Hi everyone, welcome to Pot Luck Food Talks.
Today we're going to have a different kind of show.
I'll be the one who's going to be interviewed by Sandro Bartoli, our producer.
How are you doing, man?
I'm doing good.
I feel this is a long-awaited second part of an episode I did with Phil over a year
ago.
We called it Phil's Journey.
So I thought let's do the same with you.
Let's figure out how you went into the culinary world.
And yeah, I mean, I've known you for, what is it now, 33 years?
That long, wow.
And there's a lot I know about you, but maybe I can figure out something about you that
I didn't know before.
Well, actually, you played a role in the beginnings of my journey.
It was like a turning point and it was like an afternoon.
I went to your place and we watched the premiere of the first episode of Iron Chef America,
which was with Wolfgang Puck.
Who else was there?
Mario Batali, the original Japanese Iron Chefs.
And that was super exciting.
I would say that was the beginning of my decision-taking process of becoming a professional chef.
Because you know, food has been very important in my place.
My dad used to be the cook at home.
Yeah, man.
Let's talk a little bit about that because that's something I mean, I've tried to make
similar questions to what I did to Phil because I like a certain symmetry.
But something that is a certain symmetry with you and Phil is that food, cooking, and the
value of good food was very alive in your house.
I know your dad, he used to cook a lot.
Ever since we were kids, we would go to your place.
I know every Saturday there was paella, every Sunday there was parrilla or the other way
around.
Do you think that that interest in or like that food culture at home is essential for
people that want to make cooking their profession?
Well yet at the same time, I have to say, well, I think it doesn't play a role really, because
I think there has been like amazing chefs that come from homes where food was crap.
At the same time, there are also amazing chefs that come from homes where food was even more
important than at my place.
I would say people that grew up in the countryside, I believe they always have a better understanding
of food and cooking because it's like a more immersive part of their environment.
I mean, you're more in connection with the production process of food.
I think that's a key component of understanding food itself.
For example, when I was at culinary school or even in restaurants where I worked, every
time there was someone who grew up in the countryside, they had a better understanding
of, for example, the anatomy of animals when it comes to butchering or the different cuts
of animals or different varieties of products.
That wasn't the case at my place.
The experience of eating and about valuing like a culinary experience and the other thing
is like, you know, knowing how to like take apart a chicken and like where the bones are
and where the muscles are and where the fibers are and all that stuff.
And yet at the same time, there is also something important.
Well, as you perfectly know, I'm like a mixture of cultures.
My mother is Spanish, my father is German, and I was born and I grew up in Venezuela.
So every tradition I was taught, it was like already like a diluted or transformed tradition.
So the way we did paellas at home is not acceptable in Spain.
There were things that we would do in German cooking that are maybe not the most traditional
way.
So like we had this understanding of cooking, which is something I would say American.
When I say American is the whole continent, north, middle and south, because that's part
of the nature of the continent.
It's a continent that was colonized by other cultures.
And so the result is a blend or something new, something different.
It doesn't respond to the original culture.
It's its own thing.
So if you see, I don't know, let's say pizzas in New York or in Argentina, they have a very
strong culture of pizzas and they're not necessarily the same pizzas you see in Italy, for example.
And you get to see those kinds of cases over and over again, all over the continent from
north to south.
And the same was at my place.
And also yet at the same time, I grew up in Venezuela, but we never ate traditional Venezuelan
food at home.
Well, I won't say never, but it was not like, for example, everyday breakfast was not arepas.
We would do arepas once in a while, because it's something, it would be okay to say you're
not 100% Venezuelan if you don't have arepas for breakfast every day.
And I agree with that.
And maybe I'm not 100% Venezuelan, you know?
And so all of these things played a part in my development of my understanding of food.
Yeah.
But like going back to your journey and your decision to fully immerse yourself in cooking
as your profession, because I know you've always been very creative.
I know at a very young age, you always were interested in film and illustration, photography.
You did a lot of street art, if you can say it like that.
You were in the graffiti scene in Venezuela.
So why was it food?
What was it about food where you said, okay, this is where I, you know how they say, find
your poison and let it kill you.
Why was food your poison?
I followed, I would say like a wrong hypothesis.
My hypothesis was if you learn how to cook, well, you can have a job anywhere in the world,
which is true.
But what is not true is that I thought this is a perfect thing so I can work as a chef
and at the same time study filmmaking and cinema.
Well, that is not true at all because if you're studying cinema or if you get into filmmaking,
as you perfectly know, you're completely drawn into it.
This can be like a side activity that you do while you're doing something else.
And the same thing happens with cooking.
So it had to be one or the other.
You can't have both.
At least I don't think you can.
You can't study medicine and work as a chef at the same time.
It doesn't work like that.
Of course.
So basically it was like the means to an end.
Yeah, originally it was like that.
But yet at the same time, I always had like this, I would obsess myself with stuff.
For example, when I got into the graffiti scene, I would obsess myself with it.
So I would become a nerd about it.
I would know all the graffiti writers all over the world and all the different styles
and the history of it and all the techniques and all these kinds of things.
Same happened with, I don't know.
I remember, for example, when I was a kid, I became obsessed with cartoons like Dragon
Ball and I would know everything about the history, who was the creator of it, what was
it behind the scenes.
I would read about it.
I would become really interested about it.
So I already had that background of those cases.
And when I became a chef, for me, it became really quick idea.
It became something natural to start researching like that.
Who are the best chefs in the world?
What happened in culinary history?
How did restaurants emerge out of where?
Yeah, I remember that we both had that very similar approach.
I would say we were Google junkies.
Google back in the days was fairly new.
And we both, when we liked something, we researched it to death.
I like this.
Who's doing that?
Who's doing more of that?
Who are the best people doing this?
What led them to become the best in doing the things that they're doing?
And I think that's the reason why we hung out so much because we were obsessed about
similar things about directors.
Yeah, filmmaking, for example.
Artists and photographers and all that things.
And I remember you going down the cooking route to Chef Ralph.
You know a bunch of restaurants and you know about a bunch of cooks.
We would obsess about watching the Food Network and different shows like Iron Chef Japan and
then Iron Chef America.
Also something that played a role in that is I dropped school.
I was like, okay, this is not bringing me anywhere.
I had it pretty clear that I wanted to go into a filmmaking school or a graphic design
school.
That was my idea.
And I thought the sooner I start getting a job as a chef, I could start doing those kind
of things.
So I dropped school and I went directly into a culinary school.
So I went to two culinary schools in Venezuela.
And in the meantime, I would research a lot about chefs, who are the best chefs in the
city?
What are the restaurants?
What are the backgrounds?
And Venezuela is especially Caracas is a city pretty much where a lot of people have a name
because they have been somewhere and they have worked with someone, especially in cooking.
Like this chef had worked with Ferran Adrià del Bulli or this other one worked with Daniel
Boulou in New York.
Those were actually the first chefs that I worked with.
At the same time, I was watching a lot of El Gourmet channel, which is kind of like
the equivalent to the Food Network for Latin America.
It was like an Argentinian channel, but with chefs from all over Latin America.
And for me, my favorite chef of the channel was Sumito Estevez, a Venezuelan chef who
happened to have a culinary school in Caracas.
So the first culinary school that I went, I didn't like it so much.
It was more like not so professional.
Well, I don't know.
It was not my thing.
But then I went to Sumito's school and I liked that a lot more.
So they had like a two year program, but since I already had done like a year of basics in
a different school, they allowed me to start on the second year.
Started working there.
I started, sorry, and doing my internships in the evenings.
So my first restaurant was Cafe Atlantique, which was one of the top restaurants in the
city.
Beautiful building.
My second chef was Laurent Cantino, who was a chef who learned like a French chef with
classic French training.
And he used to be the head chef at Daniel Boulou in New York.
So I thought that was a good place to start.
Of course.
And it was.
Nowadays, looking back, it was not like a fine dining restaurant.
It was more like a brasserie.
Which is also a cool place to start.
You don't have to start like plating with tweezers and these kind of things.
I think it's a good place to start like doing classic bistro style cooking and delivering.
On the toughest evening, we would deliver up to 500 guests.
Oh wow.
Yeah.
So it was absolutely crazy sometimes.
So it was like a big dining room and they would like repeat seats.
Like somebody would stand up and they would.
It was kind of like an expensive restaurant at the same time.
So the level was good, was high.
What I learned the most, and this is like an unfair advantage that you get if you grow
up in a place like Caracas, it was how to work without resources.
So because there would be days where there was no oil in the whole city.
So they would, I don't know, open some vegetables that were preserved in oil and stick the fish
inside and then throw it to a pan.
And this way of thinking of how to think around things and think out the box and diagonal
thinking that is natural to Venezuelans because you have to.
And the situation, perhaps someone who was born in Germany and grew up there where everything
works and everything has a reason of being.
There is no oil and it's a panic moment.
Like what do we do?
We have to close the restaurant.
That would never happen there.
No, because then the restaurants would never open because that's what you like.
Sometimes there's no fire.
There's no oil.
There's no electricity.
Like you have to figure it out.
Yeah.
And I remember these kinds of things, which are not the right way to cook, but it's like
a right approach to solve problem.
I remember I would see that a lot that there was this sous chef Ruben Dario Martinez, who
was like an excellent chef, and he would do these kinds of things.
You know, like there was a day like the pastry chef was completely on panic and he was like,
we ran out of coffee ice cream.
What should I do?
It's already sold to the table.
Should we say there is no?
And the sous chef said, we never say there is no coffee ice cream if you already sold
it.
So he just without thinking, just like as a reflex kind of reaction, he just took vanilla
ice cream, two espressos, like he whipped it and he there's your coffee ice cream.
It took him 30 seconds to solve the problem, you know, and he would solve this kind of
problems.
Oh, there is no strainer.
Well, he would take a tray with holes and use it as a strainer, you know, like so and
these kinds of things of working without resources and how to solve things through the alternative
ways.
It's something I learned there.
My second restaurant was Malabar, who is probably maybe the best chef of that generation, who
is Carlos Garcia.
He's now a chef owner of Alto, which is maybe Venezuela's best restaurant in a while.
I know that there are some new restaurants in Caracas that I don't know that well, like
Cordero and some others, but for at least over a decade, that was a top restaurant in
Venezuela and one of the top restaurants in Latin America run by this guy, Carlos Garcia.
I worked there for a short while.
It didn't work well, so good for me.
And then I went back to the culinary school to work there, supporting events and courses,
which I learned a lot because there were like this special courses where there were like
guest chefs and I had to do all the mission plus, all the prep cooking and assist the
chef during the courses.
So I also learned a lot there.
And then I did like a short internship in a chocolate factory, like in a chocolate shop
with Maria Fernanda Di Giacobbe, who is a recipient of the Basque Culinary World Prize.
And I learned how to work chocolate there.
And after that background, like I already had worked in all the stations, like fish,
meats, starters, pastry, chocolate.
I thought I was ready to do internships abroad.
Like why did you decide to leave Venezuela?
Like what was your motivation to go to like, we all know and people who know the show know
that you started working at Mugaritz at a very early age and you've told a lot of stories
about that.
But like, what was your motivation to go there?
And what was your reaction after having been in like several different restaurants and
culinary school?
What was your biggest like, what the fuck about like that world compared to the previous
restaurants you've been in?
So my goal was to go to Europe and work in Michelin star restaurants.
Where there was like this, maybe Europe, maybe United States, but I wanted to go like to
very high level restaurants.
But then this was 2005.
So Spain was a place to go.
It was a peak moment of Spanish avant-garde.
El Bulli was at its peak and all the restaurants that were following that wave as well.
So like, and everybody was talking about, look what Ferran did, look what this other
chef did and so on.
Just by chance one day at culinary school, it was, I think I was already working at events
or I don't remember, maybe I was still studying.
I don't remember.
But in that case there was like this draft where I won and I won a ticket to this conference.
And this was Andoni speaking.
He was invited to the international gastronomy event in Caracas.
So he gave a speech and for me it was like a very interesting chef and everything.
He also went to the restaurant where I was working.
I was working at Cafe Atlantique.
So then for sure I was still studying.
And he was presented as, look who came here, this guy is super important and so on.
And I had no idea who he was up to that point.
You know, like he was just like a...
When I worked in Atlantique, there were a lot of international chefs that would go there
and do pop-up dinners and this kind of thing.
So for me he was just one more and I had no real background about like what they were
doing.
It's crazy because I remember all these stories, like as I was living in Venezuela and we would
just hang out, you would tell me, oh, there's this Spanish guy who came or like all these
things.
And it's now that I'm realizing, you know, the importance maybe that all these people
were going to these restaurants.
Like I didn't know the importance of Atlantique or those restaurants that you were working
at.
Yeah.
And the thing that, you know, like, ah, I got this ticket to a conference and suddenly
that changed the whole course of my life.
I had this idea, like, I don't know, I was 18, 19 years old.
So my idea was I wanted to go to a one-star restaurant, after that to a two-star restaurant
and after that to a three-star restaurant.
That was my project, my roadmap.
I would take the mission guide and I would Google all the restaurants and see their web
pages and their dishes and what they were doing.
So basically what I did is I wrote all the one-star restaurants in Spain back then, which
were like, I don't know, a hundred restaurants maybe.
I wrote.
So literally just the one-star.
You just skipped the two and the three, just the one-star.
All of them.
Like everything is one of them.
So some never answered, some answered like really like a lot later.
Some answered, but Mugari answered the next day.
And also it was the most structured and formal answer.
Like all the other answers were like, ah, yeah, whatever.
Yeah, sure.
Let's do it.
You want to come?
That kind of answer, you know?
They sent me a list, like a long checklist of everything I had to consider before going
there.
How many, you know, underwear I had to bring with me, like what had to be in my chef case,
personal item I had to bring.
Like I had to consider how much money I would spend every month.
And when I saw that, I thought it was like, this has to be the place, you know?
It also taught me how important it is, like a first impression that you give with an email
and the formality of approaching.
And even being at the receiving end, you're this little kid who's like asking for a job
and the fact that they take the time and effort to reply a proper email 24 hours later.
And also, like, this is something that I'm still asked about, like, and what do you think
about working for free in these kind of places?
And for me, like it's something, I mean, for me, it would be a joke to ask them to pay
me because I was 19 years old.
I was going to this great restaurant.
I had no experience.
I was going there to learn.
And they gave, they offered me accommodation and food.
And for me, that was a great deal for me.
And the patience to teach you.
I mean, like, I know you've talked a lot about, like, you could ask a billion times, you know,
every time you ask, they would like show you again and teach you again.
And you know, in the professional world, it's not a given.
Like professionals are busy and they're doing their thing.
And if there's, you know, like this kid and an intern asking, asking, asking, not everyone
takes the time and effort to teach.
And still today, I would say it was probably the most important professional experience
I had, you know, like, and for me, that's way more valuable than the couple of hundreds
that they would have paid me some other place for being an intern, you know, like, and I
think that that's the...
I also have to say that there are levels, you know, like, I understand that if you're
doing an internship at a school cafeteria and you want to be paid, I do understand that.
For me, I always did the comparison that if you want to become a filmmaker and you get
the opportunity to go to a set where Martin Scorsese is shooting, even if you're just
bringing coffee to the director or carrying cables, that's an incredible lifetime opportunity.
And if you don't see that, you paid to do that, well, good for you.
Like I would do that for free even today.
Like even today, I would go and carry cables at a Martin Scorsese set for sure I would,
you know.
Especially if you're in a position that you want to learn, that you need to learn, where
experience is worth more than anything else.
Because yeah, eventually you'll grow to be a professional, you'll, you know, do your
things.
And yes, I guess at a certain age, it's like, it's not like Martin Scorsese can do movies
for free because every grip and every lightning person and every, you know, cinematographer
is going to work free for them.
But like if you're a kid and you're learning, of course, take the opportunity.
And yeah, also back then I was really influenced by Charlie Trotters and it's also a place
I consider to go, which was also back then one of the best restaurants in the world.
Maybe, maybe already a bit outdated.
I think that was one of the best restaurants in the world in the, in the nineties.
There it was already like a, like an OG kind of best restaurant in the world.
And I would read a lot of interviews with him, also interviews with Ferran.
And something that influenced me from Charlie Trotters is he would say like, stay somewhere
until you feel that you learned everything and then leave and go somewhere else and do
the same.
And that was kind of my journey back then.
Starting in Caracas already, I would be in restaurants or places until I thought, okay,
I already, for example, in this first place, Cafe Atlantique, even though I was an apprentice,
I could cook all the stations and same in the event place and the chocolate.
I also have to say that back then I was like a absolutely messy apprentice looking back
to.
I'm not portraying me as like a gifted kind of young chef at all.
And in any case, so what happened?
Well, my experience in Mugaris was amazing.
I could not understand how it had like one star.
I could not understand how there could be something where they would strive to perfection
more than what they were doing there.
Like, okay, if this is one, what would be two or three?
What I learned with the years and you can go and check out the episode, Chef Journey
with Ivan Brehm and some other episodes after you leave Mugaris, there is this kind of post
traumatic experience or I don't know how to define it where you're expecting the way of
doing things that you see there to find that anywhere else.
And that's not the case.
So there can be two or three star restaurants that have two or three star for other reasons,
but not because they're also as methodological.
Not because they're as...
Yeah, or as perfectionist or not in that way, because of course you have to be perfectionist
to have two or three stars.
But the way of doing things, of teaching, of thinking, of talking, of many, many things,
it's something very, very, very difficult to find anywhere else.
Still today, I would say.
Was Mugaris the place that taught you there's a life in gastronomy that goes...
You started this as a means to an end.
Was Mugaris the place that taught you, okay, there's a career, there's something more that
I want to accomplish in this world?
I think that already happened in Caracas.
In Caracas, I already decided.
My plan was somehow, I told you at the beginning that it's very common to be someone in Caracas
that you go...
Well, all of the great chefs in Caracas back then, it would be like, ah, this one worked
with Charlie Trotters, this one worked with Adel Bougie, this one worked with blah, blah,
blah.
So my goal was to be, at the very beginning, it was like that, okay, I want to go to Europe,
work with some great chefs and come back and have already that credential to open something
or whatever.
So that was already my goal.
I already was sucked into it.
I don't remember that there was a specific aha moment when I said, ah, this is what I
want to do.
It was more like something that just happened gradually and I never realized when it happened.
And then I remember that he went to a couple of the really big restaurants, like after
Mugaritz, you went to another three-star restaurant.
That was the thing.
Since I already had...
While I was in Mugaritz, they got their second star, which was also an amazing experience.
And then he walked into the room.
He was talking on the phone very loud.
It felt like he wanted everybody to listen.
Ah, okay, yeah, yeah, good, good, thank you.
Thank you for the good news.
And he hangs up the phone.
We were all having our staff meal and he said, we just got our second star.
So he walked into his office.
Everybody was quiet.
And then all the chef de patti, they all stood up and walked into Andoni's office.
Yeah, and it was amazing.
Martin Berasategui came, like a lot of chefs came.
There were pictures with the whole team, the whole thing.
And for me, it was like, okay, double check.
One star check, two stars check.
I should go to a three star now.
And then just to skip a little bit ahead, because I think that's also an interesting
moment where you said, okay, you did your journey as an apprentice.
And then you came to Berlin and you wanted to open your own restaurant.
How much of a goal was that?
Not just opening a restaurant, but then eventually also having your own star at some point.
Were your ambitions back there?
What was your goal at that point when you decided to come to Berlin?
Yeah, from a very early moment, I decided my ambition was never to make a star restaurant,
because that just doesn't represent the way I think or the way I am or the way I understand
food, at least back then.
I don't know if I were a millionaire and I could spend money and resources today.
I still think it wouldn't be the case.
I remember I was a bit jealous of, especially, I worked in Mugaris and I worked in a Racoa
Canfabas, which was a three star restaurant.
In both places, we would work 13 to 16 hours a day having, for example, just one day off
and two halves.
For example, one day the whole day off and the other two days, just half day off.
That kind of working.
Then I would be really envious, jealous when I would see people working at normal tapas
bars or pincho bars.
It would be like, look at these guys.
They probably work just eight hours a day.
They're doing fucking delicious food.
Also technically, nice food.
This is not just putting ham on bread.
Also everything is more relaxed in terms of discipline and this whole military approach
to work and almost religious approach to work, which is something that Charlie Trotter would
say that you have to work, like in my residence, I want people to approach work with a religious
view.
It's almost like a sect, pretty much.
You get to see that over and over and over again and start restaurants.
For me, that was perfect to go there to learn and to develop myself as a chef, but it was
never my goal to start a business like that.
It's like-
You didn't want to create your own sect.
No, not at all.
I wanted to create a normal place where people go to work and execute their thing and go
home and relax.
That's it.
Then you started working in tapas bars in Berlin, I remember, which was fucking delicious.
I loved going to visit you.
Actually, my original idea, as you perfectly know, because you were a part of that idea,
you would be my business partner, I think was to open a pizzeria because for me that
was an excellent idea.
I worked in... I forgot to say, I also had a formal training in bakery and bread making
in Venezuela.
I understand how to formulate doughs and how to make bread.
For me that was like, oh man, a pizzeria?
That's a dream job for me back then.
There are few elements in the mission class.
Something amazing, incredible.
It's easy to train.
People are happy about it.
It's super important.
That's a business model that would represent me pretty much.
I went to Berlin with the idea of opening a pizzeria, but that never worked.
I was pretty young.
I didn't know how to make a business plan, how to get a loan.
There was a lot of information I didn't have for a long time.
It was also pretty difficult to learn these things while working at the same time.
Also, Berlin is a city where the night scene sucks you in and then spits you out every
night.
Oh yeah, for sure.
We've talked about this so many times and it's still a thing.
People come here and they live here in this weird limbo for two or three years and then
they have to leave because the city sucks your soul dry.
Not everyone, but a lot of people.
That never worked.
Exactly.
That also happened to me after eight years.
I was completely like I couldn't take it anymore.
Yeah, I remember.
You were dry.
I think you lost all sorts of ambition.
You were a little bit asleep because you had good jobs in these Spanish tapas bars that
were easy, quote unquote, but you were a little bit not there anymore.
You didn't have that fire that you used to have.
No, exactly.
Then I was looking for... I would take whatever boat would take me away from that.
Then suddenly, there was this friend that went with me to Mugaritz at the very beginning.
Then he went to Copenhagen and he was recruited as the director of this project, a project
by Klaus Meyer who was the main investor and maybe the philosophical architect of Noma
in Copenhagen.
He opened this restaurant in Bolivia with the ambition of doing the same he did in Denmark,
which was creating a whole movement and transforming the way of eating of a whole region, a whole
country.
He opened Gusto in Bolivia.
They actually called me at the beginning of the project to open the restaurant and I flirted
with the idea.
I was even almost prepared to go, but I didn't.
I went there, I think three or four years later after the restaurant opened.
The restaurant was already three or four years and they recruited me to lead the culinary
lab there.
Right, because it was the first time you didn't work as a chef on the cooking side of the
restaurant, but more on the...
Exactly.
I would say that's how I left the line.
I never went back.
Well, I went back to the line just for an opening in 2020.
This was around 2015.
Around in 2020, I opened a restaurant for five months or so as a head chef and that
was it.
But it was still a restaurant as far as I understand it.
I was heavily focused on research development and the lab science part of food, wasn't it?
Which one?
The one that I opened?
Yeah, like the Labet, wasn't it?
No, no, but it also had that, but what I did was a normal chef job with the normal tasks
that you have in opening a restaurant and training a team and those kinds of things.
But just to set that up so everyone understands, so you did a couple of years in Bolivia.
I think it was two or three years in Bolivia.
And then I think you got a little bit tired of living in such a remote place and you got
lured back to Spain to start working at the Basque Culinary Center, if I'm not mistaken.
Like I was first sent on a mission to the Basque Culinary Center to learn how to ferment
stuff with Diego Prado.
Diego Prado was leading back then the Basque Culinary Lab.
So they sent me there to do a month training.
So I stayed at Diego's place and I worked with him at the lab.
I learned how to produce vinegar, koji, cider, tempe, anything that soy sauce, miso, all
this kind of stuff.
And then I went back to Bolivia and we developed those kinds of things with Andean pseudo cereals
like quinoa and caniwa and lupine and those kinds of produce, which was an amazing experience.
They liked me at the Basque Culinary Center.
So like half a year later or so they called me.
There was a position and I took it.
And this is the part where I ask you because I never fully understand what your position
is there.
Like what is your position at the Basque Culinary Center?
Yeah, well, it started as a food product developer.
So at the beginning in the R&D department, imagine whatever you see at the supermarket,
you call it cookies or sauces or whatever, those kinds of things are developed in a culinary
lab first as a prototype.
And then they're sent to a factory where they're scaled up.
But those recipes are not made by the engineers or on a factory, like the recipe.
Then that's also something very complex because these prototypes that you send to a factory,
they have to be rewritten and redesigned to scale them up.
It's never like a one-to-one thing.
It's not like, ah, you multiply all the ingredients times 10 and then it works.
It doesn't work like that.
Also, the equipment you're using, everything has to be fine-tuned when it comes.
But that prototyping phase is among many of the things what we would do, but it would
be anything that required a chef's knowledge.
So be it that kind of thing.
One of the very first projects that I worked in was a client asked us to develop like conceptualized
culinary AI.
So what should the system know when understanding?
That was extremely interesting for me.
So I thought that intersection...
And that was several years ago.
No, that was way before this AI boom that we're having right now.
Yeah, this was back in 2018.
That intersection of food and digital innovation or digital transformation turned out to be
extremely interesting for me.
So there was like this new knowledge area that was opened at the R&D center for digital
innovation.
I found my way to get transferred to that one, which is what I do now.
So basically, we develop any kind of solution at the intersection of food and digital.
It could be software or hardware.
And similar to what I explained about prototype that is then scaled up on the food section,
same thing is what we do with the digital stuff.
So we don't, for example, we don't develop an end usable software product.
We develop a prototype, something that is already tested and validated by users.
And then it's ready to be codified by a software company that can whatever, scale it up, produce
it, commercialize it, et cetera.
So we just conceptualize and validate stuff that is ready to be transferred to the market
because we can't, even if we wanted, commercialize these things because that's not our role.
Our role is just developing and transferring knowledge.
What I think is super interesting about your journey, I feel like you finally came full
circle.
You know, like you started being a chef and going through the culinary route and you still
had like all these other interests, like arts, like illustration, music, technology.
And you did briefly even study media design or something like that here in Berlin while
you're still working at a restaurant.
And I feel like now you finally come full circle.
Like you're immersed in food, but you're also doing like all these other interests that
you have.
And I'm sure 20 years ago when you started this journey, you wouldn't even know that
you would land here.
So if there was one advice or like one thing you could like tell your younger self about
this crazy journey, is there something you could tell?
Like something like, hey, don't worry, just like, you know, do your shit, like learn your
stuff and...
Yeah, like find what you love and let it kill you basically.
I mean, like if there is something you like doing, just follow that rabbit hole.
It will bring you somewhere eventually, you know?
Yeah, yeah.
And like putting together like all these different things.
And I think that's something very modern.
I feel back in the days, like 20, 30, 40 years ago, you would study like one thing and you
would be a doctor, an architect, an economist, whatever.
And you would do that.
Like nowadays you can be a hybrid.
You can be a cook, technologist, artist, whatever.
Yeah, this is just one of the many things I do, you know, like working at the R&D center
of the Vasco Linieri Center.
I also have this podcast.
I also started giving food tours, which is also like a super interesting experience that
also where I also take advantage of all my food knowledge, you know, like that most food
tour guides are people that study tourism and they understand how to operate and these
kinds of things.
But none of them can beat me in chef knowledge because I was a chef for 10 years in restaurants
plus five years in R&D.
I'm still kind of like a nerd of understanding how did the food scene in the city develop
and the history of every single chef and every single restaurant and every single dish.
And that's something, you know, it's very hard for you to catch me off guard with a
question regarding those topics, like most things I can answer right away.
And yeah, that's also something I didn't expect ever doing.
And it's super fun.
And what's interesting, there's this conversation, I'm going to bring it up here, is that you
don't see yourself as a chef or you don't see yourself as chef anymore.
I don't know if that's something about like the fact that you haven't worked in the kitchen
in a way and you don't feel comfortable or if it's tied to your identity, that maybe
even though you have the formation as a chef, you don't necessarily see yourself as a chef.
Yeah.
I don't see myself as a chef and I wouldn't present myself as a chef, first of all, because
I hadn't delivered like a professional dinner in years, you know, like that on one side,
on the other side, there is a conflict, I think, between British English and American
English.
I don't know which one is the difference between a cook and a chef.
And you have the same in Spanish.
A chef is a chef, is a chef of the restaurant, is the one who's running the team, is a boss.
Okay.
And for me, that's a title that I take with tweezers, you know, like I don't want to go
around tagging myself as a...
A lot of people do, you know, they call themselves chefs because they went to culinary schools
and they have never led a team.
And I don't want to be that person, you know, like I'm perfectly okay.
I consider myself a cook.
I know how to cook.
You could put me on the line and probably nowadays I would be like a very messy cook
on the line because I'm not trained, you know, like, and this kind of stuff requires like
a lot of discipline and structure in the way you do things.
And that's something I lost because I'm not trained, you know, like anymore.
Like I'm out of practice.
I would have to train and get there again.
And especially I don't have the interest anymore, you know, like for me, my dream job would
be maybe as a chef, I mean, like would be something where I could, let's say, cook
something.
I own a restaurant and I go and deliver service one or two days a week, but that just doesn't
exist.
It just doesn't work like that, you know, like, and in terms of team dynamics, that
doesn't work like that.
That wouldn't work.
You can't just come in and say like, okay, guys, we're going to cook something.
Yeah, exactly.
Like, for example, for me, it was very interesting, the interview I did to Santiago Fernandez in
Tokyo where he talks about the work ethics in Japan where a chef is the one that has
to come first and leave last at work.
You know, like, I think that that's the way that's a chef, you know, like that.
That's why I avoid using that title.
That's it for this week's episode of Potluck Food Talks.
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