Trust The Timing, Even When It Hurts
Humans Of The Kitchen
Every rejection and setback eventually pushed him closer to the life he imagined.
Bhavin Chhatwani
Bhavin Chhatwani has been chasing kitchens for as long as he can remember. Sneaking looks into restaurant backrooms as a child, standing on stools to cook before he was tall enough to reach the stove, completely captivated by the people creating something out of heat, movement, and instinct.
For him, food was never just about eating. It was longing, curiosity, identity, and eventually, purpose. From growing up in India to rebuilding his life and career in the United States, his path has been shaped by persistence, sacrifice, and an almost relentless belief in what cooking could become. Every setback, from rejection to immigration challenges to the uncertainty of the pandemic, pushed him closer to building something entirely his own.
Today, through Tamasha, Bhavin is redefining what Indian cuisine can look and feel like in America, rooted in memory, driven by intention, and unafraid to evolve.
In this conversation, he reflects on ambition, family, reinvention, and the kind of kitchen culture he hopes to leave behind for the next generation.
Share your Journey
- Looking back at your childhood, was there a specific moment or memory that sparked your interest in food or cooking?
My earliest food memory is standing on a stool in our kitchen, too small to reach the stove without it, mixing whatever I could find on the shelves while my parents were out. I must have been seven or eight. I didn’t know what I was making. I just knew I had to make something.
Growing up, I was asthmatic, and so many foods were off-limits for me as a child. I watched other kids eat freely while I sat on the sidelines. My mother would tell people I had incredible willpower, but honestly, it wasn’t willpower; it was longing. The moment I recovered and could eat without restriction, something inside me just broke open.
I also used to sneak into restaurant kitchens and stand outside food stalls watching vendors work. I was completely transfixed, not just by the food, but by the act of creating it. Who were these people? How did they know what to do? I wanted to be one of them. My sister was my biggest cheerleader from the very beginning. Whatever small thing I made, she celebrated it like I had cooked a feast. She made me believe I had magic in my hands. That belief stuck with me and, honestly, it still does.
- Did you have another career or job before becoming a chef? How did those experiences influence your decision to pursue cooking?
Cooking was always the plan, but convincing my family took some negotiation. My father ran a small hotel and understood firsthand how grueling the hospitality world could be: long hours, physical demands, modest pay. Like most Indian parents, they wanted something more comfortable for their son. Engineering, an MBA, a white-collar path. I was stubborn. I told them that even if I did an MBA and landed a good job, I would spend my life unhappy, always wondering “what if.” That honesty and perhaps my stubbornness eventually convinced them. They supported me, knowing I was not someone who would let go of something I truly believed in. Food had always been central to my life. I grew up in a home where conversations revolved around meals, what we ate, what we would cook next, and where we would go to eat. That constant engagement built a natural fascination. At the same time, watching my father run his business gave me a different perspective. I saw hospitality not just as cooking, but as a balance of people, operations, and resilience.
My grandfather’s journey, migrating during the Partition of 1947 and rebuilding life from nothing, also stayed with me. It instilled a mindset of perseverance: no matter how difficult things get, you can always start again.
There was never really another career, only food. But those early experiences shaped how I approach it today. They taught me that being a chef is not just about cooking well; it’s about building something sustainable, leading people, and having the courage to choose passion over comfort. That decision continues to define how I work with conviction, even when the path is uncertain.
- Did you formally study culinary arts, or are you self-taught? How has your learning journey shaped your approach to cooking?
I formally studied culinary arts and hotel management for four years, and I graduated as a top performer in my class, something that surprised even me, because I was known growing up as the most notorious kid among all my cousins, not exactly a model student. But when my parents trusted me enough to send me to one of the best culinary schools in the country, the fees my father stretched to afford that trust changed me completely. I became obsessed. Dedicated. I wanted to honor what they sacrificed.
That foundation gave me classical technique, kitchen discipline, and an understanding of hospitality as a craft rather than just a job. But the real education came after graduation. Being selected as one of eight students nationwide for the Taj Hotels Management Trainee program, out of thousands, and then learning inside some of the world’s finest hotel kitchens, that’s where theory became instinct.
Formal education gave me the vocabulary. The kitchens gave me the language. And living in different countries, cooking with ingredients I had only read about in textbooks, learning from chefs who thought completely differently from my training, that gave me the voice. I’m still learning every single day. The moment you think you’ve arrived is the moment you stop growing.
- When did you first step into a restaurant kitchen? What was that experience like, and how did it shape your journey as a chef?
Before I ever stepped in officially, I was sneaking in. As a child, I would find ways to peer into restaurant kitchens, the heat, the noise, the organized chaos, the speed. It felt like the most alive place in the world to me.
My first real professional kitchen experience came during my culinary school internship at Taj Hotels & later the same year, another internship with The Oberoi Hotels, both of which are among the most prestigious hospitality groups in the world. I remember walking in and feeling both completely at home and completely humbled. I thought I knew things. The kitchen reminded me immediately of how much I didn’t know.
The hierarchy, the pace, the precision, everything required a level of focus that sharpened me fast. You learn in a professional kitchen that there is no room for ego. The dish either works or it doesn’t. The guest either feels something or they don’t. That first experience set the tone for everything that came after. It taught me that talent is just the entry ticket. What matters is how hard you’re willing to work once you’re inside. It was a craft that demanded everything from you.
- What were some of the early challenges or obstacles you faced when you started in the kitchen, and how did you overcome them?
The early challenges were layered. First, convincing my family. Then proving myself in environments where thousands of students were competing for a handful of spots. Then arriving in the United States, a completely different food culture, a different kitchen culture, a different pace of life, and having to rebuild my reputation from zero.
At Taj Campton Place, nobody knew who I was. In India, I had made a name for myself. I had led the kitchen at Taj Falaknuma Palace at twenty-four. I had cooked for heads of state, dignitaries, and celebrated figures at a restaurant that was counted among the best in the country. None of that traveled with me across the ocean. I was the new guy, and I had to earn my place all over again, working twice as hard, proving myself twice as thoroughly. That was humbling. And honestly, it was the best thing that could have happened to me. It stripped away any complacency I might have carried.
Then COVID hit and dismantled everything overnight. Being asked to leave the country I had dreamed of living in since childhood, watching a career I had built so carefully, suddenly go quiet, that was the hardest stretch. But I kept cooking. Kept learning. Kept showing up. My belief is simple: if you stay ready, the opportunity will find you. And it did. I met my partner, Mike, who shared a vision to open a restaurant that would serve the finest Indian food in the country. I wanted the same thing, but on my own terms: to redefine Indian cuisine through my own lens, without compromise. We opened Tamasha, and word spread the way it only does when the food speaks for itself. Today, we are proud to be serving one of the finest Indian dining experiences in the country, and the journey that brought us here, every setback included, is exactly what made it possible.
- What keeps you inspired and how has that inspiration driven you throughout your professional journey? Especially during tough times in the kitchen?
The food itself. There has never been a single day in my career when I woke up and didn’t want to cook. Even during the darkest stretch, the pandemic, the uncertainty, the disappointments, my mind never stopped working on flavors, combinations, ideas. That restlessness is what tells me I’m in the right profession.
But beyond the food, it’s the people. The moment a guest experiences something unexpected, the way their face changes, that is irreplaceable. You cannot manufacture that reaction. You either moved someone or you didn’t. Chasing that feeling is what gets me through difficult days.
I also draw inspiration from the ingredients themselves. When I first walked through the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market in San Francisco, I felt like Alice in Wonderland. I had never seen that abundance of quality and diversity before. New ingredients still do that to me. A beautiful piece of produce, a mushroom I haven’t worked with, a spice used in a way I hadn’t considered, these things light me up the same way they did when I was a child on that stool in my parents’ kitchen. The curiosity never went away. I hope it never does.
What surprises people is that the numbers fascinate me just as much. The books, the accounts, the cost structures, the business of running an operation, I find genuine joy in that side of it, too. A restaurant is a living financial organism, and understanding it deeply makes you a better chef, not a more distracted one. It keeps me invested in the whole picture, not just what happens on the plate.
And then there is the science. Understanding why a dish works, the chemistry, the technique, the physics of heat and texture, feeds the same curiosity that sent me into my parents’ kitchen as a child. Every new dish I create is also an experiment. Many of them are born from my travels, from a memory of a flavor encountered in a market in India, a technique observed in a kitchen in California, a combination that arrived fully formed somewhere over the Atlantic. My journeys live in my food. That is the most honest way I know to describe what keeps me going: the food, the people, the ingredients, the numbers, the science, and the stories I am still trying to tell.
- Can you recall a moment in the kitchen that marked you forever? Maybe it was an interaction with a mentor, a fellow cook, someone you fed, or a situation that challenged you in a way that shaped who you are today?
One moment I return to often is when I first interviewed for an internship at Taj Campton Place in San Francisco, the only two-Michelin-star Indian restaurant in the world at the time. I didn’t get it. I was devastated in the way only a young cook full of ambition can be devastated. It felt like a door had closed on the one place I wanted most to be.
Five years later, I walked back through that same door, not as an intern, but as Senior Sous Chef. The kitchen I once couldn’t enter as a student, I was now leading as one of its senior cooks. That night, I took my parents to the temple to share the news. My mother cried. My father, who had run a small hotel his whole life and stretched every resource to send me to culinary school, had tears running down his face. That moment with your parents is the one that stays with me most. That full circle taught me something I have carried ever since: whatever happens, happens for a reason. God always has a better plan. You just have to be patient enough to let it reveal itself.
I have lived this more than once. When the pandemic forced me out of San Francisco and back to India, I was heartbroken. A call came from The Pierre in New York, and through circumstances entirely beyond my control, it was pulled back before it could begin. Corporate leadership had decided they needed me elsewhere. Not a rejection, but a redirection I had no say in. Disappointment on top of disappointment. But that detour led me to Raleigh, to a blank page, to the freedom to build something entirely my own. I could not have designed a better outcome if I had tried.
Then the Michelin Guide invitation arrived. October 13th, 2:35 in the afternoon. I must have read that email a hundred times. It wasn’t just recognition; it felt like validation of years of struggle, risk, and belief. Sharing that moment with my team, watching people who had believed in this from the very beginning cry together, that was even more powerful than the listing itself. If things are not going your way, trust the timing. Something better is always being arranged. Every single time, what came next was bigger than what I thought I had lost.
- As a chef, how would you describe your philosophy in the kitchen, and how does it guide your approach to cooking and leadership?
I carry one idea into everything I cook and everything I build: what is authentic today was modern once, and what is modern today may become authentic tomorrow. That philosophy frees me from the trap of thinking that honoring tradition means freezing it. Tradition is alive. It moves. My job is to understand it deeply enough to move with it.
In the kitchen, I demand two things from myself and from my team: flavor and intention. Every element on a plate must earn its place. If it isn’t adding something, it shouldn’t be there. There is no decoration for decoration’s sake.
As a leader, I try to build kitchens where people are not just skilled but safe, emotionally, professionally, and creatively. The old model of kitchen culture, ruled by fear and ego, produces technically capable cooks and broken human beings. I am not interested in that legacy. I want people to leave my kitchen better than when they arrived, as cooks and as people. That means investing in their growth not just behind the stove, but in how they think, how they lead, how they carry themselves through life. I’ve built a small library in the restaurant where the team can slow down, read, and learn. It has become something everyone looks forward to. For me, the team is family, and I mean that without sentiment. I mean it in the way that matters: I am responsible for them, and I take that seriously.
And above everything, I want the food to feel like it came from somewhere real. From a specific place, a specific memory, a specific person. Guests can taste the difference between food that is crafted and food that is prepared. I cook to connect, not to impress.
- Can you share a time when cooking or the camaraderie in the kitchen helped you through a tough period in your life? What made that experience meaningful?
The pandemic broke something in me that I didn’t expect. I had arrived in the United States, living what felt like a dream working in a Michelin kitchen in San Francisco, finally in the country I had promised myself I would reach one day. Then one afternoon, the executive chef gathered us, asked us to empty the walk-ins and take whatever we wanted home, and that was it. I cried that night. Genuinely cried.
When I was asked to return to India and was posted to Chennai to lead the opening of a new hotel, I threw myself completely into the work. Not because I was over the grief of what had been taken, but because the kitchen is the one place where I have always known exactly who I am. The creativity, the problem-solving, the ritual of it, building something new from scratch, training a team, designing a concept, it gave me purpose when everything else felt uncertain.
Every night, I dreamed of getting a call back to the US. And I kept cooking. That combination of hope and discipline, channeled entirely through the work, carried me through. Food didn’t just give me a career. It kept me whole
- Reflecting on your career, what achievements or milestones are you most proud of, and what do they mean to you?
The milestones that matter most to me are not the ones I expected. Yes, the James Beard semifinalist recognition, the Michelin listing, the Esquire Best New Restaurants, these are extraordinary, and I don’t take them lightly. But the milestone I think about most is my father’s face at my graduation ceremony, jumping in his seat when I walked up to receive my merit award. He had stretched every resource he had to send me to that school. Seeing his pride that day, that is the achievement I measured everything else against.
Opening in Raleigh is another one. Everyone told me it was the wrong city. No Michelin. No precedent. I opened anyway, and within three days, we were booked out for four months. People called it a marketing gimmick because nothing like it had ever happened there before. That felt meaningful not because of the bookings, but because it proved that if you build something with genuine craft and intention, people will find it, wherever you are.
And then the email from Michelin inviting us to the inaugural American South ceremony. I read it over a hundred times. What that represented was not just recognition. It was validation of an idea: that an immigrant chef, in a secondary market, cooking food rooted in his heritage, could sit at the table with the best in the country. That still moves me.
- What aspects of restaurant culture do you love, and what parts do you find frustrating or problematic? Are there any changes you’re actively working toward or things you hope they change in the industry? Share the reasons behind them and how they align with your vision for a better culinary world?
I love the urgency of a service. The way a kitchen team moves when everything is clicking — it is the closest thing I know to a symphony. I love that this industry is one of the few places in the world where your background, your accent, and your education level matter far less than what you can do with your hands and your mind. It is a meritocracy at its best.
But at its worst, the industry has protected a culture of fear, burnout, and ego that has cost us generations of talented people. The macho kitchen, the shouting, the hazing, and the glorification of suffering were never a sign of excellence. It was a sign of poor leadership. Some of the most technically brilliant cooks I have known left this industry before they reached their potential because the environment was unsustainable. That is a failure of culture, not of the individual.
I am actively building something different. My kitchen is not soft. We hold high standards, we work hard, and we demand focus. But we do not humiliate people. We mentor. We explain. We recognize. I want cooks to leave my kitchen with more than skills; I want them to leave with dignity and a blueprint for leading.
I also believe the industry must take immigration more seriously. So much of the innovation, the labor, the flavor identity of American dining is built on immigrant hands. It is time the structures acknowledged and protected that reality, not just celebrated it in award speeches.
- What are your hopes for the future of the restaurant and food and beverage industry? What changes would you like to see, and how are you contributing to that change?
I hope the industry moves toward a model where creativity and sustainability are not treated as opposing forces. Where seasonal, regional cooking is the default, not a premium. Where immigrant cuisine is understood as American cuisine, because it always has been.
My contribution is the restaurant itself. Every plate we send out is an argument for what Indian cuisine can be in America: complex, evolved, rooted, and contemporary all at once. Every young cook I hire and develop is an investment in a different kind of kitchen culture. And every time I speak about this work, in interviews like this one, at industry events, in conversations with people who are just starting out, I am trying to give someone permission to take the less obvious path, to trust their gut feeling, to bet on themselves even when the logic says not to.
I made it to Raleigh, North Carolina, with a dream. Michelin followed. That is not a coincidence; it is a message. Keep building something real. Everything else will follow.
- If there’s anything we didn’t ask or if you feel we’re missing something about your personal and kitchen story, please share it here.
I want to say something to the young person reading this who is standing at a crossroads, being told by the people they love to take the safer road.
My parents didn’t want me to be a chef. My father had lived the hospitality life, the hours, the sacrifice, the thin margins. He wanted better for me. But they gave in, and they gave everything to back that decision. That trust changed me. It made me take my work more seriously than I would have if I had fought my way there alone.
If you have someone who believes in you, honor that belief by becoming extraordinary. And if you don’t have anyone in your corner right now, if you are the first person in your family to try this, if nobody around you understands why you want this, let me tell you: this industry rewards people who are willing to be uncomfortable. Who travels, who learns, who fails publicly and keeps going.
I arrived in the United States not as an engineer, but as a chef. People were surprised. Some were skeptical. A few were inspired. I hope the story of what came after gives more people permission to trust their feelings over what they are expected to say.
Secret Sauce
- What’s the most unexpected ingredient you’ve ever worked with, and how did it change your perspective on cooking?
I’ve always been drawn to mushrooms. They’re an ingredient I keep returning to in different phases of my cooking. Working with varieties like Lion’s Mane, king oyster, oyster mushrooms, wood ear, portobello, porcini, enoki, and cremini, I’ve seen how mushrooms can continuously evolve in my kitchen. Each one has its own personality, distinct textures, moisture levels, and unique ways of absorbing flavor. Like Lion’s Mane, its texture is almost transformative, delicate yet meaty, and it pushed me to think beyond traditional applications. Instead of treating ingredients for what they are known for, I began exploring what they could become. That shift in thinking expanded across my cooking. It led me to use ingredients in unconventional ways, playing with texture, building depth, and creating dishes that challenge expectations, such as turning something as familiar as purple sweet potato into gelato. My obsession with ingredients keeps evolving, but mushrooms taught me one important thing: creativity isn’t about adding more, it’s about seeing more.
- What’s your “guilty pleasure” meal?
A simple bowl of dal chawal, lentils and rice, cooked the way my mother makes it. Nothing refined about it. No technique, no plating. Just the comfort of something that tastes like home and childhood and being taken care of. I have eaten at some extraordinary restaurants, worked in Michelin kitchens, and crafted dishes that took weeks to develop, and still, on a tired night, nothing touches a bowl of dal chawal with a little ghee on top.
- A food trend that you hate and why?
Overcomplicated plating with no soul and taste.
- What’s the craziest shift you’ve ever worked in the kitchen?
There have been many brutal shifts over the years, but one stands above them all.
In November 2017, I was part of the team cooking for the 8th Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Hyderabad, a joint event co-hosted by India and the United States, themed “Women First, Prosperity for All,” attended by Ivanka Trump, Prime Minister Modi, and over 2,500 dignitaries from across the world. The scale alone was staggering. But the complexity of executing food at that level of security and protocol was something no culinary school prepares you for.
Every single ingredient, every dish, every element on every plate had to pass through multiple rounds of laboratory testing before it was cleared to reach the table. Nothing moved without clearance. The margin for error was not just culinary, it was diplomatic. You are not simply cooking for guests. You are cooking for heads of state, security details, and a global media spotlight. The weight of that responsibility is something you feel in your chest, not just your feet.
I did not go home for three days. We slept in hotel bunkers in whatever hours the schedule allowed, two hours here, three hours there, and were expected to be fully present and fully sharp the moment we were called back. There was no winding down, no switching off. You stayed ready because the operation demanded it at every hour.
5. What happened, and how did you manage to get through it?
What got me through it was the team. In moments like that, individual skill matters less than collective trust. You have to know that the person next to you is as locked in as you are, that no one is cutting corners, that everyone understands the stakes. Our team had that. We communicated constantly, covered each other without being asked, and kept the standard held high from the first service to the last. feeling something I can only describe as quiet pride. Not loud, not celebratory, just the deep satisfaction of knowing we had executed something extraordinary under extraordinary pressure, and nobody in that banquet hall had any idea how much was happening behind the scenes to make it look effortless.
- What tips would you give to other cooks and chefs to help them navigate their culinary careers and find peace amid the chaos of the kitchen?
Stay curious longer than feels comfortable. Most young cooks want to move up quickly, and ambition is good, but there is knowledge in every station, every kitchen, every culture that you cannot rush. I have cooked in palaces, Michelin kitchens, and five-star hotels across India and the US, and every single environment taught me something I could not have learned anywhere else.
Find mentors, but also be willing to learn from people below you in the hierarchy. Some of the best lessons I have received came from cooks with far fewer years of experience who saw something I had stopped noticing.
And take care of yourself. The glorification of exhaustion in this industry is not a strength; it is a warning sign. You cannot create from nothing. Rest, eat well, stay connected to why you started. The chaos of the kitchen is manageable when your inner life is grounded.
- What’s an underrated ingredient and why?
Asafoetida (hing), tiny amount, massive impact, & Kokum. It is a coastal Indian souring agent, tart, fruity, deeply complex, that does things to a dish that tamarind and lime simply cannot replicate. It has a natural affinity with seafood and coconut-based curries, and it carries a cooling quality that makes it completely unique.
8. What’s a must-try dish from your kitchen or the one you’re proudest to have prepared?
Asking me about my proudest dish is like asking a parent to name their favorite child. The answer keeps changing, and it should. Some days it’s the kheema kaleji. It’s a dish my father cooked at home, humble and deeply personal, spiced minced meat with liver, the kind of food that never appears on fine dining menus but carries more memory and meaning than almost anything I know.
Then there is the Byadgi chili shrimp, which has a story that still makes me smile. It came to me in a dream. I was living in South India at the time, completely immersed in the region’s food culture, and somewhere between sleeping and waking, this dish arrived fully formed. Byadgi is a variety of chili grown in the Haveri district of Karnataka, mild in heat but extraordinary in color and depth, one of India’s most underappreciated ingredients. I woke up and went straight to the kitchen. That dish is a tribute to the chili, to the region, to the farmers who grow it.
And then there is the pork belly. Three days to reach the plate. Three days of layering, resting, building, and time doing work that no amount of technique can shortcut. When a guest learns how long it takes, something shifts in their experience. It stops being a dish and becomes a commitment.
That is what I want every plate to feel like: something that took time, thought, and a piece of a story worth telling.
About Your City!
Miami, USA
- If Anthony Bourdain or a chef came to your city, what would be the perfect tour itinerary from breakfast to dinner?
If Anthony Bourdain came to visit me, I would take him on a journey through two cities that made me who I am. One is where I was born and raised. The other is where I chose to plant my roots. Together, they tell the complete story of my food.
In Udaipur, dawn at the ghats along Lake Pichola as the city wakes. Temple bells, woodsmoke, and thick cutting chai from a vendor who has stood at the same spot for decades. A mirchi vada, green chili fritter, hot and sharp, eaten standing up, watching the light hit the water. This is where the real Udaipur lives. Not in the palace hotels but in lakes.
Mid-morning, we walk the old city lanes near Jagdish Temple for dal baati churma, wheat balls baked over wood fire, drowned in ghee, served with lentils. Rustic, generous, completely honest about the desert landscape it comes from. Lunch is a proper Rajasthani thali, gatte ki sabzi, ker sangri, dishes built from sparse ingredients cooked with patience into something that feels abundant. Rajasthani cuisine is a masterclass in constraint. Bourdain would have loved that. As the sun sets over the Aravalli hills, we find a rooftop above Lake Pichola. Laal maas, fiery red mutton curry cooked with mathania chilies that grow only in this region, with fresh bajra roti and a cold beer. No rush. That city lives in me, no matter how far I have traveled.
Bourdain loved cities in the middle of becoming something. Raleigh is exactly that. We start at the State Farmers Market, where local growers offer seasonal produce, and a Southern biscuit pulled apart by hand that is a spiritual experience in itself. Lunch is Eastern North Carolina barbecue, whole hog, vinegar-based, slow-smoked. This is not Texas barbecue. It is something older and more tied to a specific stretch of land. Bourdain would have recognized it immediately as food that only exists because generations of people refused to change it. And then dinner. We come to my restaurant. I want to cook for him, to show what happens when everything I carried from years of cooking across India, California, and the American South, lands on a single plate. The Carolinian-Indian cuisine.
Flavors From the Black Sea
Humans Of The Kitchen
Childhood memories of simple meals became the foundation of his cooking philosophy.
Volodymyr Artamonov
Volodymyr Artamonov’s cooking starts with memory. The sound of oil in a pan, fresh fish from the sea, meals that didn’t need much to mean everything.
He’s been in kitchens since he was 14, shaped by pressure, discipline, and environments that demand more than just talent. Moving from Odessa to Germany forced another kind of growth with a new language, a new culture, and starting over. Through it all, he held onto the same idea that cooking isn’t about complexity, it’s about honesty. Let the product speak, do the work, and keep improving.
His path has been built on consistency, not shortcuts. From early lessons in humility to working under chefs who pushed him to be better, every step has reinforced the same belief that this craft takes time, sacrifice, and intention.
In this conversation, Volodymyr shares how those early memories continue to shape his cooking, the discipline behind his growth, and what it takes to build something honest in an industry that doesn’t wait for anyone.
Share your Journey
- Looking back at your childhood, was there a specific moment or memory that sparked your interest in food or cooking?
I grew up in Odesa, by the sea. One of my strongest childhood memories is watching flounder being fried at home, just flour, a pan, and fresh fish. I still remember the sound of the oil, the smell of the kitchen, and how such a simple meal could bring the whole family together. My father also used to bring home game after hunting, pheasant and quail, and we cooked it very simply: fire, salt, and time.
That was when I understood that food is not just something you eat. Behind every dish there is a story, a memory, and an emotion. Later, when I started working in kitchens, I wanted to connect those childhood memories with professional technique and precision. Even today, my dishes come from that same place: simple, honest flavors from my childhood, expressed through modern gastronomy.
- Did you have another career or job before becoming a chef? How did those experiences influence your decision to pursue cooking?
No, cooking has always been my first and only profession. From a young age, I knew I wanted to work in kitchens. I started early, and the more time I spent in this world, the more certain I became that this was where I belonged.
What kept me in this profession was not only the food itself, but also the discipline, the pressure, and the feeling of creating something meaningful every day. Working in kitchens taught me precision, patience, and how much can be achieved through hard work. Even when it is difficult, I cannot imagine doing anything else.
- Did you formally study culinary arts, or are you self-taught? How has your learning journey shaped your approach to cooking?
I did receive a formal culinary education, but I learned much more by working than by sitting in a classroom. While many other students spent most of their time behind a desk, I was always trying to be in the kitchen, watching, practicing, and learning through real service.
For me, the most important lessons did not come from books, but from the people I worked with, the pressure of service, and the mistakes I made along the way. That experience shaped my approach to cooking: practical, disciplined, and always focused on improving every day.
- When did you first step into a restaurant kitchen? What was that experience like, and how did it shape your journey as a chef?
I first stepped into a professional kitchen when I was 14 years old. I was very young, and at the beginning, I mostly watched, cleaned, and helped with small tasks. But even then, I was fascinated by the energy of the kitchen, the speed, the discipline, and the teamwork.
Very quickly, I realized that this was the place where I wanted to be. The pressure did not scare me; it motivated me. From that moment on, I tried to spend as much time as possible in kitchens, learning from every chef and every service. That first experience shaped the way I work today and confirmed that cooking was not only my profession, but my path.
- What were some of the early challenges or obstacles you faced when you started in the kitchen, and how did you overcome them?
One of the biggest challenges at the beginning was that I was very young. I had to prove that I was serious and that I belonged in the kitchen, even though I was younger than almost everyone around me. The work was physically difficult, the hours were long, and there was a lot of pressure.
Later, another challenge was moving to Germany and adapting to a new language, a new culture, and a different way of working. At first, it was not easy. But I overcame those difficulties by working harder, listening more, and never being afraid to ask questions. I learned that if you are willing to work and keep improving, obstacles eventually become part of your strength.
- What keeps you inspired and how has that inspiration driven you throughout your professional journey? Especially during tough times in the kitchen?
What inspires me most is the idea that cooking can tell a story. I am inspired by my childhood memories, the sea in Odesa, simple dishes, and the people I have met in kitchens. I am also inspired by chefs who show that discipline, hard work, and creativity can exist together.
In difficult moments, what keeps me going is the feeling that every challenge can make me stronger. I remind myself why I started: because I love this profession and because I want to become better every day. I want to build something meaningful, make my family proud, and one day become a chef known not only for technique, but also for having something real to say through food.
- Can you recall a moment in the kitchen that marked you forever? Maybe it was an interaction with a mentor, a fellow cook, someone you fed, or a situation that challenged you in a way that shaped who you are today?
One of the moments that left the biggest mark on me was the moment I joined Moya by Daniel Wallenstein. Daniel had just become Chef of the Year 2025, and for me, it was the first time I was working so closely with someone who had reached a level I had dreamed about myself.
What impressed me most was not only his technique, but his discipline, his standards, and the way he pushed everyone around him to become better. Working in that environment taught me that talent alone is not enough. You need consistency, sacrifice, and the courage to keep going even when you are tired or doubt yourself.
Today, I am a semifinalist for Koch des Jahres myself, and I often think back to those moments. They showed me that the distance between a dream and reality is smaller than it seems if you are ready to work for it every day.
- As a chef, how would you describe your philosophy in the kitchen, and how does it guide your approach to cooking and leadership?
One of the philosophies that influenced me the most came from Daniel Wallenstein. He taught me that the best cooking begins with respecting what nature gives us. The product should always come first. Instead of trying to hide it behind too many techniques or ingredients, we should bring out its true character.
Today, I believe the same. My approach is based on simplicity, precision, and honesty. I want every ingredient to taste like itself, fish should taste like fish, and vegetables like vegetables. Technique is important, but only if it helps express the natural flavor more clearly. Even though I am still learning and growing, this is the philosophy that guides me every day in the kitchen.
- Can you share a time when cooking or the camaraderie in the kitchen helped you through a tough period in your life? What made that experience meaningful?
Moving to Germany was one of the hardest periods of my life. I had to leave behind my home, my country, and everything familiar. I arrived in a new place, with a new language and a different culture, and there were moments when I felt alone and unsure of myself.
What helped me most during that time were the kitchen and my wife. In the kitchen, I felt that I still had a place and a purpose. No matter how difficult life felt outside, once I was working, I knew who I was. At the same time, my wife was always there for me. She believed in me even in moments when I doubted myself. Together, those two things gave me the strength to keep moving forward.
- Reflecting on your career, what achievements or milestones are you most proud of, and what do they mean to you?
The achievement I am most proud of is becoming a semifinalist in Koch des Jahres. For me, it means much more than just taking part in a competition. It is proof that all the years of hard work, long hours, sacrifices, and difficult moments were worth it.
As someone who came to Germany from another country, had to build a new life, learn a new language, and prove himself in a new environment, I find this moment especially meaningful. It shows me that I am moving in the right direction. At the same time, I know that this is only the beginning and that I still have much more to achieve.
- What aspects of restaurant culture do you love, and what parts do you find frustrating or problematic? Are there any changes you’re actively working toward or things you hope they change in the industry? Share the reasons behind them and how they align with your vision for a better culinary world?
What I love most about restaurant culture is the discipline, the teamwork, and the feeling that everyone is working for the same goal. A great kitchen can teach you respect, responsibility, and how much you are capable of when you push yourself.
At the same time, one thing that disappoints me today is that many young cooks, not all, but many, want quick success without being ready for the work that stands behind it. I often see people who are 18 years old and already think mostly about limits, fixed hours, and comfort. When I was 18, I remember working 16-hour days under pressure, being exhausted, but also learning more every week than I thought possible.
Of course, I do not believe that the old culture of fear, shouting, or unhealthy pressure should continue. That is not the answer. I think the industry needs both discipline and respect. Young cooks should be treated better, but they should also understand that becoming truly good at this profession takes time, sacrifice, and patience. I hope the future of the industry will combine high standards with a healthier environment, where people still work hard, but also support and teach each other.
- What are your hopes for the future of the restaurant and food and beverage industry? What changes would you like to see, and how are you contributing to that change?
My hope for the future of the restaurant industry is that it becomes a place where people can build a real, long-term career without losing their passion for cooking. I believe one of the best changes would be a 4-day-on, 3-day-off schedule. For me, that is the most realistic and healthy balance. It gives cooks time to rest, recover, and continue growing without burning out.
I also believe that salaries in our industry need to improve. Too many talented people leave kitchens because the work is hard and the pay does not match the effort.
At the same time, I hope that real competition between cooks returns. I think many people today want fast results, but fewer are willing to push themselves to become the best. Competition, when it is healthy, makes us stronger. It pushes people to learn more, work harder, and take pride in their profession. I want to contribute to that by continuing to improve myself and by showing younger cooks that passion and hard work still matter.
- If there’s anything we didn’t ask or if you feel we’re missing something about your personal and kitchen story, please share it here.
Cooking has given me much more than a profession. It gave me a place in a new country, people who became like family, and a reason to keep moving forward even in difficult moments. Sometimes I think that if I had not become a cook, I would have become a completely different person. The kitchen taught me discipline, patience, and how to keep going when things are difficult. It also taught me that behind every dish there is always a person and a story. That is why, no matter how far I go in this profession, I never want to lose the honesty and passion that made me start.
Secret Sauce
- What’s the most unexpected ingredient you’ve ever worked with, and how did it change your perspective on cooking?
One of the most unexpected ingredients I have ever used was young spruce cones. At first, I could not imagine using something from the forest in fine dining so directly. But when I worked with them, I discovered a flavor that was fresh, resinous, slightly citrusy, and unlike anything else.
They changed the way I think about cooking because they showed me that inspiration does not only come from expensive or rare products. Sometimes the most interesting flavors come from nature and from ingredients that people usually overlook. Since then, I have tried to look at ingredients differently and to be more curious about what is around me.
- What’s your “guilty pleasure” meal?
Honestly, my favorite dish is anything my wife cooks. No matter how many restaurants I visit or how many complicated dishes I make, there is something special about food made by someone who loves you. It always feels comforting, familiar, and real.
- A food trend that you hate and why?
I do not like the trend of making food only for social media. Too often, dishes are created to look impressive in photos or videos, but they do not actually taste good or have any real thought behind them. I believe that food should first make you feel something when you eat it, not only when you look at it.
- What’s the craziest shift you’ve ever worked in the kitchen?
The craziest shift I ever worked was in Belgium. During that period, we worked almost every day for about 18 hours. We started early in the morning and often finished late at night, then came back a few hours later and did it all again.
It was exhausting, both physically and mentally, but it also taught me a lot. I learned how much pressure I can handle, how important discipline and teamwork are, and how far I can push myself when everyone around me is giving everything as well.
5. What happened, and how did you manage to get through it?
It was not one specific thing that happened, but rather the constant pressure, the lack of sleep, and the feeling that every day demanded everything from you. There were moments when I was exhausted and thought that I had nothing left.
What helped me get through it was the people around me. I was lucky to work with others who were going through the same thing. We worked together, pushed each other, joked, laughed, and found energy even in the hardest moments. That experience taught me that no matter how difficult the kitchen becomes, the right team can make you strong enough to keep going.
- What tips would you give to other cooks and chefs to help them navigate their culinary careers and find peace amid the chaos of the kitchen?
My advice would be: do not try to become great overnight. Learn to be patient. Focus on the basics, work harder than others, and never think that any task is beneath you. The cooks who become the best are usually the ones who stay curious, listen, and keep learning even after many years.
To stay calm in the chaos of the kitchen, you need discipline and routine. If your station is organized and you are prepared, your mind becomes calmer too. And when things go wrong, do not panic. Breathe, focus on the next step, and trust your team. No one survives this profession alone.
- What’s an underrated ingredient and why?
Potatoes are one of the most underrated ingredients. People often think of them as something simple, but in reality, they can be incredibly elegant and complex. A potato can become a purée, a crisp, a foam, a croquette, or something completely unexpected. I think the best ingredients are often the simplest ones, if you know how to treat them with enough respect.
8. What’s a must-try dish from your kitchen or the one you’re proudest to have prepared?
The dish I am most proud of is probably my flounder dish, because it tells the story of where I come from. It is inspired by a very simple memory from my childhood in Odesa: flounder, flour, and a pan. I took that memory and tried to express it through the technique and precision that I have learned over the years.
For me, this dish is more than just food. It is the connection between my childhood, my family, and the cook I have become today. I think that is why it is the dish that best represents me.
About Your City!
Gengenbach, Germany
- If Anthony Bourdain or a chef came to your city, what would be the perfect tour itinerary from breakfast to dinner?
If Anthony Bourdain came to my city, I would take him to Gengenbach. We would start the morning with breakfast and coffee at Hotel die Reichsstadt, the heart of the town, where you can really feel the atmosphere of the Black Forest.
After that, we would walk through the old streets of Gengenbach and visit the local market to see seasonal products from the region. For lunch, I would take him to a small traditional restaurant to eat something simple and local, like trout, Black Forest ham, or spätzle.
In the afternoon, we would drive through the vineyards and small villages around Gengenbach, stop at a local winery, and end the day back at Hotel die Reichsstadt with dinner in Restaurant Moya. I think that would show both the region’s tradition and the modern side of my kitchen.
Rethinking What Matters
Humans Of The Kitchen
A call for a more honest industry, where craftsmanship speaks louder than trends.
Larissa Metz
Larissa Metz’s work is built on precision. Not just in technique, but in the way she approaches growth, quietly, consistently, without needing to prove it to anyone but herself.
She started in pastry at a young age, shaped by traditional training and a deep respect for craftsmanship. Over time, that foundation carried her into fine dining, where discipline, patience, and attention to detail became essential. Recognition came along the way, but so did doubt, criticism, and the kind of pressure that tests how much you trust your own path.
What stayed constant was her focus: to keep learning, to keep creating, and to build something meaningful through her work.
In this conversation, Larissa reflects on resilience, craftsmanship, and the balance between high standards and a healthy kitchen culture.
Share your Journey
- Looking back at your childhood, was there a specific moment or memory that sparked your interest in food or cooking?
I used to enjoy cooking with my mom. The first dish I ever cooked on my own was spaghetti with tomato sauce. I also loved baking as a child. The best part for me back then was being able to sneak a taste of the batter and enjoy every moment in the kitchen.
- Did you have another career or job before becoming a chef? How did those experiences influence your decision to pursue cooking?
No, I started my apprenticeship as a pastry chef right after graduating from high school. After three years of training and one additional year as a journeyman, I completed my master craftsman certification. Following another season in a pastry shop, I moved into the hotel industry, where I experienced a completely different way of working and new structures. I really enjoyed it, and that’s how I earned my first position as Head Pastry Chef.
- Did you formally study culinary arts, or are you self-taught? How has your learning journey shaped your approach to cooking?
I completed a formal apprenticeship as a pastry chef. In Germany, there is no specific training program exclusively for pâtissiers. You either train as a pastry chef or as a cook, and then acquire the necessary pâtisserie skills through practical experience.
My apprenticeship had a strong influence on me. I trained in a very traditional pastry shop, which is why my approach is always rooted in classical craftsmanship. Craftsmanship is extremely important in my work and forms the foundation of all my desserts and petits fours.
- When did you first step into a restaurant kitchen? What was that experience like, and how did it shape your journey as a chef?
After my first position as Head Pastry Chef in a hotel, I wanted to focus more on plated desserts. I was aiming to work with greater precision and create perfectly composed plates. Therefore, after my role at a hotel with an extensive product range, I decided in 2020 to join an up-and-coming fine-dining restaurant. In 2021, we earned a Michelin star together with the team.
In 2022, I received my first award as “Pastry Chef of the Year,” which also led to my meeting Joachim Wissler, a renowned German chef. He asked if I would like to work with him, and that’s how I ended up at Restaurant Vendôme.
- What were some of the early challenges or obstacles you faced when you started in the kitchen, and how did you overcome them?
Some of the earliest challenges I faced when I started in the kitchen were the fast pace, long hours, and high expectations. It was a completely new environment for me, and I had to quickly learn to stay focused and organized under pressure. In the beginning, it wasn’t always easy to keep up or to meet the standards I set for myself.
Another challenge was building confidence in my own skills. Especially in a professional kitchen, where everything has to be precise, I sometimes doubted myself. I overcame this by staying consistent, practicing every day, and learning from more experienced chefs around me. I also learned to accept mistakes as part of the process and used them to improve.
Over time, discipline, patience, and a strong work ethic helped me grow. I became more confident, more efficient, and developed my own style while still respecting the fundamentals of the craft.
- What keeps you inspired and how has that inspiration driven you throughout your professional journey? Especially during tough times in the kitchen?
I always go through the world with open eyes, that’s the best way to stay inspired. Whether it’s nature or new techniques that others are using, you can always turn them into your own ideas and creations. Even when times in the kitchen are especially tough, staying inspired makes those challenges feel only half as difficult.
- Can you recall a moment in the kitchen that marked you forever? Maybe it was an interaction with a mentor, a fellow cook, someone you fed, or a situation that challenged you in a way that shaped who you are today?
Unfortunately, there have been far too many of these moments—both positive and negative. But I have also grown from the negative ones. After receiving my first award, I experienced a lot of hostility, even within my own workplace. People said things like, “I didn’t deserve it,” or, “Without the head chef and his restaurant, I would never have achieved it.”
Of course, that affected me at first, but today I am certain that I would have succeeded regardless of who I worked with or where I was. I would have followed my path either way, because I’m not driven by recognition, but by the desire to create. I want to build and develop something meaningful, and that is what matters most to me. From that, something genuinely good emerges, something that others can clearly see and appreciate.
- As a chef, how would you describe your philosophy in the kitchen, and how does it guide your approach to cooking and leadership?
It is very important to me to create a harmonious working environment in the kitchen. I want the people who work with me to take something meaningful with them, not just techniques or recipes, but also a mindset: to stay curious, keep their eyes open, and think in new ways.
Of course, in a restaurant like this, things are naturally strict; everything has to be right, everything has to be perfect. But even so, that standard can be built on mutual respect and a positive team dynamic.
- Can you share a time when cooking or the camaraderie in the kitchen helped you through a tough period in your life? What made that experience meaningful?
There was a time early in my career when things felt especially intense. The pressure in the kitchen was high, expectations were even higher, and I was still trying to prove myself. There were moments when I doubted whether I was good enough to keep up.
What really carried me through was the sense of camaraderie in the kitchen. Even though the environment was demanding, there were colleagues who supported me, pushed me, and stood next to me during long services. You share the same pressure, the same exhaustion, but also the same small victories. That creates a very strong bond.
One moment I remember clearly was after a particularly tough service. Everything that could go wrong seemed to go wrong, but instead of blaming each other, we came together, stayed focused, and pushed through as a team. Afterward, there was this quiet sense of pride that we had made it through together.
That experience was meaningful because it showed me that cooking is never just about the food. It’s about the people behind it, the trust you build, and the resilience you develop together. Those moments stay with you and shape how you lead and work with others later on.
- Reflecting on your career, what achievements or milestones are you most proud of, and what do they mean to you?
The biggest milestone for me is being able to work in this restaurant. Here, I’m given every opportunity to realize my potential and do what I truly love, which motivates me daily and helps me grow both professionally and personally in a supportive and inspiring environment.
- What aspects of restaurant culture do you love, and what parts do you find frustrating or problematic? Are there any changes you’re actively working toward or things you hope they change in the industry? Share the reasons behind them and how they align with your vision for a better culinary world?
What I love about the current restaurant culture is that many people are once again appreciating good food and paying attention to high-quality ingredients. What I appreciate less is that many small restaurants are trying to move toward fine dining, only to end up charging a lot of money for something that is not really fine dining. I would prefer there to be many small restaurants that place great value on good craftsmanship and high-quality products, and that do not try to compete in the fine-dining sector but instead focus on the essentials.
- What are your hopes for the future of the restaurant and food and beverage industry? What changes would you like to see, and how are you contributing to that change?
My hopes for the future of the restaurant and food & beverage industry are that it becomes more honest, more sustainable, and more focused on real craftsmanship again. I would like to see a shift away from trends and status-driven concepts toward places that truly respect ingredients, producers, and the people who cook and serve the food.
One change I would love to see is a clearer distinction between different types of restaurants, so that “fine dining” is not used as a marketing label, but actually reflects precision, creativity, and depth. At the same time, I hope small, independent restaurants feel encouraged to stay authentic rather than pressured to imitate high-end concepts just to survive or to attract attention.
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Photo credits: captured through the lens of @onelionmedia, @chmilerik, and @rike_oakpot📷
Secret Sauce
- What’s the most unexpected ingredient you’ve ever worked with, and how did it change your perspective on cooking?
For patisserie, caviar was the most unusual ingredient I have used so far to create a dessert. I combined it with a beurre blanc and bergamot ice cream, and paired it with a Williams Christ pear and a jasmine blossom infusion. This dessert showed me that even unusual ingredients can be incorporated, as long as they are used properly.
- What’s your “guilty pleasure” meal?
A late-night pizza.
- A food trend that you hate and why?
Combine everything with Asian products and season to taste. I sometimes feel that chefs make it easier on themselves by using ready-made fermented products to make the food seem a bit more special.
- What’s the craziest shift you’ve ever worked in the kitchen?
The craziest shift in the kitchen was when I had to cook a gala dinner for a one- to two-star level event for 200 people.
5. What happened, and how did you manage to get through it?
I was named “Favorite of the Year” by the FAZ newspaper, for which a gala was held with all the other awarded chefs. For this gala, we had to plate 200 desserts, which we would normally prepare for 30 guests in a restaurant. It was, of course, very intense, but with a good team and solid preparation, I was able to handle it well.
- What tips would you give to other cooks and chefs to help them navigate their culinary careers and find peace amid the chaos of the kitchen?
You always have to stay focused and remain on your own path. You need to know what you want and take one step at a time, not trying to achieve too much at once, but instead setting priorities.
- What’s an underrated ingredient and why?
In patisserie, balsamic vinegar, such as PX vinegar, is often very underestimated, as it adds a lot of depth and a subtle umami note to various creams or ice creams, and can give a dish that certain something.
8. What’s a must-try dish from your kitchen or the one you’re proudest to have prepared?
At the moment, I am very proud of the dessert that will be added to the next menu: Spaghetti Eis. This is a classic ice cream creation in German ice cream cafés, where vanilla ice cream is shaped like spaghetti and served on a plate with strawberries, frozen cream, and white chocolate.
I am also creating a version of Spaghetti Eis. Instead of vanilla ice cream, there will be a Parmesan ice cream with wild strawberries, oregano, and frozen cream. It is definitely something I would highly recommend trying.
About Your City!
Bergisch Gladbach, Germany
- If Anthony Bourdain or a chef came to your city, what would be the perfect tour itinerary from breakfast to dinner?
Start the day with breakfast at Neobiota, enjoying a calm and creative atmosphere to ease into the morning. Afterward, stop by Schmelz und Bohne for a refreshing ice cream, a perfect sweet break during the day.
In the afternoon, take a ride on the Cologne cable car and enjoy the view over the Rhine. Later, have a cold Kölsch at the Gaffel Brauhaus to experience a true taste of Cologne culture.
For a small bite, head to Hennes Weinbar and enjoy a relaxed snack paired with a good glass of wine. In the evening, start with an aperitif at Seiberts, before finishing the day with an exceptional dinner at Vendôme, rounding off a perfect culinary journey through the city.
Chasing Freedom Through Food
Humans Of The Kitchen
Inspired by independence, he built a path that allowed him to create on his own terms.
Renato Kanashiro Pacheco
Renato Kanashiro Pacheco didn’t plan on becoming a chef. In fact, the first time he stepped into a kitchen, he was sure it wasn’t for him.
What started out of necessity slowly turned into something else. Between long hours, early responsibilities, and learning on the go, cooking became more than a job; it became a way forward. Over time, that path led him to build something of his own, rooted in both his Japanese-Peruvian heritage and a desire to do things differently.
His journey hasn’t been defined by perfection, but by persistence, learning through pressure, growing through mistakes, and choosing to build a kitchen grounded in respect, balance, and real connection.
In this conversation, Renato reflects on responsibility, freedom, and what it means to create not just food, but a life on his own terms.
Share your Journey
- Looking back at your childhood, was there a specific moment or memory that sparked your interest in food or cooking?
When I was a child, I had very fond memories of the food my grandmother and my mother used to make. I also remember shared tables on special occasions, where you would find a mix of Japanese and Peruvian food at the same time, since I have Japanese heritage. However, I wasn’t really interested in cooking until I was around 18 or 19, when I had to get into it out of necessity after becoming a father at a very young age.
- Did you have another career or job before becoming a chef? How did those experiences influence your decision to pursue cooking?
Yes, I first studied Hotel and Restaurant Management, and it was during some basic cooking courses that I started to connect with cooking a bit. At the same time, I was already working in a restaurant.
- Did you formally study culinary arts, or are you self-taught? How has your learning journey shaped your approach to cooking?
Yes, after finishing my degree in management and having gained some experience in the kitchen, I decided to study gastronomy. That’s what ultimately convinced me to fully enter this world, as I realized I could be good at it.
- When did you first step into a restaurant kitchen? What was that experience like, and how did it shape your journey as a chef?
The first time I stepped into a kitchen was at my first job, but when I spoke with the manager, I was very clear that I wanted to be placed in any position except the kitchen. I started as a dishwasher and also prepared coffees and juices, and I remember watching the chaos in the kitchen and telling myself, “There’s no way I could ever do that. I would never work in a kitchen.”
- What were some of the early challenges or obstacles you faced when you started in the kitchen, and how did you overcome them?
My lack of experience, and above all, confidence, since I never imagined I could be good in the kitchen, made it very difficult for me to take on new challenges without going through intense anxiety and stress. On top of that, there was an imbalance in my life. I was studying and working at the same time, and I also had to find a way to see my son during the little free time I had, since he didn’t live with me.
- What keeps you inspired, and how has that inspiration driven you throughout your professional journey? Especially during tough times in the kitchen?
What keeps me inspired is my team. Today, we have an incredible team, and seeing them grow, create, and achieve balance in their lives because we chose to do things differently is what motivates me the most. And of course, traveling and experiencing other interesting proposals, both local and international, also play a big role.
Something that kept me motivated when I was just starting to build my path, and helped me keep going no matter what, was wanting to give my son the best I could at that moment. At the same time, I was deeply driven by seeing chef-owners who had the freedom to do what they wanted; I’ve always sought to be free in every aspect of my life.
- Can you recall a moment in the kitchen that marked you forever? Maybe it was an interaction with a mentor, a fellow cook, someone you fed, or a situation that challenged you in a way that shaped who you are today?
It wasn’t exactly in the kitchen, but I clearly remember a moment when my current partner, Coco, told me, when we were barely 22, “When we’re 26, we’re going to open Shizen. Remember what I’m telling you.” I don’t recall the exact context, but years went by, and it actually happened, we opened our first small location when we turned 26.
Another key moment was when I was working at what is currently the best restaurant in the world, according to the 50 Best list. I remember wanting to quit just a week after starting, but my wife and partner, Mayra, encouraged me and helped me push through. I ended up staying for a few years, and it became a place that would shape my career and professional life forever.
- As a chef, how would you describe your philosophy in the kitchen, and how does it guide your approach to cooking and leadership?
The philosophy we have at Shizen is, I believe, quite unique. It’s something Mayra, Coco, and I were very clear about when we decided to start this journey. We didn’t want to be treated the way we once were. We wanted to build a kitchen based on respect, without humiliation. We wanted a close, human connection with our team, and to give our people the opportunity to have balanced lives, where coming to work doesn’t feel like a burden.
At the end of the day, we are human beings, and we need to live and enjoy life. I truly believe that anything that destroys you physically and psychologically is never worth it. Living under constant, unsustainable pressure and stress will always come at a cost, and by the time you’ve built everything, you may not even be able to enjoy it.
- Can you share a time when cooking or the camaraderie in the kitchen helped you through a tough period in your life? What made that experience meaningful?
Two years ago, we were victims of a scam. It was an incredibly hard blow for us, so much so that we almost ended up closing Shizen after six years of growth. And I’m not trying to play the victim here, because in large part it was our fault for blindly trusting someone outside the three of us.
But some colleagues and chefs we’ve always admired supported us a lot by sharing knowledge and methods that helped us start climbing out of that hole. In the end, that experience became a powerful lesson. We took back control of our business the way we should have from the beginning, learned a great deal about management, and ultimately became stronger and more united as business partners. It’s also a mistake, I think many cooks make when opening a business. We eventually realize we can’t just be cooks; we have to learn how to be entrepreneurs as well.
- Reflecting on your career, what achievements or milestones are you most proud of, and what do they mean to you?
Something we feel truly happy and proud of, first and foremost, is having sustained and grown a business for nearly 12 years, starting with nothing, no money, no connections, and no experience running a business. We began cooking at Coco’s house, doing catering, then opened a small location, and eventually moved to our current, much larger space.
When we opened our first location in 2018, we didn’t really have a clear goal; we simply wanted to cook. Life has taken us down a path that’s been tough, but also incredibly beautiful. And eventually, last year, we entered the extended list of Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants for the first time, at #62. We’ve also been recognized for several years as one of the best Nikkei restaurants in Peru.
Today, all I feel is gratitude, because I’m living the life I once dreamed of.
- What aspects of restaurant culture do you love, and what parts do you find frustrating or problematic? Are there any changes you’re actively working toward or things you hope they change in the industry? Share the reasons behind them and how they align with your vision for a better culinary world?
Something I really value about the gastronomic culture, at least here in Peru, is the sense of camaraderie. We’re a large community, and while there are smaller circles within it, we support each other and work together to move the industry forward. At least on our end, we always try to maintain good relationships with everyone.
From the very beginning, we’ve focused on creating an environment where our team can have balance in their lives and, above all, grow as good people, as I mentioned before.
And if there’s something we’ve consistently tried to change, it’s the idea that the customer can do whatever they want. Guests come into our house, and the rules of our house must be respected. We have zero tolerance for disrespect toward our team; we’ve even asked some guests to leave because of it.
We strongly believe that the mindset of “the customer is always right” has long been outdated.
- What are your hopes for the future of the restaurant and food and beverage industry? What changes would you like to see, and how are you contributing to that change?
I hope the industry stays united, because that’s the only way to build something truly meaningful.
I’d also like to see the new generations keep that curiosity for returning to their roots. Many young people are eager to pursue innovation and avant-garde approaches, but they often forget that without tradition, there is no innovation. We always have to start from what’s ours, by understanding the origin, because that’s the only way to move forward.
That’s something we strongly believe in at Shizen: we can’t pretend to mix flavors or ingredients if we don’t first understand where they come from.
- If there’s anything we didn’t ask or if you feel we’re missing something about your personal and kitchen story, please share it here.
We’re planning to develop three additional projects, smaller, more casual, and designed to be scalable and replicable. And with Shizen, we’ll continue to grow and evolve, going wherever the journey takes us.
Photos of the dishes by @jimena.agois.
Kitchen moments captured by @catchofthedey.
Secret Sauce
- What’s the most unexpected ingredient you’ve ever worked with, and how did it change your perspective on cooking?
The first time we got piure, I remember trying it and thinking it was terrible. I didn’t want to use it ever again. Clearly, I had no idea how to work with it and just assumed it was a bad ingredient. Later, when I traveled to Chile and tried piure in different, delicious preparations, I understood that an ingredient isn’t defined as good or bad by itself, but by how it’s treated.
- What’s your “guilty pleasure” meal?
There’s a Peruvian burger chain called Bembos that I really like. You could put a Bembos burger next to one made with A5 wagyu, and I’d still choose the Bembos one. it has a unique, unmistakable industrialized flavor.
- A food trend that you hate and why?
None.
- What’s the craziest shift you’ve ever worked in the kitchen? What happened, and how did you manage to get through it?
We had the honor of cooking alongside Micha Tsumura at Shizen. We created a collaborative dinner together. It was the moment in my career when I felt the most pressure, nerves, and stress so far.
5. What happened, and how did you manage to get through it?
It turned out incredible, but with so many friends and familiar faces in the dining room, and with a live band that night, which made some guests uncomfortable sitting too close, people started switching seats and joining tables.
That completely disrupted the reservation map and made the tasting menu flow lose all structure. At some point, despite our efforts to stay in control, we no longer knew which course belonged to which table or where each table was in the sequence.
It became absolute chaos, and it was the only time my partners and I genuinely felt like going to the bathroom to cry and just let everything collapse. Of course, we didn’t. In the end, we had to figure out how to regain control and push through.
At first, it felt like a curse, but it actually helped us. The music was so good that some members of the band started dancing with the guests, which made the delays and the exhaustion happening behind the scenes almost unnoticeable. From the guests’ perspective, everything felt great, but behind the curtain, everything was falling apart.
- What tips would you give to other cooks and chefs to help them navigate their culinary careers and find peace amid the chaos of the kitchen?
If you have the chance to travel, do it. And if you don’t, invest your money in dining out.
If you’re thinking about starting a business, understand that you won’t just be a cook anymore; you’ll have to learn to do a bit of everything, especially on the administrative side. At some point, you need to stop being so romantic about it and start becoming more objective, even a bit cold when necessary.
And I know it’s hard, but finding the time and balance to work on yourself should be a priority. Training, going to therapy, eating well, and spending time with your family are goals we should all be pursuing alongside our work.
- What’s an underrated ingredient and why?
For me, it’s the egg, but fried. It’s something I personally love. I put it on stews, pastas, soups, just with rice, with meat… I always say, everything tastes better with a fried egg.
8. What’s a must-try dish from your kitchen or the one you’re proudest to have prepared?
I’d say you absolutely have to try our Chirashi Ceviche. It’s our best-selling dish and a good selection of nigiris that perfectly reflect the DNA of our cuisine.
About Your City!
Lima, Peru
- If Anthony Bourdain or a chef came to your city, what would be the perfect tour itinerary from breakfast to dinner?
If Anthony Bourdain were to visit Lima, I’d take him through a full day that really shows the city’s contrasts. Something honest, a bit chaotic, but deeply rooted in flavor and identity.
I’d start early with a traditional breakfast, something simple like a pan con chicharrón and a strong Peruvian coffee, maybe from a spot like El Chinito. No luxury, just pure, unapologetic flavor to wake up the palate.
Then I’d take him to Mercado de Surquillo. Walk through the market, look at the fish, taste some exotic fruits, and maybe have a quick ceviche at a stall. For me, that’s essential, understanding the product and the people behind it.
For lunch, I’d go with something that represents Lima’s seafood culture at a high level but still feels connected to tradition, either La Mar or La Picantería. Both have a strong sense of identity and respect for ingredients, just expressed differently.
In the afternoon, I’d slow things down in Barranco. Grab a coffee, walk around, maybe some street sweets like picarones. It’s important to feel the rhythm of the city, not just eat through it.
As the sun goes down, we go straight to the streets. Anticuchos, rachi, grilled everything. That’s non-negotiable. That’s where the real soul of Lima lives.
For dinner, I’d bring him to Shizen. Not just to eat, but to show where we’re taking things, how Nikkei cuisine can evolve while still respecting its roots. I’d have him try our Chirashi Ceviche and a progression of nigiris that really reflect our DNA.
And to close the night, I’d take him to Lady Bee; they have a truly unique beverage program, and the food is excellent. It’s the kind of place where the night naturally extends, with great drinks, great energy, and the kind of conversations that stay with you.
Starting Over, Without a Map
Humans Of The Kitchen
Building a career in a new country through persistence, learning, and quiet strength.
Mercedes Castillo
Mercedes Castillo learned to cook by watching her mother make something out of almost nothing.
Her story is rooted in resilience, shaped long before she entered a professional kitchen. Growing up in Cuba, she learned early that food wasn’t about abundance, but about intention, creativity, and care.
Before stepping into the kitchen, she worked in hospitality, learning about service, wine, and the dining experience. Over time, that shifted. She didn’t just want to serve it; she wanted to build it.
Her path hasn’t been easy. Moving to a new country, learning a new language, proving herself in spaces that didn’t always make room for her. But she stayed with it, learning, adjusting, and growing.
In this conversation, Mercedes shares what that process looked like and the kind of kitchen she believes in now.
Share your Journey
- Looking back at your childhood, was there a specific moment or memory that sparked your interest in food or cooking?
Looking back on my childhood, my interest in cooking was sparked by watching my mother create meals with almost nothing. Amid absolute scarcity, she would take one or two simple ingredients and turn them into countless dishes.
I watched her cook with creativity, resilience, and intention, not just to feed us, but to make something meaningful out of very little. That taught me that cooking is not about abundance, but about resourcefulness, heart, and care. Long before I saw food as a career, I understood it as survival, love, and strength.
- Did you have another career or job before becoming a chef? How did those experiences influence your decision to pursue cooking?
I worked in hospitality as a server and bartender, and later deepened my knowledge of enology and wine, cigar, and food pairings. Those roles taught me how flavors interact, how experiences are built beyond the plate, and how service, timing, and atmosphere shape the way people remember a meal.
Understanding wine, pairings, and guest experience helped me develop a more holistic view of food. Over time, I realized I wanted to be on the creative side of that experience, not only serving it, but building it with my hands. Cooking became the place where all those elements came together.
- Did you formally study culinary arts, or are you self-taught? How has your learning journey shaped your approach to cooking?
My culinary journey began with a basic cooking program that lasted a little over a year, which gave me foundational knowledge and structure. However, what truly refined my skills was practice, working consistently, experimenting, and failing many times.
I learned the most from recipes that didn’t work, because they forced me to study, question techniques, and understand why something went wrong. Through repetition, trial and error, and hands-on experience in professional kitchens, I developed resilience and discipline. That process shaped my approach to cooking: intentional, curious, and constantly evolving.
- When did you first step into a restaurant kitchen? What was that experience like, and how did it shape your journey as a chef?
The first time I stepped into a professional kitchen, I was overwhelmed with the pace, the pressure, and the intensity. It was demanding, physical, and mentally exhausting, but it also felt right. That environment taught me accountability and teamwork very quickly. I learned that consistency matters as much as talent. That first experience shaped my journey by showing me that passion alone isn’t enough; discipline and perseverance are what truly define a chef.
- What were some of the early challenges or obstacles you faced when you started in the kitchen, and how did you overcome them?
One of my earliest challenges was proving myself in environments where pastry was often underestimated and where I had to work twice as hard to be taken seriously. Long hours, self-doubt, and the need to balance personal life were constant obstacles. I overcame them by staying focused, asking questions, and trusting the process. Instead of giving up, I used every challenge as fuel to grow stronger and more confident in my craft.
- What keeps you inspired and how has that inspiration driven you throughout your professional journey? Especially during tough times in the kitchen?
What keeps me inspired is knowing that my work has meaning beyond the plate. My children and my family are at the center of everything I do. I want them to see resilience, discipline, and consistency lived out every day, not just talked about.
During tough moments, I remind myself that I am setting an example, showing them what perseverance looks like when things are not easy. Inspiration comes from progress, from learning, and from understanding that every difficult season is shaping not only the chef and leader I am becoming, but also the legacy I am building for them.
- Can you recall a moment in the kitchen that marked you forever? Maybe it was an interaction with a mentor, a fellow cook, someone you fed, or a situation that challenged you in a way that shaped who you are today?
There was a moment when I created a personalized dessert box for a close friend who is a veterinarian. The box was designed with edible images of her dogs and moments from her wedding. When I gave it to her, she couldn’t believe that everything was edible, and even more so that it tasted as good as it looked.
Watching her reaction, the surprise, and then the emotion, reached me deeply. In that moment, I understood the true power of what we do. Food is not just technique or presentation; it is connection, memory, and emotion. That experience reminded me why I chose this path: to create moments that stay with people long after the last bite.
- As a chef, how would you describe your philosophy in the kitchen, and how does it guide your approach to cooking and leadership?
My philosophy in the kitchen is rooted in respect, discipline, and consistency. I believe great food starts with strong fundamentals and a healthy team environment. As a leader, I focus on accountability while creating space for growth. I lead by example, knowing that how you show up every day sets the tone. Cooking is about precision, but leadership is about people.
- Can you share a time when cooking or the camaraderie in the kitchen helped you through a tough period in your life? What made that experience meaningful?
During some of the most stressful periods of my life, pastry became my form of therapy. Baking quiets my mind, and decorating absorbs all my stress. When everything feels heavy, I turn to recipe development, measuring, testing, and refining brings me clarity and calm. In the kitchen, I find balance, focus, and a sense of peace that grounds me. Pastry is more than my craft; it is my Zen zone.
- Reflecting on your career, what achievements or milestones are you most proud of, and what do they mean to you?
One of the achievements I’m most proud of is building my career after arriving in a new country, where I didn’t fully speak the language and everything felt unfamiliar. I had to learn not only techniques and systems, but also how to communicate, adapt, and trust myself when words failed me.
During moments of deep stress and uncertainty, the kitchen, especially pastry, became my refuge. Baking grounded me, recipe development calmed my mind, and repetition gave me confidence. Earning leadership roles and mentoring others in that context represents resilience, sacrifice, and quiet strength. These milestones are not just professional achievements; they are proof that growth can happen even when fear, doubt, and distance are present.
- What aspects of restaurant culture do you love, and what parts do you find frustrating or problematic? Are there any changes you’re actively working toward or things you hope they change in the industry? Share the reasons behind them and how they align with your vision for a better culinary world?
What I love most about restaurant culture is the sense of purpose and teamwork. There is something powerful about a group of people working under pressure to create something meaningful for others. I also value the discipline, standards, and pride that come with doing things the right way. What I find frustrating is the normalization of burnout, long hours without balance, and the idea that suffering is part of success.
I believe we can maintain high standards while also protecting mental health and fostering respect. I actively work toward creating healthier team environments through mentorship, communication, and leading by example. My vision for a better culinary world is one where excellence and humanity coexist.
- What are your hopes for the future of the restaurant and food and beverage industry? What changes would you like to see, and how are you contributing to that change?
I hope the future of the food and beverage industry moves toward sustainability, balance, and intentional leadership. I would like to see more investment in education, mentorship, and work environments that support long-term growth rather than short-term results. I try to contribute to that change by mentoring younger cooks, promoting consistency over ego, and encouraging a culture of respect. Even in small ways, I believe how we lead today shapes the kitchens of tomorrow.
- If there’s anything we didn’t ask or if you feel we’re missing something about your personal and kitchen story, please share it here.
One thing that often goes unseen is how much personal sacrifice this career requires. Behind every service is discipline, missed moments, and constant self-reflection. I want people to know that growth in this industry is not always loud or glamorous. Sometimes it’s quiet, repetitive, and deeply personal. But those quiet moments are where resilience, confidence, and true passion are built.
Secret Sauce
- What’s the most unexpected ingredient you’ve ever worked with, and how did it change your perspective on cooking?
An unexpected ingredient I’ve used in pastry is dried chiles, such as ancho and guajillo. Their warmth and subtle sweetness add depth and complexity, especially with chocolate and fruit, teaching me balance and restraint in dessert flavors.
- What’s your “guilty pleasure” meal?
A good pizza, a creamy risotto, or anything with melted cheese. Comfort food always wins.
- A food trend that you hate and why?
Trends that prioritize appearance over flavor. Food should first taste incredible. Aesthetics should support it, not replace it.
- What’s the craziest shift you’ve ever worked in the kitchen?
One of the craziest shifts I’ve worked was running the entire pool kitchen by myself, managing two lines at once —the full hot line with oven, grill, fryer, and more—while also handling the Garden Manager station. Service was nonstop, and expectations were high. After completing an eight-hour shift there, I went straight upstairs to the banquet kitchen to continue the day. It was physically demanding and mentally exhausting.
5. What happened, and how did you manage to get through it?
I got through it by staying calm, focusing on what was immediately in front of me, and moving one ticket at a time. In moments like that, chaos becomes manageable when you narrow your attention, trust your training, and keep going with discipline and clarity.
- What tips would you give to other cooks and chefs to help them navigate their culinary careers and find peace amid the chaos of the kitchen?
Protect your passion, learn constantly, and don’t confuse burnout with dedication. Growth takes time.
- What’s an underrated ingredient and why?
Salt. When used properly, it transforms everything
8. What’s a must-try dish from your kitchen or the one you’re proudest to have prepared?
I don’t have a single dish I’m most proud of. What I value most is the process of refinement. I find pride in developing recipes, adjusting techniques, and seeing how small changes improve flavor, texture, and balance. For me, growth lives in repetition and evolution, not in one finished dish.
About Your City!
Miami, USA
- If Anthony Bourdain or a chef came to your city, what would be the perfect tour itinerary from breakfast to dinner?
If Anthony Bourdain came to my city, I would show him Miami through the lens of someone who arrived from Cuba. We would start the day with a strong Cuban coffee and pastelitos, sitting in an unpretentious place where conversation matters more than aesthetics. We’d walk through neighborhoods shaped by immigration, stopping at local markets and small kitchens that carry history in their flavors. Lunch would be simple but soulful, food rooted in memory and survival. As the day moves on, I’d introduce him to the contrast Miami offers: cultures colliding, evolving, and creating something new. Dinner would be elevated but honest, reflecting how far we’ve come without forgetting where we started.
Miami is not just a city; it’s resilience, nostalgia, and reinvention on a plate.
Learning What Not to Become
Humans Of The Kitchen
Early exposure to unhealthy kitchen culture redefined the standards for leading a team.
Vardaan Marwah
For Vardaan Marwah, hospitality didn’t start in a professional kitchen. It started at home.
Growing up in a North Indian household filled with guests, food, and constant movement, cooking was always part of the rhythm of life. What began as curiosity, watching, asking questions, and being around it slowly turned into something more intentional, shaped by experience, learning on the job, and building something of his own from the ground up.
Today, Vardaan’s work reflects that same energy, rooted in connection, growth, and the creation of spaces where both food and people can evolve. From running multiple kitchens to mentoring his team, his journey is less about titles and more about building something that feels alive, for himself and for the people around him.
In this conversation, Vardaan talks about the path that shaped him and the kind of kitchens he’s trying to build now.
Share your Journey
- Looking back at your childhood, was there a specific moment or memory that sparked your interest in food or cooking?
I come from a North Indian family where both my paternal and maternal grandmothers fed large families. Their kitchens were always filled with the aroma of spices. I just wanted to be around them, watching what they did and how they did it. Always asking questions like, “How was this seared?” or “Why was this done in a certain manner?” The love my parents and grandparents had for hosting people shaped me deeply. Our house always had at least 10 guests coming at least thrice a week. We would all cook, host, and throw parties together. Somewhere along the way, I felt hospitality was always a part of me. In India, there’s a saying, “Atithi Devo Bhava,” which translates to “Guest is God,” and we treated them in a similar man
- Did you have another career or job before becoming a chef? How did those experiences influence your decision to pursue cooking?
I studied Commerce and Accounts at Delhi University. During my time in academics, there were many restaurants and cafes around campus that we frequented, but none of them gave us a reason to come back. Hence, I’d always go back to my kitchen and cook for my friends, and they would always push me to do something of my own. Somewhere, that sowed the idea of becoming a chef.
- Did you formally study culinary arts, or are you self-taught? How has your learning journey shaped your approach to cooking?
No, I am a self-taught Chef. But when I decided to pursue cooking, I started running a home kitchen, which became an instant success. I felt I needed a course to hone my skills, which led me to pursue a diploma from the International Institute of Culinary Arts, where I started in the patisserie and baking department. The skills I learned as a pastry chef, along with my teachers’ tips and tricks, I still use in my kitchens. A lot of my food is inspired by the techniques pastry chefs use.
- When did you first step into a restaurant kitchen? What was that experience like, and how did it shape your journey as a chef?
In 2018, I interned with a restaurant in a 5-star hotel, where I got exposed to how professional kitchens are run. There was a very toxic environment where chefs in leadership positions misused their positions. I was out for 6 months, but one key takeaway was to never disrespect my juniors and to focus on culture-building in all my future kitchens.
- What were some of the early challenges or obstacles you faced when you started in the kitchen, and how did you overcome them?
As someone who did not pursue a degree in the culinary field, I found the learning curve steep, but the curious cat inside me just wanted to learn and grow. I kept shifting between departments to broaden my horizons and understand how each one works, which has helped me run multiple kitchens today.
- What keeps you inspired and how has that inspiration driven you throughout your professional journey? Especially during tough times in the kitchen?
What keeps me inspired is everything around me: the flavors I ate as a kid, my surroundings, and the people who have helped shape me into the man I am today. As an Indian, living in this incredibly diverse country fuels my fire like nothing else. Every 50 kilometers, the religion, language, traditions, and food change drastically; it’s the most inspiring place on earth for any chef. You get to explore endless variety, which has driven me through my entire professional journey, especially during the toughest times in the kitchen when exhaustion hits, and tempers flare. Those roots pull me back, reminding me why I cook with passion.
- Can you recall a moment in the kitchen that marked you forever? Maybe it was an interaction with a mentor, a fellow cook, someone you fed, or a situation that challenged you in a way that shaped who you are today?
One moment that marked me forever happened in a bustling kitchen here in India, a country teeming with people from every walk of life. So many come from humble backgrounds; they lack the money or the exposure to travel, to eat global dishes, or even to grasp what fine dining means. Many end up as chefs out of sheer necessity, yet that inner passion still burns bright.
There was this young kitchen steward on my team, just 19 years old. He washed dishes day in and day out, but his eyes were always glued to what the chefs were doing. One day, I pulled him aside for a chat, and my eyes welled up with tears when he shared, “I’ve never eaten anything outside my home food, so it makes me so curious about what you all do here. I want to learn it someday.” That hit me hard; it showed how a lack of education can steal dreams and opportunities from someone so eager.
I took it upon myself to teach him everything, step by step. It’s been four years now, and he’s grown into a confident commis chef in one of my kitchens at Farro, masterfully handling the flatbread section. Moments like these remind me why I lead with heart in hospitality.
- As a chef, how would you describe your philosophy in the kitchen, and how does it guide your approach to cooking and leadership?
My philosophy in the kitchen revolves around storytelling through food, rooted in exploration, growth, and genuine connection. I run five restaurants, each with its own distinct theme and cuisine. Farro, my true passion project, traces the journey of the ancient grain farro, mirroring its roots and my own life path. This lets our menu evolve freely, giving me space to experiment boldly with flavors, techniques, and fusions that surprise and delight.
What guides my leadership is simple: I grow alongside my team. Uplifting chefs, nurturing their talents, and celebrating our shared wins matter most to me. It’s not just about plates; it’s about building people who pour their hearts into every shift, creating hospitality that feels like family.
- Can you share a time when cooking or the camaraderie in the kitchen helped you through a tough period in your life? What made that experience meaningful?
During the brutal 2020 lockdowns, my restaurant in Delhi shut down completely. Our team was gripped by fear; many left for their villages, but one of them stayed back. Together, we started Glaze Factory, my home-run kitchen, and ran delivery operations from my home. One night, a team member opened up about his family’s money troubles. We sent out care packages made at the Glaze Factory. That teamwork changed everything. We turned it into a successful delivery model, helped a few people however we could, and got me through the toughest days. It proved cooking, and our bond keeps us connected, no matter what.
- Reflecting on your career, what achievements or milestones are you most proud of, and what do they mean to you?
Winning the TV show Chef vs Fridge, the Rising Star Chef of the Year 2025 award, and all those honors for Farro feel great; they’re real feathers in my cap. But what truly fills my heart is seeing people from all walks of life grow alongside me. I’ve had team members stick with me for over 6 years now, and I’ve watched them level up both personally and professionally. My mentor drilled this into me: your biggest achievement is the growth of the people who helped get you here. It keeps me grounded every day.
- What aspects of restaurant culture do you love, and what parts do you find frustrating or problematic? Are there any changes you’re actively working toward or things you hope they change in the industry? Share the reasons behind them and how they align with your vision for a better culinary world?
What I love most about restaurant culture is meeting new people, whether as team members or guests; it keeps things exciting and full of energy. Building connections over a shared meal, watching a shy steward turn into a confident Commis as I did with that kid at Farro, that’s the magic.
But it’s frustrating too. No two people think alike, and getting a diverse team on the same page for vision, standards, or even basic hustle during peak hours is the biggest challenge in any kitchen. In Pune, experimental spots like Farro were rare until we came along. We’re changing how the city sees food, from grain journeys to fusion twists. It’s been tough pushing boundaries in a traditional market, but incredibly rewarding as we learn tons and innovate daily.
Long, grueling hours that burn people out, uneven pay for back-of-house heroes, and too much focus on trends over sustainability. I’m actively fixing this: hands-on training for growth, fair wages tied to loyalty, sourcing local Maharashtra grains to cut waste, and work-life balance like no shifts past midnight unless it’s a big event. My vision? A culinary world where hospitality lifts everyone, teams thrive, guests feel the story in every bite, and Pune becomes a food innovation hub. It’s all about people-first progress.
- What are your hopes for the future of the restaurant and food and beverage industry? What changes would you like to see, and how are you contributing to that change?
My big hope for the restaurant and F&B industry, especially here in Pune, is a cultural shift where more people step out of their comfort zones. Folks should embrace trying bold, experimental concepts instead of sticking to the familiar.
We’re making it happen at Farro with new menus and a fresh tasting menu every month. It draws in crowds, sparks curiosity, and gets them hooked on innovative dining.
I’m also mentoring young talent through hands-on workshops and pushing sustainable sourcing to build a stronger, more adventurous food scene. Pune’s ready to lead India’s next wave.
- If there’s anything we didn’t ask or if you feel we’re missing something about your personal and kitchen story, please share it here.
I’m a collector at heart, Pokémon cards, colorful sneakers, all that vibrant stuff fuels my creativity. I love hosting friends at home, grilling up experiments over drinks. I’m an emotional guy; my plates carry those personal stories, from family aromas to tough lessons learned. It’s what makes my food feel alive. Also, I love cats!
Secret Sauce
- What’s the most unexpected ingredient you’ve ever worked with, and how did it change your perspective on cooking?
The most unexpected ingredient that blew my mind was farro, that ancient grain I first encountered years ago. It wasn’t on every Indian menu, but diving into its journey, from rugged hills to versatile flavors, changed everything. I studied its roots obsessively and opened my passion project restaurant, Farro, around it. Now, it reminds me cooking is about stories and adaptability, pushing me to fuse it with local spices in wild ways.
- What’s your “guilty pleasure” meal?
Opening a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos right after work.
- A food trend that you hate and why?
Putting Matcha in anything and everything. It should be treated only as a beverage ingredient!
- What’s the craziest shift you’ve ever worked in the kitchen?
20+ hour shifts during the pre-opening of one of my restaurants, where I was the Executive Pastry Chef.
5. What happened, and how did you manage to get through it?
Management postponed the launch date, and we had only one day to prep and get the restaurant ready. We were there all day and got barely 2 hours to take a nap. The excitement and the adrenaline helped. Also, it was my first pre-opening at a leadership level.
6. What tips would you give to other cooks and chefs to help them navigate their culinary careers and find peace amid the chaos of the kitchen?
Never say no to new things. Always keep learning and upskilling. Be yourself, fuel your cooking through the happy faces of your customers.
- What’s an underrated ingredient and why?
Jackfruit. It has a nice meaty texture and can be used as a meat alternative in almost any scenario.
8. What’s a must-try dish from your kitchen or the one you’re proudest to have prepared?
One dish I’m really proud of at Farro is Nani’s Keema Pao, my ode to my grandmother’s classic mutton mince. I elevate her recipe with fluffy brioche pao, a silky parmesan mousse, and a crunchy poached egg on top. It’s comfort food with a modern twist, every bite brings back her kitchen aromas while surprising guests.
About Your City!
Pune, India
- If Anthony Bourdain or a chef came to your city, what would be the perfect tour itinerary from breakfast to dinner?
- Breakfast: Paranthe Wali Gali, Chandni Chowk, hot stuffed parathas that will win over anyone’s heart.
- Snacks: Gol Gappas at Bengali Sweet Shop, tangy bursts of joy.
- Lunch: Street chaat in Karol Bagh, pure Delhi hugs in every bite.
- Evening: Smoky kebabs at Jama Masjid, its soul-warming magic.
- Dinner: My paternal Grandmother’s spinach-meat curry that can make anyone feel what heaven would be like.
- Dessert: Kulfi Falooda in Karol Bagh at Roshan di Kulfi for bringing out the child in you.
Built Through Resistance
Humans Of The Kitchen
Difficult moments in the kitchen became a turning point toward growth and consistency.
Meagan Stout
Meagan Stout didn’t grow up with much, but food was always at the center.
One of nine kids, in a small kitchen in Houston. They didn’t travel, but they experienced the world, different cultures, and flavors through what they cooked. That’s where it started, not as a career, but as a way to understand the world.
She’s been in kitchens ever since. Years of pressure, long hours, and environments that weren’t always built for her. Spaces where she had to fight to stay, and chose to anyway.
Over time, that shaped how she leads now.
Less about ego, more about people. Less about surviving the kitchen, more about changing it.
In this conversation, Meagan reflects on her journey, the realities behind the industry, and the kind of kitchens she believes should exist.
Share your Journey
- Looking back at your childhood, was there a specific moment or memory that sparked your interest in food or cooking?
Growing up in a food desert and as one of nine children, I found food scarce and sacred. We learned about the world through food from Martin Yan, Jacques Pepin, and PBS’s Best Chefs in the World. My mother dove into Emeril’s world nightly and Julie Child’s world as our travel guide.
On weekends, we had Peckin Duck, roast geese, chicken Kyiv, Vietnamese fare, and Moroccan grub in our tiny kitchen in the inner city of Houston, TX. This taught me empathy, cultural connection, and the importance of cooking as exploration and adventure. As I got older, my parents began to take my teaching for granted. I moved away to college and missed those weekend trips to my childhood home. I craved it while fumbling along my path in engineering until I realized I could do the same in any space to rediscover home.
- Did you have another career or job before becoming a chef? How did those experiences influence your decision to pursue cooking?
I’ve been a cook since I was 16. I haven’t done anything else in 20 years.
- Did you formally study culinary arts, or are you self-taught? How has your learning journey shaped your approach to cooking?
I was formally trained for a short time in culinary school, but I learned the most in high caliber and Michelin starred kitchens. I taught ACF culinary arts later in life, mentoring people who chose that route, but I also teach in kitchens because culinary school isn’t the only path.
- When did you first step into a restaurant kitchen? What was that experience like, and how did it shape your journey as a chef?
My first restaurant kitchen outside food-service production kitchens was the French Room at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas, TX. It made me feel like I met my soulmate. I had to learn more and challenge myself to know my mate. I still have an insatiable appetite for learning and growth.
- What were some of the early challenges or obstacles you faced when you started in the kitchen, and how did you overcome them?
Some people feel kitchens aren’t made for people like me: female, black, and bold. I’ve weathered bullying, racism, sexism, assault, and corporate corruption to cover these things up. It has empowered me to stand steady and open doors for people like me. The world needs to see a broader perspective beyond French and Italian food.
- What keeps you inspired, and how has that inspiration driven you throughout your professional journey? Especially during tough times in the kitchen?
My passion. It’s annoying most of the time. I could have had so many missed moments, holidays, birthdays, and times. More time with my kid and spouse. More time for myself, my health, and other joys. But my passion to cook, learn, and evolve as a chef lingers loud. I think I was just born this way.
- Can you recall a moment in the kitchen that marked you forever? Maybe it was an interaction with a mentor, a fellow cook, someone you fed, or a situation that challenged you in a way that shaped who you are today?
The first time I got a shot to put a dish on the menu. I was a pastry cook at the time. It was a large rose-scented macaron with strawberry. I overcooked the macarons and didn’t let them mature. The first order went out and came back in seconds. Everything was trashed in seconds. I laugh now, and you bet, I will never screw up a macaron again.
- As a chef, how would you describe your philosophy in the kitchen, and how does it guide your approach to cooking and leadership?
I always ask my cooks, “Are you truly in it or just visiting?” When people are dedicated to the craft and not just the job, excellence can be achieved. I’m also huge into empathy and working as a unit. The world needs to be more empathetic for us all to thrive as a unit and society.
- Can you share a time when cooking or the camaraderie in the kitchen helped you through a tough period in your life? What made that experience meaningful?
Working in Michelin kitchens is tough. There was one rough day at a particular Michelin restaurant when the brunch shift almost became my demise. Ticking flying, working with a new station mate, and just not being set up enough. I was considered the lead cook, so the chef was on me like white on rice. So many choice words and phrases were yelled at me. It began to diminish my confidence. We had a second to get water, and my whole team hugged me and told me how badass I am. That was my fuel to keep going.
- Reflecting on your career, what achievements or milestones are you most proud of, and what do they mean to you?
I was named Rising Chef in Dallas in 2018. I was promoted to sous chef at a Michelin-starred restaurant. I was granted a James Beard Fellowship early in my career. The most rewarding is teaching cooks who are hungry and want to grow and learn. It reinvigorates me and allows me to outpour all the knowledge I have to help them succeed.
- What aspects of restaurant culture do you love, and what parts do you find frustrating or problematic? Are there any changes you’re actively working toward or things you hope they change in the industry? Share the reasons behind them and how they align with your vision for a better culinary world.
What I love most about restaurant culture is the sense of craft and shared purpose. A kitchen can feel like a small world built around discipline, creativity, and trust. There is something beautiful about a group of people from different backgrounds moving in rhythm toward the same goal, feeding others. Restaurants are also one of the few places where culture, memory, and identity show up on a plate. I love the constant learning, the humility ingredients demand, and the way food can connect people who might otherwise never meet.
At the same time, parts of the industry can be deeply frustrating. The culture often glorifies burnout, long hours, and unhealthy work environments. Too many kitchens still tolerate toxic leadership, inequity, and the idea that suffering is the price of excellence. As someone who values mentorship and empathy, I want kitchens to remain places of high standards without sacrificing humanity. I believe great food does not require broken people to produce it.
The changes I hope to see, and actively try to model, center around respect, sustainability, and curiosity. That means building kitchens where younger cooks are taught rather than humiliated, where diverse voices and culinary traditions are valued, and where technique is paired with care for the people doing the work. My vision for a better culinary world is one where craft and compassion exist side by side, where the pursuit of excellence also honors the well-being of the people who make it possible.
- What are your hopes for the future of the restaurant and food and beverage industry? What changes would you like to see, and how are you contributing to that change?
I hope the glorification of ultra-fine dining is limited. The state of affairs without the US is tough right now. The glorify elitism is troubling, as most of the country struggles. Also, I hope there is less gatekeeping of who sits at the top of the industry. It’s very much who-knows-who, but not necessarily the people working in the background.
Secret Sauce
- What’s the most unexpected ingredient you’ve ever worked with, and how did it change your perspective on cooking?
Bottarga. It’s cured fish roe. It opened up the world of traditional preservation techniques like curing, drying, and fermenting.
- What’s your “guilty pleasure” meal?
Smoked Chicken Wings.
- A food trend that you hate and why?
Trends exist for a reason. I don’t hate any of them if people love them.
- What’s the craziest shift you’ve ever worked in the kitchen?
Any mother’s day brunch.
5. What happened, and how did you manage to get through it?
Over caffeinated, pumped up my team, and didn’t stop flipping eggs until the doors closed.
- What tips would you give to other cooks and chefs to help them navigate their culinary careers and find peace amid the chaos of the kitchen?
Get a “glam team” that includes a therapist, a primary care physician, a nutritionist, and a group of grounded people who uplift you. Find those first before thinking about buddies.
- What’s an underrated ingredient and why?
Nigella seeds.
8. What’s a must-try dish from your kitchen or the one you’re proudest to have prepared?
Anything I make with pork shoulder.
About Your City!
Arlington, TX
- If Anthony Bourdain or a chef came to your city, what would be the perfect tour itinerary from breakfast to dinner?
In the DFW Starship bagels while you wait in line at Goldee’s BBQ IN Kennedelle. The Modern Museum of Art in Fort Worth. Dinner at Radici in Grand Prairie, a nightcap at Midnight Rambler at the Houle Hotel. Visit glow on the Dark Park in Farmers Branch with a little one.
PETER SMIT
Humans Of The Kitchen
Interview by Marla Tomorug
Explore more of her work on Instagram @marlatomorug
Photo credits to: Peter Smit, Rachel Tan, Tan Lu San and Dirty Supper.
THE BEGINNINGS
I’m originally from Toowoomba, in Queensland, Australia. It’s a small country town—there’s really nothing there. I’m currently living in Singapore and have been here the past 7 years.
My intro into cooking wasn’t an expected one. My first intentional experience with cooking was to impress a girl. I was a 17 year old trying to get laid (with my then partner). I never cared about cooking—couldn’t care less about it, and food was just a means to stay alive. If you had asked me when I was 17, if I wanted to be a chef, I would have told you you’re an idiot.
I ended up cooking for a day and weirdly, I actually liked it. And then the next week I quit my job and started in a local fish and chip shop.
It’s actually taken me a long time to admit that I started in a fish and chip shop. I thought it was a little bit embarrassing — I thought people would say, “You didn’t start from where you’re supposed to start.” Looking back now, the shop taught me all the fundamentals of cooking. We made everything fresh. It wasn’t just your standard beachside chippy, where everything is brought in frozen. Everything was made daily.
After about 6 months of working in the fish and chip shop, I began an apprenticeship at what was probably the best restaurant in my town. It wasn’t anything fancy, a pub occupied 1 half and there was a bistro-style eatery in the other, which was a more upscale version of the pub. The chef was from Brisbane and he had the old school-style chef approach—some might say that of an asshole. While I still talk to him to this day, and still have a lot of respect for him, within my first two weeks, he told me I should just find another career because I’ll never be a chef. It’s a very different mentality and it’s a very different world to what we live in now — you could never say that now. But back then, for me, that worked as a motivator. I worked for him for a few years and then he helped me get into a really good restaurant in Brisbane, which changed my mentality.
I’ve been really lucky to have worked and experienced the places that I have. I’ve also been lucky enough to work with some amazing chefs that have opened my eyes to what it means to be a chef. In 2008, I helped open a luxury lodge on Kangaroo Island in South Australia. I got the job there by pure luck—just a chance encounter with someone who, a month later, called me and asked if I wanted to come down.
The day before I was to fly down from Brisbane, I fractured both of my ankles—not the best timing. Something inside me told me that I still needed to go, and just make it work. The next day, I forced myself to walk on my tip toes, caught a couple flights and arrived at the lodge. I began working with a chef named Tim Bourke. He was ex-Ledbury in London back in the day and, again, had that old-school mentality. We opened a 21-room luxury lodge with just a small team of three. Seven days a week, we served breakfast, lunch and dinner, and the guests were not allowed to have the same food twice (except for breakfast). It was mental— I remember working thirty days straight, starting at 4:30am finishing at 11pm.
There was no stewarding, so we did everything and I got my ass kicked everyday. Because Tim was very old-school, things were hard and, while no physical abuse ever happened, Tim’s leadership was mentally very challenging at times. To be honest, it fully broke me—but then something happened. When I felt like I’d broke, I told myself, “Fuck this—I can’t quit,” and I forced myself to be able to keep up with Tim and the Sous chef (I was just a Commis). When I decided this is, it felt like my “ah ha” moment. This was no longer just a job—it was what I knew I wanted to commit my life to. After that, everything started to fall into place. It’s Tim that deserves the credit for me being here now, still a chef. He allowed me to see what can happen if you really love what you do. It’s been a ride.
In Australia, it’s a little bit different where you can do an apprenticeship and you don’t have to go to university. I was terrible at school — I think my final year of school, I was there for 10 days out of the last semester. I moved out of home when I was 16.
So if I’d had to go to school to be a chef, I don’t think it would have worked for me. Luckily, I got to learn on the job.
I came up in a different generation of chefs. The generation now is less rugged—a bit more cookie cutter. I came up in the generation where there was bullying, screaming, swearing and, while I don’t agree that that is good leadership, I personally think it shaped me into who I am and what I’ve decided to do. It’s kind of like a double-edged sword. When I was told I’d never make it as a chef, I told myself, “I’m going to prove him wrong.” I come from a tough love family, so that type of training worked for me.
FINDING IDENTITY
One of the big challenges that I came across in these early stages was trying to find my identity as a chef. I think this is the hardest thing. Honestly, I only found my identity as a chef about 10 years ago, when I was in London—the only place in the world that feels like home to me.
On a recent London trip, I met up with the old GM of the restaurant that I ran there—I haven’t seen him since I left, about 10 years ago. He told me he’d been following my current restaurant, Dirty Supper. And said he can clearly see my identity in the execution and experience. This felt like a milestone to me.
As a young chef the hardest thing to navigate is not having an identity. You’re trying to do a million different things at once, and also trying to please the person that you’re working for and sometimes trying to become a copy of them. But instead of copying someone else, I think we need more chefs with agency—more of them doing their own thing.
And for me, finding my identity was just luck. It was a few moments building up to meeting certain people and seeing certain places and realizing,“Oh, fuck, like this is what I really like.”
Another part of what has helped me on my path is that I don’t like being comfortable or plateauing. It’s easy to find yourself in a situation where you do the same thing over and over again every day. I wish I was the kind of person that enjoyed that, but I’m not. Something kicks in that says, “I’m comfortable now. It’s time to get uncomfortable.”
I believe that all the experiences—good and bad—are beneficial, and they help build up to your thing, whatever that might be.”
THE PROCESS
Nose to tail is being able to use every part of a whole animal, whether it’s the head, the hoofs, the innards, the blood—all of that.
I recently ate one of the best meals that I’ve ever had at Camille restaurant, in London — Camille is proper nose to tail. That place blew my mind. It was super simple. I had tempura cow’s brain and cow’s udder schnitzel, just to name a few great dishes. This is by far my favorite restaurant in the world—I’m so obsessed.
But I think the term nose to tail is really overused, and not used appropriately. You can’t be a nose to tail place and only use a lamb rack, for example, six months of the year—where’s the rest of the lamb?
What we do at Dirty Supper— don’t consider us as nose-to-tail. For us, in Singapore we just do the best that we can, and we do what I call “whole animal butchery”.
We only buy whole animals, but because of certain regulations in Singapore, we aren’t able to get things like the offal or blood. So we break what we can get into different parts—out of a lamb, we get about 20 different cuts.
The reason Dirty Supper, my concept now, is alive is because 1: Someone told me in a random conversation that I can’t do a restaurant the way that I wanted to do it in Singapore and 2: I am stubborn as hell, so if you tell me it’s not possible, I’m going to try and prove you wrong. And then we opened it. And here we are 2 years later and still going.
I also think that butchery is a dying art and it’s a bit of a shame that not everyone knows how to butcher down an animal, because I feel like we should be able to. You shouldn’t just be able to buy a packet of meat and go, “Oh, this comes from here,” and not actually understand like the rest of it. Whole animal butchery is an opportunity to educate people a little more about their food.
Sometimes it’s not so cost-effective, but it’s definitely more fun. It’s so much more interesting to get a whole pig and figure out how to make it work where the goal is to have no waste, but you have all this trim, and you get to figure out how to do something with it.
THE DISCOVERY
My journey into nose-to-tail started in London, with a chef named Tom Adams—the chef who I really learned the most from. I was originally in London because I wanted to work in Michelin restaurants—that was my goal—think tasting menus and fine dining.
But instead, I ended up working in this weird spot and ended up meeting someone, a colleague named Oscar, who took me to a small basement restaurant in Soho. And it blew my mind. It was a 30-seat restaurant that shouldn’t have had 30 seats in it. You walk in the kitchen and you couldn’t fit more than four guys in there. All they had a wood fire grill that had two big smokers. And the food was insanely simple, but I could never stop thinking about that meal.
A few days later, I went to work, went down to Oscar, and resigned. I told him that I didn’t move to London to work in the kind of place where we were, and he said he fully understood. The restaurant we were working at was doing brunch and I knew I didn’t move to London to work in a place like that. I didn’t have a plan of what I wanted to do. I just quit. And told myself, “I’m just going to figure it out.”
When I told him that I was quitting, he said he’d actually resigned as well, but he hadn’t told anyone where he’s going. He had a new opportunity, and while he couldn’t talk about it just yet, he’d asked if I’d be interested in joining him—he just needed to make a call to see if I could go too.
Then, one or two hours later, Oscar found me in the cold room and said, “Okay, I got you a job. Do you want to come?”
I accepted immediately. Didn’t know what position I was taking. Didn’t know the restaurant. Didn’t know what we were cooking.
All he said was, “You’ll like it.”
A few weeks passed and we were sitting down and I said, “Hey man, I need to know—what’s my position? What’s my salary?” We hadn’t talked about any of that prior.
Oscar said, “Okay, I can finally tell you where we’re going—remember that small basement restaurant that I took you to? Pitt Cue? We’re opening a bigger one. And you’re coming as my guy.”
I said, “Okay, cool—so what position am I starting at? Commis?”
“No no—you’re coming in as my Sous.”
And within a month, we were down in Cornwall meeting all the farmers that Tom (the owner) had connections to.
We went to the farm where we reared the pigs, and we met everyone else who worked at the butchery. And from then on, I was hooked—it was like a drug.
The way Tom thinks is amazing, and it took a long time for me to earn his trust enough for him to teach me. I was hardly even on the line when we opened—only Tom’s long-time, trusted crew was allowed, because they knew exactly how he wanted things done. The prep for that place was nuts—simple food is often the hardest, because you can’t hide behind the bullshit. Everyday everyone was in the shit. During lunch service, I would do the prep for the rest of the team while they did service. I felt like a bit of a prep monkey somedays, but after about a month or so of this, Tom came out, saw I had finished everyone’s prep, and was surprised. He said, “Tomorrow, you’re in the butchery with me, and on the pass for service. You’re not doing their prep anymore.” From then on, I continued to build his trust and he began to show me his ways. I ran with it. And every day I was with him, learning. Then, within about 3 months of opening, I was promoted to Head Chef.
That first meal in the Pitt Cue basement restaurant had sparked something in me. And it wasn’t just the food—I think it was a mix of everything. It was this little basement, where we were so crammed we were shoulder to shoulder. If someone wanted to go to the bathroom, we had to get up and get out of everyone’s way. And then the food came out and I just remember it was one of the best steaks I’d ever eaten. But it was just steak on a wooden board with some sauce and a garnish, and then that was it. I thought to myself, “How is this so fucking good?”
When you’re a young chef, you often try to add things to make something better. This was as stripped back and raw as it could possibly be. There was nothing to hide behind.
INSPIRATION IN THE SHIT
I never wanted to leave the UK—it’s the only place that felt and still feels like home. I wanted to stay, but for that, I needed to get sponsored. I could have had sponsorship through employment at Pitt Cue, but I was worried about being locked into Pitt Cue’s very specific style—and was worried that if I stayed there, I would plateau. I loved Pitt Cue—it was my home and made me who I am now. But I was ready to try new things.
In another conversation with Oscar, I told him I needed to push myself, and that I needed to be sponsored. He had previously worked for Simon Rogan in London, and knew that they needed a Head chef at one of their restaurants in the Lake District. He connected me to them, I cooked for Simon and his Operations Manager, and I got the job. That was the start of my role as Head Chef working for Simon Rogan at Rogan and Co.
I put myself in the shit again. Rogan and Co. was far from the same concept as Pitt Cue, and it was also more “restaurant-y”. Simon had a massive farm a few miles up the road from Cartmel (where the restaurant is) and, because of that, I was able to play with ingredients a bit more. Because of the farm, the restaurant had more seasonality, and I could work with fresh vegetables and actually pick what I wanted to use.
I had personal relationships with all the farmers that I was purchasing our animals from and, in my breaks between service, would go to our farm and pick whatever we needed for dinner service and lunch service the next day. The guys at the farm would show me what was about to be in season and what needed to be used—we adjusted our menu all the time to suit what was available. I also knew a cheese maker down the road who reared sheep. We would buy whole baby lambs and I’d butcher them down. It wasn’t nose-to-tail like we had been doing at Pitt Cue, but we were still doing a lot of whole-animal butchery.
In my ideal world, I would have a farm attached to my restaurant, where I could pick all the fresh ingredients, and would also be able to buy whole animals and write a new menu every day, with everything we have available.
WHEN IT’S GONE, IT’S GONE
At Dirty Supper, our menus are designed to run out. We don’t have a menu that’s designed to feed 100 people.
We have one, more consistent, menu which is printed and kind of designed to not run out. But if we run out, we run out. I’m more than happy to say, “No, I don’t have it,” instead of just buying extra and keeping it there just in case.
Then we have our chalkboard menu, which is bigger than our printed menu—it can have up to 60 items at times.
Examples of what would be on our chalkboard menu are the different cuts we get from the pig heads. We order four pig heads a week for our pig head nuggets that are on the printed menu. When they come in, we cut off the snouts and the ears, and make separate dishes out of those. We braise the snouts overnight in pig head stock (the rendered fat and juices that come from roasting the whole heads overnight) and dried shiitake. We braise the ears, and then we either press them together to make a pig ear terrine, or we do a crumbed pig ear schnitzel. We only get four snouts a week, so they go on the chalkboard menu. Once they’re gone, they’re gone and we won’t have them again until the next week.
Because of the unique cuts we get from the animals we purchase, we can have upward of 100 unique dishes every night.
UNEXPECTED FUN
I think, as soon as the fun is out of it, then there’s no point. People come out for dinner to have fun. So if you’re the one creating, and you’re not having fun with it anymore, then how are the people coming to your restaurant going to have fun?
Dirty Supper is very much an extension of me. So I want people to come in, I want them to feel like they’re at my house, and it’s relaxed. We’re not a fancy restaurant, we don’t have white table cloths, we use old plastic chairs, and we share the space with the noodle shop in the morning. I want it to be a place you can just walk into and it’s unexpectedly fun.
I think the beauty about Dirty Supper is that when you walk up to it, it looks terrible. Like it looks old and run down as shit. And then you sit down and you hear the music, which is a little bit more upbeat—it’s more hip hop and old school vibes. My favorite part is when you see people nodding their head to the music or moving to the beat.
And then when they get the menu, then they’re like, “Okay, this looks interesting.” And then when they get the food, they’re like, “Oh, fuck, this is like very interesting.”
I like the space to be a unique kind of fun that almost builds throughout the experience.
DESIGNING THE SPACE
I never wanted to open my own restaurant. And it took me a long time to want to do that. When I finally did get the opportunity to open something, I wanted it to reflect my identity and taste, because if I’m there for 14 to 16 hours a day for seven days a week, I have to enjoy being there. I don’t want to come into a place where it doesn’t feel comfortable. So I always label it as a very selfish space. And maybe that’s the wrong way to look at it, but I’m there all day, every day. So even the music—it’s what I want to listen to during service.
When I was opening the place, I was looking at plateware and everything was so boring and generic, I ended up making all my own plates. And it wasn’t even to make a point of trying to stand out, it was just to have something more fun. Our plates are very bright colored—they’re all bright blues and purples and pinks and greens. They aren’t plates that you’d normally see in a restaurant, because everyone typically wants plateware to be a little bit more neutral so that their food pops. But for me, I feel like our food pops more with these crazy colors. Some of our plates are starting to chip, but I don’t want to replace them because it adds to their uniqueness.
My partner at the time had a ceramics business and her studio was in our house. I’d just sit in the corner on a wheel with a beer and my headphones in and I’d make all of the plates. None of our plates are symmetrical and everything is different.
It takes two weeks to make one plate. You have to fire them twice and, in the process, you might get a hairline crack. When that happened, I was told I should throw them out and start again. But I thought, “No, I can use this.” So I started breaking them and seeing how they broke—the ones that broke nicely are now our bread plates for the restaurant.
The steak knives are custom as well. I was going around Singapore and trying to find something different. Everyone just had the same generic crap. So I found a knife maker in Bali, gave him a design and had my steak knives handmade in Bali.
A MINDSET SHIFT
My hope for the food and restaurant industry is focused more on the customer than the structure of the industry itself.
A big challenge is that people don’t really understand what we’re trying to do with whole animal butchery. I’ve actually been surprised that we haven’t had more complaints about things running out, because Singapore as a culture, is used to being able to have whatever you want, whenever you want. You can get asparagus 365 days of the year, because we don’t operate on seasons and everything is imported. People don’t really like being told that you’ve run out of something.
And yet another challenge is people labeling what we do as weird. We serve things like duck head and duck feet, which is normal at a Chinese restaurant in Singapore and actually the reason why things like our duck head skewers are on the menu now—I’ve had it at a Chinese restaurant and I loved it. But people seem to see it differently because they’re coming into a Western-style restaurant with a white boy cooking their food. But it’s not that weird. We’re doing what other people do. It’s just in a different format.
I think our biggest challenge is cost, because it’s so expensive to do what we do. On paper, it doesn’t make sense to do it—for example, it’s actually cheaper for me to buy cuts rather than a whole animal.
I hope that people are able to become more educated with what they are purchasing. I’d love for the general public to understand how the hospitality industry works, and how prices are created. People always complain about the prices of dishes, but it’s not just about the food that they get on the plate. If you’re going out to eat, you’re paying for the experience and the work behind the food. One recent comment we had was that we are serving “not fancy cuts for fancy prices,” because we serve duck heads for $8 and people see that as expensive, but it’s the work that goes into that experience that they are also paying for.
This is one of the only industries where people expect things for free. For example, someone eats half of a meal and then all of a sudden says, “Oh, I don’t like it,” and expects the cost off of their bill. And that’s a cost for the restaurant. Or, for example, if you go into a restaurant and request a lemon in your water, it might seem like a small thing. And if you’re charged a dollar for that slice of lemon, you might be upset, because it is just a slice of lemon. But if a hundred people a day want that lemon, that’s a hundred dollars. If you do that over the whole month, it all adds up. We have to buy those ingredients—how can you get it for free if I need to buy it? You wouldn’t expect that from a car dealership, or a clothing store, so why from a restaurant?
DIRTY SIPS
We have a cocktail bar called Dirty Sips. It’s my belief that if you want to have a cocktail with dinner, it needs to make sense. We don’t use sugar syrup and we don’t use a lot of citrus. We use things like the pickle or ferment brines from the kitchen.
We have a few drinks on the menu, which are pretty unique.
One of them is a black garlic sour—so black garlic and whiskey sour. Garlic in a cocktail doesn’t sound good whatsoever, but it’s a drink that evolves as you sip it. So the first sip you have, you don’t really get the garlic. You get more sweetness from the honey. You get the sour. You get a little bit of a note of black garlic, and you think, “I know this flavor, but I don’t know quite what it is.” And then as you drink it, the garlic becomes a little bit more prominent.
We have a raw prawn dish on the menu. The best pairing drink for that dish is a pickled lemon martini. A martini is boozy as fuck and prawns are really delicate. So on paper, it doesn’t work. But when you have it together, they complement each other.
I realized we could purposely under season or leave out a component in the food, but include the component in the cocktail pairing. So when you had the drink and the food together, everything was balanced. It’s been fun to play with that element.
The first time I hit that “aha” moment around this concept was with a fish dish. We had a really slow-grilled fish with a fennel puree, and it needed salinity and a burst of citrus. I kept it really boring and neutral in the food. But in the cocktail, we did a burnt kombu and pickled something to balance what was missing in the dish.
When we delivered the food to the table, we would tell the guests to take a bite of the food first and then have a sip of the cocktail. And then the next bite, take a sip of the cocktail and then have a bite of the food. And then you could see like their brains changing. When they would have the first bite, they’d say, “Oh, like something’s missing.” And then they’d sip the cocktail and they’d say, “Okay, this is kind of is making sense.” And then when they went the opposite way, then they’d think, “Oh, shit—this really works!”
I think the hardest thing now is the balancing act because obviously not everyone that comes into the cocktail bar has food. So it needs to be a balancing act of making sure it still makes sense to have it by itself without having food.
I never R&D anything. I just think and go. I have a very, very good bartender that puts up with my crazy ideas and he takes what I’m thinking and he makes it something good. He worked in hotel bars for so long, where the environment lacked creative freedom—it took six months to change one drink. Whereas when I say I want to change something, I say, “Let’s change it tomorrow.”
And I’ve been very lucky with my whole team—they’re all ex-Michelin and ex-fine dining, and they sought out this experience because they were bored and they wanted to learn. It’s my goal to teach them everything I can teach them. I’m very lucky to have them.
I’m grateful that I have these amazing people as the foundation of Dirty Supper, and am lucky they are open to the “let’s like run with this crazy idea and let’s have it on as soon as we can” mindset.
I’m like the madman in the background saying, “I want to put this with this.” And they might think it’s like the dumbest idea, but they never say no. They might give me the look, but they never say no.
KING OF THE FLAVOR COMBOS
I’ve been asked the inspiration question a lot, and I honestly don’t have a good answer.
Inspiration for me is so random. I’ll be walking down the street and I’ll be thinking about something and then think, “Oh, fuck, this sounds really fun.” And then we just implement it.
I love the weird combos. My brain is just not normal—it bounces everywhere. I’ll get hyper-focused on one ingredient for some reason, out of no reason at all. And then I’ll just think, “Okay, we can do this, this and this.” For example, one of our desserts is a yellow bell pepper parfait. It makes no sense whatsoever on paper, and kind of sounds terrible. I don’t even like yellow bell pepper—it’s not a flavor that I’m going to seek out. But for some reason, I just had this idea that it would be fun and it would work. And then we just played and now we’ve had it as a dessert for the last year and people love it. And we’ve just made a cocktail out of the byproducts of the same flavors, but it tastes different.
Another interesting combo is our baked rice pudding. We make the rice pudding with whey, so it’s a little bit more creamy and a little bit more sour. It’s not sweet. Then we make a black banana ice cream with bananas that we cook for a month at 60 degrees. And we add parsley with that. We finish it with a dehydrated parsley powder—again, on paper, it doesn’t make sense.
We also do this chicken fat financier. Financier is usually a cake made with brown butter. When I explain this to the guests, I tell them, “It’s like I got stoned in a park, got the munchies and put everything that I thought was fun on a plate.”
Because none of it makes sense. We bake the cake, then we dry the cake and it’s more like a biscuit. It has lemon zest creme pat, pickled purple grapes, a passion fruit skin jam (where we take the white part of the passion fruit skin and blend it with like the bottom third of coriander stalk), and then we add in fried chicken skin. And we finish it with coriander. The coriander is the binding agent of the whole dessert, which it shouldn’t be, because it sounds really messed up and weird.
When we are first creating a new dish, I have all my chefs try a dish before me. I would rather get everyone else’s input before I try it. And then if everyone says the same thing, like, “Oh, it’s salty,” or, “It’s too sour,” or something, then I’ll try it. And I’ll figure out how to fix it.
With the chicken fat financier, we agreed something was missing.
I asked my chef to try coriander, and he looked at me like I was an idiot. And that was it. That was the missing piece. It’s been on the menu now for a long, long time.
We have something we call Dirty Scoops, which is ice cream on our dessert menu.
We’ll make three pints of one flavor, and once it’s done, we’ll never repeat it.
And the only rule is it cannot be a normal flavor—so it can’t be vanilla, chocolate, pistachio, or anything else like that. It has to be something that you would never normally be able to find.
And this just stemmed out of me trying to see how fucking weird I can get with ice cream. It actually sells well and people like it. And from there, we can turn those flavors into another dessert on the menu.
We also recently made a dish with roasted cabbage wrapped in crépinette, which is the lining of a pig stomach, and then baked it really hot over the fire and served it with whipped roe—that was really tasty.
A DIRTY LEGACY
I hope that everyone who comes to work with me is able to take it further than I have.
They’ve had a lot of different experiences compared to me and know so many different things compared to me, so I want them to be able to take this space and just make it better. That’s it. Like, just do better than what I can do.
And I think that everyone can, whether you’re confident or not, but I think that everyone has Dirty Supper is built on my experiences from the last 23 years. So someone can take that and combine it with their experience and then make it even better than has been. That’s the only thing I want. I just want them to be better than I am and take it to the next level.
WHAT A WASTE
The waste in the industry is definitely something that I wish was different. There is so much waste. In this industry, there is so much focus on portions and pieces being the perfect size, and everything typically has to be exactly the same. If I eat at a restaurant like that, I don’t enjoy it. Because I can see they aren’t using the rest of it—the whole ingredient. A carrot, for example — if you’re cutting a carrot to a certain size for one dish, but then there’s no carrot anywhere else on the menu, what are you doing with the rest of it?
Working with farms for the last few years, everywhere except for Singapore, you can see how hard people are working to grow and provide that produce. I don’t think everything has to look perfect—no one gives a shit. Honestly, if a carrot is bent in a different way, no one fucking cares, it still tastes the same. As long as it tastes like it’s supposed to taste like, it’s fine.
The plastic used in kitchens is another thing that bothers me. Commercial kitchens use a lot of plastic, and we are no exception. We store a lot of stuff in vac-packs to store them more efficiently, because our kitchen is so small and we don’t have a cool room. I don’t know if the restaurant industry will ever get to the point of not using plastic—it would be nice if you could, but I just think the industry is too reliant on it.
Even if there were viable alternatives, they tend to be more expensive, and we run on such tight margins. When ingredients or supplies are more expensive, you have to pass that cost onto the customer and the customer doesn’t like it, so the customer stops coming.
KEEPING IT INTERESTING
I kind of went through a stage recently where I was not as inspired because the dishes started feeling monotonous—I felt like I was plateauing, essentially.
Everything that we had been making, I just started hating. But I have a good outlet, because when I get to that degree of being uninspired with the food, I can go into the bar and then I can start playing with the drinks and coming up with new things there. I can kind of bounce in between.
In those moments, I can feel myself getting very antsy. Going to the market and buying the same produce every day—almost on autopilot—it becomes a bit draining. So when I get to that point, I make myself buy something odd, or make myself try to do some obscure preparation and just figure it out.
One thing I’ve learned about myself is that I can usually fix a dish. If you give me a weird flavor combination, then I can go, okay, I can make that work. I’d say 95% of the time, my wild ideas work, and then the other 5% of the time—we don’t talk about those.
There was one time we were making a pork liver sausage—I think it was for our first year anniversary. I was trying to rush it and being a fucking idiot, and I forgot something in it. So I did the entire process, and got to the end and realized I made a mistake.
One of my chefs said, “Is this one of the 5% that we don’t talk about?”
Determined to salvage it, I responded, “No, I’m going to make it work.”
We ended up doing a pork liver pate, instead of a sausage. So it didn’t become one of the 5% that day.
I’ve had a lot of fuck ups—a whole lot. But even if something is wrong, usually, there’s a way that you can fix it. That’s why I say it’s only 5% that don’t work out, but of course, it’s really more.
LOOKING AHEAD
In terms of aspirations for the future, it would be great to collaborate with Tom Adams from Pitt Cue—I would love to create something now with the people who have shaped me. That would be really epic.
And my dream is to bring Dirty Supper to London and have everything in one spot—my bar, my supper club, my restaurant and a little mini butchery. A place where you can see everything. You can see the animals hanging and can pick your steak—that’s where I want the next evolution to go.
The Difference Between Cooking and Leading
Humans Of The Kitchen
Earning the title was easy, understanding how to lead took time and intention.
Doug Settle
Doug Settle cooks with fire, but the real shift came from what he left behind.
After years in traditional kitchens, he stepped outside. Less walls, more elements. Through Hearth & Harvest in San Diego, his cooking leans into the basics: flame, product, people. Meals meant to be shared, not staged.
His path has been shaped by people more than plates. Mentors who pushed him, teams that felt like family, farmers and producers who changed the way he sees food. Somewhere along the way, he realized cooking isn’t just about control or technique. It’s about taking care of others without losing yourself in the process.
In this conversation, Doug talks about stepping away from the kitchen he knew, and the kind of industry he still believes in.
Share your Journey
- Looking back at your childhood, was there a specific moment or memory that sparked your interest in food or cooking?
I’ve only ever cooked as a career, and honestly, for the better part of the first decade, I hated it. I finally stumbled into a kitchen with a chef who cared a lot about the people and the food. That’s when I realized I could do something with the skills I’d been attaining. I thought I was good at this and that, in the right environments, I could help people, support sustainable agriculture, and make people really happy. I don’t think he knows it, but that one chef changed my life path, just because he cared. That’s what I’ve been striving to be ever since.
- Did you have another career or job before becoming a chef? How did those experiences influence your decision to pursue cooking?
I’ve only ever cooked as a career, and honestly, for the better part of the first decade, I hated it. I finally stumbled into a kitchen with a chef who cared a lot about the people and the food. That’s when I realized I could do something with the skills I’d been attaining. I thought I was good at this and that, in the right environments, I could help people, support sustainable agriculture, and make people really happy. I don’t think he knows it, but that one chef changed my life path, just because he cared. That’s what I’ve been striving to be ever since.
- Did you formally study culinary arts, or are you self-taught? How has your learning journey shaped your approach to cooking?
I had been cooking for about 6-7 years by the time I went to culinary school. One restaurant in particular was breaking volume records nationally for the brand in our small East TN town. I didn’t love working there, but boy, did it make me fast! By the time I enrolled in school, I already had a good baseline of real-world industry understanding and solid speed. I was able to absorb more nuance and gain more attention from my chefs by not having to focus on the baby steps as much. All in all, school helped me excel and fall deeper in love with food, but only because I was in a great position to receive.
- When did you first step into a restaurant kitchen? What was that experience like, and how did it shape your journey as a chef?
My first job was at a local fast food dig. There are only a couple of dozen locations. The food’s nothing crazy, just burgers and hot dogs, but they held insanely high standards of cleanliness and organization. We’re talking cleaning the baseboards with a toothbrush and bleaching the dumpsters, weekly. I carried this with me my entire career as a standard. No matter what the standard was around me, I kept my stations to that high watermark, and it didn’t go unnoticed, allowing me to stand out among my peers.
- What were some of the early challenges or obstacles you faced when you started in the kitchen, and how did you overcome them?
I wouldn’t say I’ve faced any new challenges in our industry. We’ve all struggled through various versions of the same issues. Starting out as a big fish in a small pond, only to move and realize the pond is much larger than you could have imagined. Rampant substance abuse is a cure-all for the mental and physical health issues that come along with our work at times. Bootstrapping a start-up and giving it everything you have in you. There’s nothing new under the sun, and sometimes it’s nice to know we’re all plagued with the same battles because if somebody’s making it happen, then we all can.
- What keeps you inspired and how has that inspiration driven you throughout your professional journey? Especially during tough times in the kitchen?
Newness. New ingredients are an obvious one, right? But taking that further, a new way of growing, raising, or harvesting an ingredient that improves its quality and environmental impact. Maybe it’s a new cook who becomes a new student, and I get to pass along more knowledge. A new teacher or mentor, no matter how long you’ve been cooking, is out there. For me, it’s having the opportunity to cook in new places and discovering new bioregional food or cultures. Taking that a step further, new stories about food memories from new people. There are obviously certain staples I love to cook again and again, but when someone asks me what my favorite thing to cook is, I always say something new.
- Can you recall a moment in the kitchen that marked you forever? Maybe it was an interaction with a mentor, a fellow cook, someone you fed, or a situation that challenged you in a way that shaped who you are today?
I had recently finished culinary school and been promoted to sous chef at the restaurant where I had been working. The original chef I worked for had left but just returned. I was so eager to impress my reinstated mentor as I ran the pass that night. Long story short, the night didn’t go as I had envisioned. Man, did he tear me up, and man, did I deserve it! I was essentially told, in no uncertain terms, that I was being a shit leader. He was right. Since that day, I’ve made it my mission to study leadership with the same passion I bring to studying food. Just as cooking is a skill that takes constant honing, being a leader is a journey that requires consistent effort.
- As a chef, how would you describe your philosophy in the kitchen, and how does it guide your approach to cooking and leadership?
Fire. I let the fire drive my every move. You can’t control it, but you can definitely harness its power. I obviously cook over fire as a standard, but there’s more to it than that. Fire is chaotic, but it is also methodical. Steadily inching forward towards its goal. Relentless on its path, influencing everything it encounters just by being near it. Being a chef and a leader is similar. The staff looks to your steadfastness every day. If you’re burning wildly and rampantly, exhausting your fuel too quickly, and burning out, or if your fire is dwindling and dying, people notice and look to you as the example. I try to harness the fire, burning bright but strong, steady, and controlled. They see that as well, and my fire might light theirs.
- Can you share a time when cooking or the camaraderie in the kitchen helped you through a tough period in your life? What made that experience meaningful?
During the COVID shutdowns, we were all struggling. Like most of us, I had spent more time out of the kitchen than I ever had since starting this journey. I was just coming to terms with the idea that I’m not just a chef, but I’m a person first. At the time, I was having a bit of an identity crisis, not being able to practice what I thought made me, me. The only thing that I knew how to do. I found a job at a restaurant that was just reopening, one I loved eating at. When I got in, the job was crazy demanding and very difficult. But the team that was there was like nothing I had ever seen. It was like being on a professional sports team; everyone wanted to win, but not at the expense of leaving anyone behind. We pushed each other hard, and the head chef pushed us even harder, and we all rallied around the energy he gave off. I didn’t end up working there for too long, as another shutdown rolled through, and I kept trying to work instead of collecting unemployment. But I still have very supportive relationships with the chefs I worked with there.
- Reflecting on your career, what achievements or milestones are you most proud of, and what do they mean to you?
This may be a bit of a shocking response, as most of the chefs here still work in kitchens. But stepping out of traditional kitchens, taking a job on a farm, and segueing into starting my own business with my fiancé has to be my proudest moment. I miss the kitchen, but I get to consult with some restaurants, and now I get to cook over fire outside with my person every day. Cooking and sourcing exactly how we want to, nobody telling us how to run the business or what to serve. We travel and cook in new places. We make deep, meaningful memories for people in an approachable and relatively affordable way. Nothing pretentious, just good food, good stories, and good people around a fire.
- What aspects of restaurant culture do you love, and what parts do you find frustrating or problematic? Are there any changes you’re actively working toward or things you hope they change in the industry? Share the reasons behind them and how they align with your vision for a better culinary world?
I love the camaraderie. The friendships that form out of struggling together day after day, month after month, with the same people. I keep tabs on people I worked with years ago because of the bond we built spending so much time together. There are a lot of things to be frustrated about, abusive leadership is an obvious one that’s top of my mind right now with everything going on at Noma. A big one for me is sustainability. I know that’s a big buzzword in the industry right now, but it’s a lifestyle for me, for our company, and our employees. It’s how we live our day-to-day lives, where we choose to spend our money. Not just a fad. It’s part of why I decided to be a chef and why we started the company that we did. We buy local not because it’s cool, but because it supports someone else out here just trying to live their dream like we are. I get to help someone I know and oftentimes form relationships with, rather than some huge company. I also know exactly what their farming, ranching, or fishing practices are like, not to mention cutting down on carbon footprint by not having ingredients trucked in from god knows where. Plus, this food usually tastes the best and is the best for you.
- What are your hopes for the future of the restaurant and food and beverage industry? What changes would you like to see, and how are you contributing to that change?
I’d love to see us all move toward a more sustainable, bioregional approach. I do realize that’s not always possible for everyone everywhere. Some places are food deserts in terms of what can be produced there. But in the United States, we can do so much better overall. The era of bringing in the best ingredients from all over the world, with Europe predominantly glorified, is over. Sure, white truffles are incredible in the Piedmont region in fall, and branzini brought in right off the Mediterranean is beautiful, and syrah from the Rhone Valley is lovely. But what makes your bioregion unique? One hundred years from now, when the world thinks of where you’re from, will they think, wow! They brought in the best cheeses from Italy! Or will they think of how a particular viticulturist found the specific non-noble grape that grows best in the Temecula Valley, or how that particular cheese is best made in the hills of Vermont?
Secret Sauce
- What’s the most unexpected ingredient you’ve ever worked with, and how did it change your perspective on cooking?
The most unique ingredient I’ve ever come across is fire. I know, I know, I’ve played up the fire thing enough. But I really think that if you learn to use and trust open flames enough, they can truly be the best ingredient in any dish. The right amount of smoke, more or less char, sometimes even a little burnt! It can take something incredibly simple and add so many layers of complexity.
- What’s your “guilty pleasure” meal?
California burrito. Everytime. I don’t eat them as much as I did when I was a line cook, staying out until 2 am. But they’re nostalgic about cutting my teeth in the Gaslamp of San Diego years ago. You can’t find a burrito like this anywhere else in the world.
- A food trend that you hate and why?
Chef’s Blend microgreens. If the ingredient doesn’t intentionally add something to the dish, get it out of there. Micros for the sake of something pretty on a dish, without a second thought, drive me nuts.
- What’s the craziest shift you’ve ever worked in the kitchen?
It was New Year’s Eve in that same kitchen where my mentor chewed me out for not acting like a leader. It wasn’t too long after that, actually. We had way overbooked for whatever reason and were obviously running a special prefix menu, so everything was new to the line cooks. I was on expo and had never seen so many tickets in my life. The rail was full, the ticket chain was on the ground, and they just kept coming. The whole restaurant was backed up, the hosts were being yelled at, and apparently, it was up to me to dig us out. Crazy night.
5. What happened, and how did you manage to get through it?
The team was one of the strongest I’ve ever worked with, so even though I wasn’t the best expo yet, that group of gnarly pirates dug deep, and we all pulled it out. We’ve all been there.
6. What tips would you give to other cooks and chefs to help them navigate their culinary careers and find peace amid the chaos of the kitchen?
Exercise your body. You’ll find health through that journey. Not just physically being stronger, but you’ll start focusing on your diet, your joints, longevity, etc. I found that physical exercise also clears the clutter and stress from the mind. Exercise before your shifts, kids.
7. What’s an underrated ingredient and why?
Cabbage is one of the most underrated ingredients to me. It’s really cheap and so versatile to cook with. Sear or roast wedges of it, slice and caramelize it, braise it. Cabbage can be very flavorful and surprisingly sweet when treated right!
8. What’s a must-try dish from your kitchen or the one you’re proudest to have prepared?
Finding a must-have dish of ours because we rarely cook the same menu items. We recycle ingredients, sauces, and experiences, but it’s not often that an entire dish will be repeated. I’d say one that comes up pretty often is our grilled-and-chilled oyster table.
This is something we pull out for happy hour, passed/stationed apps. We basically have some chefs pulling oysters fresh off the grill with a pickled compound butter and garnishing the chilled ones with a seasonal mignonette right in front of guests. They land on a large table filled with foliage, herbs, leaves, flowers, etc from whatever venue we’re at, nestled between the foliage to hold them up. It creates a fun, very organic-looking way to serve the oysters.
About Your City!
San Diego, CA
- If Anthony Bourdain or a chef came to your city, what would be the perfect tour itinerary from breakfast to dinner?
San Diego definitely has a lot to experience, and it’s pretty spread out. I’m partial to North County these days, but I’ll try to get you across the whole city.
I’d start with a pour-over coffee at Steady State in Carlsbad, there’s a few places that serve their coffee, but you can’t beat getting it straight from the source. Their pour-overs are life-changing. For breakfast, walk 10 yards down the street and hit Wildland. They have some great bread baked in-house. It’s run by a multi-Michelin-starred group, but this concept is no fuss, casual all-day food.
Next, we’re going to head south to North Park for lunch. There’s nobody doing what the boss at Bica is doing. It’s an awesome little cafe where you can get that second coffee, but you’ll want to indulge in anything from the kitchen. They focus on tartines, fish plates, and sandwiches using sustainable catches such as sardines and anchovies. Really unbelievable.
Dinner is a hard choice. There are several awesome chefs doing incredible work around. You could head back up to Oceanside for Pizza at Allmine, or near Balboa and hit Hillcrest for Cellar Hand. Callie in the East Village is always a win! But if you had to choose one, I’d say you’d want to grab sushi in Oceanside from Wrench and Rodent. Davin has been a San Diego legend and a leader in sustainability for the better part of two decades, and it’d be a shame to miss his passion.
A Kitchen of Resistance
Humans Of The Kitchen
Grew up in a taquería in Tabasco, shaping a path to reclaim and elevate the south’s cuisine.
Lupita Vidal Aguilar
I didn’t become a cook because I planned to. But in many ways, I was always surrounded by it. I grew up with the sounds of kitchens, with wood stoves and pots always moving. My father is a cook. He had a taquería serving traditional stews from Tabasco, so even if I didn’t realize it at the time, I was never really separated from that world.
My interest in cooking came later, in my twenties. Before that, I thought I would dedicate myself to film. I even studied communications for a year. But life has a way of redirecting you, and little by little, I found myself coming back to what had always been there.
When I finally stepped into a professional kitchen, I immediately thought this was where I belonged. Not because it was easy, but because it felt like a challenge. And I needed that. I wanted to prove to myself that I could earn my place.
I did study gastronomy, but to be honest, in many parts of Mexico, especially in the south, true professional culinary education is still developing. There are gaps, and that creates challenges for the craft. For me, the real learning didn’t come from school. It came from necessity.
I was young, I didn’t have connections or financial resources, and being a woman from the south comes with its own set of barriers. So my husband and I started something of our own because we had to. There was no other path. And in the end, that small kitchen we built and my state’s culinary identity became my real teachers.
There have been moments in my life that were difficult in ways I didn’t expect. Not just professionally, but personally. I remember living away from Tabasco and feeling a deep loneliness. No one really guides you in those moments. It’s just you, your vocation, and whatever strength you can find inside yourself.
When I returned home, everything changed. I met my husband, Jesús, and we started walking this path together. He left his career as a photographer to build this with me. It hasn’t been easy. At some point, you stop being the one learning and become the one responsible for guiding others. That carries a different kind of weight.
But today, after more than a decade, we’ve become something I wish I had when I was starting: a place for people who cannot leave, who cannot travel, who still deserve to learn and grow.
What keeps me going is identity. I believe deeply in the cuisine of the south, in the cuisine of the tropics. For a long time, we were taught not to feel proud of it. And that’s exactly why I do. Because I see what it really is with all its richness, its depth, its history.
Cooking is not just cooking; it’s social, it’s agriculture, and it’s health. It’s part of how a society develops. And there is still so much that needs to be dignified, not only in kitchens but across the entire system surrounding them.
The kitchens of my land have marked me forever. The women who cook every day without recognition, yet carry the identity of an entire people. My father, who understands what it truly means to serve. The culture of water and smoke. The resilience that exists in the south.
That is what inspires me. My philosophy is rooted in dignity. In understanding that nothing we do is individual. We are part of something much bigger: our communities, our territories, our people.
Cooking is demanding. It can exhaust you, it can hurt you, it can challenge everything you are. But it should not destroy you. It should build something.
There are always moments of camaraderie that remind you of that. I remember being in Cancún, far from home, not even knowing how to move around the city. A fellow cook from Tabasco helped me, both inside and outside the kitchen. Those gestures stay with you. They remind you that even in a difficult industry, there are always people willing to guide you.
Of course, there are also people who try to close doors. But you keep moving forward for what you believe in.
What I feel most proud of is not just what I’ve done, but what it has meant for others. Helping position Tabasco’s cuisine internationally is important, yes, but even more important is seeing people from my own land feel proud of who they are. Seeing producers, fishermen, and oyster harvesters feel that their work matters. That it is valued, that it is respected.
That is everything. Because cooking does not begin in the kitchen. It begins in the land, in the water, in the hands of the people who make it possible. And for a long time, many of those places, like the south of Mexico, have not been seen the way they deserve.
I hope that changes and that we move toward a more conscious, more just way of cooking. One that respects people, respects territories, and understands that food is not just something we serve, it’s something we carry.
And for me, that’s what this has always been about. Not just cooking. But creating space for a culture, for a community, for a story that deserves to be told.
Photo credits to @elfoodografomx
Secret Sauce
- What’s the most unexpected ingredient you’ve ever worked with, and how did it change your perspective on cooking?
The freshwater ingredients of Tabasco. I grew up seeing many of them, but when I began cooking them professionally, I realized how complex they are. Ingredients like pejelagarto or popal shrimp taught me that freshwater cuisine has its own techniques, timing, and flavors. They made me understand that territory defines cuisine.
- What’s your “guilty pleasure” meal?
A good street taco. I grew up in my father’s taquería, so tacos will always be a place of memory and happiness for me.
- A food trend that you hate and why?
When cooking becomes a spectacle and forgets the territory and the people who produce the ingredients. Gastronomy should speak more about identity and less about trends.
- What’s the craziest shift you’ve ever worked in the kitchen?
The first years of my restaurant. There were very few people doing everything and working endless shifts, trying to keep the project alive. It was chaotic, but it was also where I truly learned what it means to sustain a kitchen.
5. What happened, and how did you manage to get through it?
I realized that in the kitchen, no one can do it alone. I learned to trust the team, listen, and build community in the kitchen. That is the only way to survive the hardest days.
- What tips would you give to other cooks and chefs to help them navigate their culinary careers and find peace amid the chaos of the kitchen?
Remember why you started. The kitchen is demanding and often chaotic, but when there is a vocation, it becomes a path of constant learning. My advice is to seek kitchens where you can truly learn, to respect the craft, and to understand that no one grows alone. Community and teamwork are what sustain a kitchen on the hardest days.
- What’s an underrated ingredient and why?
Freshwater ingredients from the tropics, especially pejelagarto. For a long time, it was seen as a humble ingredient, but it holds a deep history in the cuisine of southeastern Mexico. When you understand its territory, its techniques, and its culture, you discover an extraordinary ingredient.
8. What’s a must-try dish from your kitchen or the one you’re proudest to have prepared?
A dish with pejelagarto, one of the most representative ingredients of Tabasco. For me, it captures the cuisine of water, smoke, and the tropics. It’s a dish that speaks about territory, tradition, and the culinary identity of my state.
About Your City!
Tabasco, Mexico
- If Anthony Bourdain or a chef came to your city, what would be the perfect tour itinerary from breakfast to dinner?
If a chef like Anthony Bourdain came to Tabasco, I would first take him to La Güera for her thick, handmade tortillas. Then we would have a meal with Doña Francis to experience traditional cooking at its deepest level.
We would go to Sánchez Magallanes with Braulio to eat freshly opened oysters by the sea. Then we would try the piguas from Los Selvan and the butifarras from La Morena Jalpaneca.
We would also visit the flooded maize fields with Joanna and El Negro Chon to understand where our cuisine is truly born. We would eat grilled pejelagarto at La Cevichería Tabasco and finish with my father’s traditional stewed tacos.
More than restaurants, I would show him the people and the territory.