezanne and Benue, all these kitchens where you kind of look at the way they work.
11 Madison Park and you sort of like, yeah, they're really in pursuit of excellence there.
They have a culture.
They have a religious approach.
They show up every day and they just do their thing.
And like a knife on a sharpening stone, it gets refined, refined, refined, refined until
it's laser sharp.
I can think of this book from Elias Fromm called The Art of Loving.
He was like a psychologist from the 60s, like German Jewish American.
And I remember I read that book when I was a teenager and I could summarize it and like,
well, the way he approaches the concept of love is that he says that love is something
is a practice and something that you have to train and to do proactively towards things.
It could be a person, it could be cooking, you know, it could be anything.
And he says it has like four elements.
And if you apply those four elements into something, then you are basically loving it
and that thing will somehow reward you for it.
Okay.
And these things are care, knowledge, respect, and responsibility.
Like the combination of those four.
If you apply this to learning how to cook better or cooking better, like executing a
specific dish or I don't know, running a restaurant or serving a table, then that thing will reward
you like, you know.
That's really beautiful, man.
And I can totally relate to that.
I can absolutely relate to that.
I really love the fact like loving is something that you have to do proactively.
I think that's super true.
And that's kind of how you should approach cooking also, you know, proactively and proactively
also looking for the beauty in it and loving it.
I've been watching this show that's called La Grande Mezzo Tokyo.
It's on Netflix also.
And that is also a show that is about the pursuit of excellence in a really beautiful
way.
Have you seen it?
No, I haven't seen cook shows lately, but I've heard like this one.
And there is also like a Korean show also on Netflix.
I've heard very good comments about it.
Yeah, they're both really good culinary wars, I think you mean.
They're both really, really good.
They're both very different.
So this La Grande Mezzo Tokyo, it's like a Japanese telenovela.
And just to kind of break the story down, it's about a Japanese chef in Paris who has
two mission stars and he gets disgraced.
So he basically poisons the customer.
Nobody wants to hire him.
Jump to three years later.
He's like basically living on the streets and he meets this like middle aged woman who
takes him back to Tokyo and wants to open a restaurant with him.
He's a very difficult character.
And so they open this restaurant and they want to get three mission stars.
So I started watching the show and I thought it was going to be like very lighthearted.
And then the more I watched the show, the more I got hooked.
And the more you saw about the cooking, the more I realized that whoever was advising
them on the food had a really intricate and deep understanding of cooking.
And I watched the whole show.
It's only like 11 episodes.
And I was like, man, the show is so fucking good, especially in the end.
It gets really good, especially like cooking wise.
There's dishes in there where you're like, man, that's so smart, you know.
And then after I watched it, I started watching it again because I wanted to watch it second
time and I made a little bit of research and I realized that the two main restaurants in
the show, one is like very modern Japanese and the other one is like very kind of old
schooly modern French with Japanese ingredients.
The French restaurant, it was all the dishes that they serve.
For most of them, the dishes from quintessence in Tokyo.
Okay.
Yeah.
Like if you say that the dishes are clever, there is probably like a good consultant behind
it.
100%.
I mean, quintessence in Tokyo is, you know, arguably the most infamous famous three mission
star Japanese French restaurant in Japan.
And there are such sort of like really like finely tuned dishes in there with like little
bit simple, but they have these twists and these techniques where you're like, oh my
God, if I think about it, it's so smart.
And yeah, that is also a really beautiful show where they, you know, in the previous
episodes we talked about the 10 commandments from the Vel Poussin, the sort of like, yeah,
thou shalt not be, what was it, systematically modernist.
Right.
And they do exactly that.
They sort of, they stay away from technique and they really delve into the experience
that the people have when eating the food.
And I thought it was a really, really beautiful showcase of the pursuit of excellence.
I was looking, you just mentioned this is grace chef that poisoned someone.
Did you read the news?
Like this happened?
I think just a few days ago or last week, the latest where some, there was like an infection
in McDonald's in the States and someone died.
And also like also in Victoria here in Spain.
Well, that was, was for Collie, you know, this infection that happens with meat sometimes.
Yeah.
And here in Victoria is, and I was reading this article that they published at El País,
like a local newspaper talking about why, why it's, is it risky to eat medium rare burgers?
You know, because if you eat like a steak, the, these bacterias, they're on the surface
and they get immediately killed when, when you grill them.
Yep.
But of course, if you grind the meat, then you mix the whole thing and the bacterias
will be inside.
And if you keep the draw, they might survive.
And the risk of, of getting poisoned by medium rare burgers is 30 times higher than if they're
not.
That's crazy.
And I love eating raw burgers.
You know, like,
Me too.
I like both actually.
I like the medium raw burger.
I like the smash burger, you know?
Yeah.
I mean, like what people forget with minced meat is that the surface area of the meat
becomes like times a million, you know, because you cut it up and it's like, you have small
particles of meat that all have a surface area, you know, it's not like closed.
So the bacteria can spread on the surface of this meat.
And it's, it's really, really intense.
I mean, what's a good alternative?
Steak sandwich?
I guess a smash burger is a good alternative or sando sandwiches.
Sando sandwiches.
You know, I actually read an article just a few days ago that was saying that actually
it makes sense to not serve burgers medium rare because, and the title of the article
was sort of like, a burger is so juicy, you have to cook it beyond medium so that all
the like moisture gets trapped, right?
Outside of the burger, which I guess makes sense, but a medium rare burger is just very,
very delicious.
I had a very good burger yesterday and this place in Barcelona called Visio.
It's like a burger place that is becoming trendy.
And it's funny, it was a cheeseburger with truffle sauce and the truffle sauce was nice.
But it's funny this place because it's all like, like a sexualized place, you know, like
with red lights, it's called Visio.
Then when you walk in, there is like this sign that says, you're going to get your thing,
you know, like, and then when you're reading that, like the descriptions of the, like in
the recipe and I know like in the receipt, in the ticket, it says like, this burger is
like a satisfied, butter is not included.
It's like that, you know, like we did sex messages around everywhere.
You know, like it was very funny.
That's really funny.
That's it for this week's episode of potluck food talks.
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