Hi everyone, welcome to Pot Luck Food Talks.
Today I'm here with David Egy.
He's a gastro diplomat, brand ambassador for some of the hottest names in the culinary
landscape worldwide.
Some of them are three Michelin star chefs, many of them are 50 best.
Many of them were listed in the Risa and top chef list that we're going to talk about.
How are you, Dave?
Welcome.
Nice to have you here.
Thank you, thank you.
Thank you for having me.
I'm good.
I'm ready to talk about restaurants and chefs and work.
So you just arrived from Dubai.
How was this list event that just happened there?
Well, what just happened in Dubai is the Best Chefs Awards.
So I think it's their ninth year and it's an organization that awards chefs, but it's
chefs voting for chefs.
So it's a little different.
Up until now, they've been, they were a ranking and they awarded the top best, 100 best chefs
in the world.
And this year they changed things a little bit.
And what they did was to make it into a rating system and they give knives to chefs.
So you can either have one, two or three knives.
And they turned the list of 100 into 550 chefs worldwide.
So I think that their aim is to make it like a global thing and to be able to include more
and more chefs from maybe areas that don't necessarily have a great reach towards 50
best or Michelin or, you know, to, to make it more inclusive in a way.
For example, I mean, I'm Venezuelan, obviously Venezuela doesn't have Michelin and, and they've
also struggled to be a part of the world's 50 rest or Latin America's 50 rest because
of voters not being able to go to Caracas.
In this organization, we had five Venezuelan chefs already awarded with knives and they
can get them also by going to other places and cooking with chefs and building relationships
with them and going to other places around the world to cook and show what they do.
So that's one good example of how this, this specific list can be a little more open and
inclusive, you know, and it's, I think it's fun.
Yeah.
It's positioning itself as a third alternative after Michelin, 50 best.
And now, now I think that this one is getting a good ground, like in this kind of list also
I've heard like they, or I read somewhere like part of the criteria is, um, the, the
innovative spirit of chefs.
Like these chefs are like groundbreaking in some way or in their own context, like the
culinary scene very carefully, if I understand well.
They award different things.
They also have a list of special awards, including awards like food experience or the best pastry
chef from the world.
They also always give a special award to a chef that stands out in this host city.
I guess as other guides and rankings and ratings, there's a lot that needs to be considered
and maybe some places are extremely conscious with sustainability, but don't have the craziest
experience.
It's like stripped back and straight into the food.
And some other places are just like, I don't know, like alchemists that are just like a
crazy experience.
It doesn't necessarily have to have like a huge focus on sustainability.
It just like changes depending on where the chef is and what the context of the place
is, you know?
But I think that they're doing a very good job in trying to, to show a more diverse landscape
of chefs and international and including younger ones too.
I didn't realize that they became like a 500 top list kind of like I was seeing that there
were like a lot of names.
I also saw names I wasn't expecting.
Like, I don't know, Deborah Fadul, who I have a pending interview with her.
We've been postponing it for many months.
We'll have her soon here at Postdoc Food Talks.
And other chefs.
What's the name of this guy from El Bosque, Ivan Garcia?
Ivan Garcia from Caracas.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Like I wasn't expecting to see him there as well.
And yeah, how did you perceive the whole gala, the whole event?
This wasn't this super seven star hotel in Dubai, right?
Yeah.
I mean, I wasn't in Atlantis at the palm.
I mean, Dubai is very Dubai.
It's difficult to, it's difficult to describe it.
It's definitely a place that's not for everyone, but something that I really like about the
city, it's managed to somehow prove everyone wrong in terms of the restaurant and food
universe.
Maybe some years ago, everyone thought that it was going to be like the New Vegas and
it was just like about famous chefs opening restaurants that had huge budgets and amazing
buildings and stuff.
And that's happening.
Their very own, very talented group of chefs and projects happening like Corfa Libros and
other projects that are doing a great job in creating Dubai's food and reputation.
I guess if you ask any food writer internationally right now, maybe they're not a fan of the
idea of Dubai, but they will have to recognize that there are interesting things happening
there in terms of food and restaurants and chefs.
Yeah, I'm sure about it.
And so you work for Bon Vimant Communication.
First of all, if you could explain us what it is and what is your activity, but also
you have a catalog of chefs that how many, at least nine or 10 of them were in this recent
list?
In the best chefs awards, we had 17 chefs with knives.
17, wow.
One of them, Eric Vilgard from Copenhagen was in the top three.
And then we had Vaughn Moby from Amisfield in New Zealand.
He won the Food Experience Award and René Franck from COLA in Berlin, one of the world's
best pastry chef.
Yeah.
And you asked me before how I experienced the gala and it was very stressful in the
beginning.
Just like looking at all your chefs appearing on the screen and finally knowing what they're
going to get or if they are going to be awarded anything.
And then it turned into a celebration, you know?
So it was definitely a night to celebrate also on behalf of all the chefs, you know?
And going back to this question, yes, I do work at Bon Vivant.
I've been doing so for five years already since I moved from Venezuela to Barcelona.
And Bon Vivant, we describe it as a culinary embassy.
So it goes further than just a communications agency.
We are involved in basically every single area of the food world.
We organize one of the most infamous dinner parties in the world called Dining Impossible.
The owner of the agency, Christian Blas, has also produced culinary movies.
There were two already premiered out of a trilogy that's dealing with Michelin as a
main subject.
The last one was shot during COVID and it was a huge project and it ended up having
to change throughout the production because of COVID.
And it ended up giving a lot of highlight to the Faroe Islands and Cox, the restaurant
that's there.
This movie was featured in the San Sebastian Film Festival a few years ago, is it possible?
In the San Sebastian Film Festival, there is always a food movie section and the chefs
that are featured in these movies come to San Sebastian and do a dinner here.
And these tickets are sold literally in three minutes.
Every year I try and I'm like, I refreshed the site and I lost my opportunity.
You should have asked me because I was there.
We didn't talk about it.
But yeah, we went and we had the premiere at the San Sebastian Film Festival for the
second one, the Spanish premiere at least.
Then we had a little dinner and Q&A with the chef from Cox, the Bas Culinary Center.
It was very, I remember that it was very controversial because it happened maybe like a
few weeks after the whole whale situation from Faroe Islands and everyone kept asking
the chef about the whales.
But yeah, that's also one of the things that we do with 1v1, so the production of documentaries
and films related to astronomy.
Super cool.
And then the main thing would be the work that we do with restaurant chefs and projects,
like culinary projects in general.
So it can either be a hotel that has a very big focus on gastronomy.
It can either be a country that wants to highlight tourism or culture through gastronomy, or
it can be a chef, it can be a superstar chef, or it can be a newcomer that wants to somehow
make some noise in the world.
And that's what we're doing right now.
So if I understand correctly, you take a restaurant or a chef, I understand they have to be already
have some kind of, there has to be a selection criteria or if I understand correctly, you
don't understand like rookies or newcomers to develop them.
You take already people that are already somehow established to some degree.
Yes, yes and no.
I mean, I guess that it's been, it changes depending on the moment, you know, on who
is interested in working with us.
We definitely are very selective, not only because of the amount of clients that we already
have and the type of work that we want to do with them, but also I guess that it's a
way of somehow respecting the group that we have.
Yeah, I understand.
You need to be able to hold yourself within that group and to have something interesting
to amplify to the world.
And then it's kind of like a holistic strategy.
The word communication is an important part, but I guess there is also like the character
to show to the world, like a persona as a chef or a story to tell or a certain time
of imagery or audiovisuals and so on, something like that.
And that also changes depending on the client.
And it's very difficult to describe in just one example, because really every single one
is completely different and every single collaboration we do is somehow tailor-made.
We've had amazing examples of chefs with whom we work together to somehow create the story.
Yeah, and the persona, not the persona, the image that we're going to show, you know,
not only is it in terms of the menu that they're creating or the experience in the restaurant,
but also in how we want to show that to the world.
We've had the opportunity of developing that together with chefs and restaurants in many
cases or actually with some, we've had the opportunity to go even before.
Like, when the restaurant is just a project, they usually trust us in having some opinions
even about like the menu or how the experience is going to be held.
That part for me is actually my favorite one.
Okay, that's super cool, like an early concept development before they open a restaurant.
And maybe, just to say an example, a chef could have like a crazy idea of mixing too
many things and you orient them to create something like more direct or focused on a
specific storyline or persona or character or something that represents the environment.
I don't know, like I understand this could be infinite possibilities.
Yeah, to somehow edit.
I guess that you know this and you're in contact with a lot of chefs, but being a chef can
be a work that's very secluded.
A lot of chefs are very focused on what they want to do and they don't even have time to
go out and eat in other places or travel or somehow have the input that they can turn
into ideas or inspiration or even just references, you know.
This has changed a lot lately, but I always, I do interview all of the chefs in the beginning
when we have to start the collaboration.
And it's so funny because all of them come from a different generation or most of them.
Their contact to other references used to be through cookbooks.
I remember a lot of them mentioning like El Bulli cookbooks and books like that, like
got my hands into this book from the chef and that's how it became something else.
Now that's completely changed.
Yeah, in terms of helping them develop an idea or edit it or just figure out how the
service is going to flow.
There are so many details that go into creating a restaurant like this one.
I guess people sometimes forget it.
It's like when design is done well, it just works.
You know, it looks great.
The piece that you're using works so good that you're not thinking about everything
that went into making it, but when it's not done well, then you realize the mistakes.
You go into a place and you're like, well, these tables are like strange and I'm sitting
and I'm not comfortable and it's too warm and the kitchen is too far away.
So all those details, sometimes for a chef and especially one that's creating a restaurant
and they are so focused on what they want to do and their own food that sometimes they
miss things like that.
Not always, but that's also something that we do sometimes.
And for me, that's very exciting because I also, it feels strange to be included in something
so personal as a project like that.
And then when you finally go and it's open and they're like, oh, we did this because
you told us that it would work better.
You feel somehow proud of being a part of the whole project.
Yeah, that's amazing.
Because at the end, you say it's not only communication, but at the same time, I would
say everything is communication.
Like a design, like an environment, like the way the staff is dressed, the look of the
architecture of the place, like the way the menus, everything communicates something.
I was also thinking when it comes to PR, I think of two cases, like two of the, I would
say most important restaurants in the last 50 years, I would say are El Bulli and Noma.
Right?
Dare to say that they wouldn't have become what they became without groundbreaking articles.
I think in the case of El Bulli was an article in the New York Times or Times Magazine and
Noma, same thing.
In the case of Noma, it was Lisa Venn.
And in the case of El Bulli, I don't know who it was.
I think Coleman Andrews.
But at the end of the day, they had to have like a contact who would write a piece and
put it in an important newspaper and that would call the world's attention.
And that's also part of becoming in the list of the best restaurants in the world and these
kinds of things.
I guess like this kind of process, you have a very well-interviewed with the restaurants
that you work with.
I think that this is somehow the part of the industry that people don't know about.
And it's also something that can be said about the food, the film industry or the sports
or like music.
I think that there's this idea that the stars align and someone that's just like super talented
got lucky and somehow...
An inspector came to his restaurant that was in the middle of nowhere.
He was just passing by and had a taste of something and fell in love.
Right?
And it can be a story like the one from Massimo Bottura that's like, well, the roads were
a food rider from the New York Times didn't have a place to have dinner.
So he ended up there and then he wrote an article and everything changed.
And even that tale is the result of an agency.
I can think of two tales like this.
One is also from El Bulli.
It was like Joel Robuchon was up to take a train, but he tried the tomato canita at El
Bulli.
This was in the mid nineties and he on purpose, he lost the train just to finish the whole
menu.
You know, this is like a story Ferran has told many times.
Also the story of the French Laundry where Thomas Keller says every day he would take
the phone and ask someone for money to open his restaurant.
I actually got a story first person from someone who met Thomas Keller when he was walking
around asking for money.
He completely looked down at him.
Like this guy who is like, I don't know, 50 years old saying he wants to open the best
restaurant in the world.
Like there was like, this guy is crazy.
You know, like that.
That would also be one of my favorite parts.
A lot of times you sit down with chefs.
I guess there's a little bit of everything in the food world and in the restaurant world
in terms of personalities.
You have a few superstars that can combine the social skills and the personality with
the amazing talent in the kitchen.
And then you have some people that are shy and that express who they are and what they
think through their food and through their projects.
And especially with those, it's so interesting to actually sit down and take those stories
out of them because they don't really even see how those stories can make the whole thing
better as an experience for a guest.
And they just focus on the food.
They have it so interiorized that they don't even see the value in these stories.
So you sit down with them.
And as I told you, I always have to have a very long interview with the chefs when we
start working with them.
What I always tell them is like, look, I've read the books, I've been through your website,
I know everything about you, but this is going to be like a nightmare interview for you because
we're going to start from the beginning.
So you're going to tell me like, since you were a child, everything that happened throughout
your life that got you here and in the way you see them relaxing and you see them letting
go and you start pulling stories out of them.
And that part is always so interesting because it really the moment where you can create
a cool narrative and extract the moments in their lives.
You know this chef's table moment that it's like the realization moment, you know, it's
always like drama and like the panning of the kitchen.
When Alex Atala took an LSD trip and realized the circle of the flower.
I always connect it when I'm having the interviews and I hear the moment where it's like, this
is where we're going to, what we're going to use to amplify this guy's work.
I always somehow go back to chef's table and to that moment of like the violins moving
and all that movement and everything because I'm like, okay, we have it, we have it, keep
going, keep going, you know.
I think that in terms of, I mean, in general, people don't know anything about this part
of the industry.
Like people think it's just like restaurants and they go and they, you know, and it's a
huge part of the industry.
That's why I thought it was so interesting to interview most of our audience are chefs
and young chefs.
And I'm sure many of them don't know anything about this, that this is also part of the
job part of creating a restaurant and making it successful, a restaurant or a personal
brand because you could also be a consultant or something else, but you will always need
to create this character to show to the world that is that the chef you are.
Or for example, in my case, I'm not running a restaurant or cooking anymore, but I do
food tours and I present myself as a character that is a specific kind of people you want
to hang out with and go out and eat and have drinks and San Sebastian, for example.
You can even like take it to something as basic as describe your food.
For some of them, it is so difficult to express what they do in words.
Even though they have three stars and they've been cooking and doing interviews and books
and things for years and years, you sit down with them and you ask them like about their
culinary style or to describe what they're doing in the menu.
Why do you like this dish?
Yeah, but that's a difficult question.
If you ask someone, why do you like this?
You just like things, right?
You don't rationalize why you like things.
And the moment you start like to degrading and deconstructing these kinds of things
is where the interesting messages to communicate come out.
But somehow for someone that's done therapy, it can feel like when you go to therapy and
they're like, okay, how do you feel?
And you're like, well, I don't know.
I'm happy.
And why are you happy?
It's like, well, because I am.
Like, no, no, no, let's find out.
So when you sit down with a chef, for me, it's super exciting when I see them verbalizing
something for the first time that they were never able to before.
And it's like, okay, this is what you're going to say.
Someone asks you this question because it's the truth.
And this is also important.
I don't know about other agencies or other offices, but we're not making anything up
here.
The idea is to be as authentic as we can and to help them figure out where it's all really
coming from.
That's really interesting what you just said, because also as a tour guide, I started realizing
that there were very frequent questions that people ask.
And these are frequent questions that I would say any chef will be asked.
For example, what's your favorite dish to cook?
Anyone who's a chef, that's something the taxi driver will ask you if you tell them
you're a chef.
And it's good to have prepared answers for these things.
Even like, it's not a good answer to say, I don't have any.
Like I love cooking everything.
Find a story that tells something interesting about your work and put it as an answer for
these kind of questions.
And the thing is, like I just said, it's not about making things up, but the thing is that
it's usually, it's just like not true.
Like if you are a chef and you love to cook, there's polo, it's something that you're leaning
more towards that you love and enjoy cooking.
You have to find out.
You're just simply not thinking about it.
You're like, whoa, I love everything.
That to me, it's like a nightmare.
That type of, when I'm sitting, even if I'm doing the interview, because I used to be
a food writer before, or if I'm organizing an interview between a group of writers and
a chef or one journalist and a chef, and I'm sitting there and I just see them giving nothing
and the writer or the journalist trying to get something out of the chef.
And they're just like, well, no, I don't really know how to describe my food and I don't have
any like restaurants that I particularly like.
I just eat at home.
Exactly.
You just have to see the face.
You can see the face of the journalist like, okay, this was a waste of time.
So this is, I think that when we do this first interview, it's also a good exercise for the
chefs to realize a lot of things that they've never said out loud.
And I always tell them at that moment, like, okay, remember the story because this is a
good one.
Maybe this one doesn't really like, don't say this again.
Yeah, that's also important.
Of course.
Yeah.
Like what to be quiet about is as important as what to talk about.
The work ends up becoming so much bigger than even people that know about communications
would imagine.
We were just saying for someone that doesn't know anything about this world, everything
is new, but there are some people that do understand that there's a lot of work behind
in terms of communications and PR and representing chefs and connections and everything.
But even for people like that, some of them would be amazed at the things you end up doing
with and for chefs.
So yeah, it's very dynamic and fun.
So something I wanted to ask you about, because this is something we love here at Potluck
Food Talk, is like fuck up situations or things that went wrong or crises or these kinds of
things.
Do you have any story, of course, without revealing names or anything?
Like, I don't know.
Did you have like a chef that started crying in front of you because you found out like
a trauma in the middle of the...
Or a crisis?
That happens.
I don't know.
Like maybe I can share one.
In this regard, I was working at a restaurant and the sommelier was sent to a different
city for a wine event.
Two days later, the guy got fired.
He did almost like an orgy in his hotel room.
He peed on the mayor's car, the mayor of the city.
He peed on his car.
He did like a huge mess completely in one day.
And it was crazy firing him.
He got fired right away.
But this guy was an important piece in the restaurant.
So this really became like a big shock for the whole thing.
I mean, this one's tricky because my job goes against revealing these things.
And even if it's with chefs or with food writers or with clients or during Dining Impossible,
that's even more private.
Like what happens in Dining Impossible stays there.
But I've definitely had...
I mean, I didn't see it as a crisis or a bad thing.
I've had chefs crying during interviews because the interview becomes very personal.
I don't necessarily see it as a bad thing.
The few moments that it's happened, it's been very real and vulnerable.
And that's something that depending on who's listening, it can be appreciated or even used.
I guess it's part of opening the Pandora box.
Something that will come out eventually if you're sharing your personal story.
It's part of any personal story.
I mean, I guess that's something that's tricky.
No, I understand.
I understand.
But you mentioned Dining Impossible.
What about that?
What is Dining Impossible?
And can you share a little bit about it?
How was the last edition and what is it in the first place?
Okay.
So Dining Impossible, we like to describe it as the world's most famous dinner party.
So the creator of Om Viva Ant, Christian Brasch, he's from Denmark.
And he started doing dinner parties in Copenhagen.
Good city.
Those dinner parties when Noma...
Well it still is a place that's impossible to get a reservation in.
But they had like a private area, like a private room that they were not using.
And he got access to dinner parties there.
So that also made it become even bigger.
And at that time it was called the dinner party.
And then he started thinking, okay, how can I make this even cooler?
He started doing it in different cities around the world and making it somehow like a tour.
So like you do tours, this would be like the tour on asteroids or something like that.
So I remember when the first Dining Impossible that I went to as a writer and food photographer,
it was in Barcelona.
We went to dinner the first night at Disfrutar.
Then the second day we went to dinner at Sallet Can Roca.
Wow.
And the third day we went to lunch at Tickets.
And we went to dinner at La Sarte.
Wow, incredible.
Complete this with like a crazy group of people from all over the world.
Everyone's there because they enjoy it and they want to have fun and they appreciate
food and they appreciate wines.
And then you mix in a little bar visit here and a party here and that becomes Dining Impossible.
So it is, I guess the name describes it very well because it is impossible in many different
ways.
Sometimes it's impossible to eat all that food in three days, but people manage to do it.
It is kind of impossible to replicate that on your own too.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
If you're just like a couple that's coming to Barcelona, it's very difficult for you
to be able to do that in three days and also to have the experience that you're going to
have with that group.
So that somehow evolved last year into the IJET, which was like even more insane version
of that.
So it was, for example, the whole group meets at the Eiffel Tower and then they go to a
three-mission restaurant in Paris.
Then the morning after they fly on a private jet to San Sebastian, eat at Mugarritz.
And then the day after they fly to Girona, dinner at Selle Can Roca.
And the last day they went to Nice, helicopter to Monte Carlo and then drive to Mirasul.
Wow.
That's insane.
So that was four days of insane eating and traveling.
That's crazy.
And obviously like in the plane, it was also like champagne.
I would like possums.
If I wouldn't make something like that, I wouldn't like that.
I don't know.
To spend a day in each city at least.
You don't get any free time or recovery time.
We did one in Faroe Islands that was crazy too.
That one was not the IJet, but dining impossible and it was, I would say, more adventure.
So yeah, it's just like a super cool event for real food lovers.
This year we didn't do one because we've been growing a lot in terms of actual restaurant
clients and the team, but the demand is really there and we're thinking about some places
that can be cool for next year.
I think we're going to do two.
Okay.
But it's still not...
Anything to reveal there or not yet?
No, not yet.
Not yet.
Okay.
Cool.
I mean, it happens like what you said with the dinners at Bas Culinary Center during
the film festival.
With dining impossible, it's something that we publish and like a week later or like two
days later, it's full.
We really wait until everything's ready and we're sure that we have all the bookings and
all the restaurants and all the program ready to reveal it because then it's not easy to
take it back.
That's it for this week's episode of Potluck Food Talks.
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