Latest / New Worlder / Episode #129: Christian Puglisi

Transcript

Episode #129: Christian Puglisi · New Worlder

• 0:00
  [music]
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_02: Hey everybody, it's Nicholas Gill and this is the New Worlder podcast.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: Co-host Juliana Duque will be joining shortly.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: We're speaking with Christian Puglisi today.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: He's a Copenhagen-based chef and restaurateur that closed and sold all
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_02: of his restaurants in recent years to spend time with his family,
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: but he's gradually transitioned into being a writer with a memoir in the works and
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_02: an active Substack newsletter called A Chef's Perspective.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_02: He's also active on social media and on YouTube and
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: Where he has been posting these kind of long stream of consciousness thoughts
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: about different topics in the restaurant industry.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_02: Giving his unique perspective as someone who was on the inside of some of
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: the world's top fine dining restaurants.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: Including El Bulli where he was a stage and Noma where he was the sous chef
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: for two years during its earliest period.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: He's not afraid to speak his mind or say something even if it is
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: a little bit uncomfortable or controversial.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: Whether you agree with every argument he makes or not,
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: he's genuinely trying to create dialogue and real conversation with some room
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_02: for nuance, and he is engaging a wide swath of the industry.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: I do think we need more of that.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: I went to a few of his restaurants when they were open, and I enjoyed them quite a bit.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: For one, I could afford them, but they were also ahead of their time.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: As Noma and other Copenhagen fine dining restaurants were becoming more luxurious
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: and exclusive,
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: he opened Relay with the idea that people working there Would be able to eat there.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_02: He did things to minimize costs to make the restaurant more efficient.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: He opened in a gritty neighborhood and did things like putting the silverware
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: in drawers and banning tweezers in the kitchen,
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: which we get into more in our conversation.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: I still see the impact of his restaurants, whether we realize it or not.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: Still, he has many questions about the state of the industry today
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: and why some things just don't work anymore.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: I really don't know what is going to happen in the world of fine dining.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_02: It will never disappear.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_02: I know Bruno Verjuice,
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: who is closing his renowned restaurant Taub in Paris later this year,
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: suggested that.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_02: But people are always going to want a meal for special occasions.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: However,
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: we do seem to be hitting a breaking point
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: into how economically functional these kinds of ultra-luxurious restaurants
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: that depend more on visibility than cooking truly are.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: As a reminder,
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: my forthcoming book,
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: Eating the Amazon, is available for pre-order, It comes out in April.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: You can find it on Amazon and Bookshop.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: Pre-order sales are really important for getting a book like Eating the Amazon out
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: into the world.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: If you were going to buy it anyway,
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: please pre-order it and subscribe to my newsletter,
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: New Worlder on Substack, or just go to neworder.com.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: And if you like this episode, like us, share us, it's all connected.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: So you closed Relay in 2020 and sold off your
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_02: restaurants, what, a
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: few years ago?
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, 25 last year.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_02: You could just be chilling and staying out of it.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: But, you know, like be with your family, walk your dog, catch butterflies.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know what you do in your free time, but whatever.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: But instead,
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: over the past year or so,
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: you've been out there and you've been engaging on sometimes sensitive topics in
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_02: the restaurant industry on Substack, social media, YouTube.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: What kind of made you come out and get involved?
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there's, of course...
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: A little sense of restlessness that comes from catching butterflies for a year or so.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: I had a great privilege in being able to sell a business in my mid-40s where my kids are small.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a privilege that is for the very few.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: But even for the few that have the privilege,
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: mostly it's when you're in the 50s or so and your kids don't want you
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: to bother them anymore.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: So having that, I really wanted it to be something that I invested time in.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I spent a lot of time with my kids and I have three kids.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know,
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just interested in,
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: it's not like you can spend 25 years in a world and then just not have any interest
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: in it anymore.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: Admittedly,
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: my interest is different than it was,
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: but I am very interested in what's going on and particularly
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: when things become sensitive because sometimes I think that they are misunderstood
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: and I feel that having the position that I've acquired,
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: I can say things that many people are afraid to say because they are so afraid
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: of being misunderstood and it will have much greater consequences for them than
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: for me because the butterflies They don't, they don't care.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: So, so at that point, that's it.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: So, so yeah,
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: I've been following everything going on and yeah,
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: I find, I find it very interesting.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: I cannot bug out of it.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: And you've been pretty honest,
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: I think about your experiences in the restaurant industry, which,
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: few people are willing to be kind of that open and invulnerable about things.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: And your videos are like on YouTube,
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: they're very, I mean,
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_02: at least it seems very stream of conscious,
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: just kind of exploring ideas,
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: thinking out loud and just kind of riffing and,
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: and they're long, but I give you credit.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_02: You stay kind of on track through them.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: Are they edited at all?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: Or is it just like, Oh,
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: there's,
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: there's many different ways I've been,
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: I've been trying to do them, you know, and I'm, I'm, I'm dabbling.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'm, I'm,
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to sort out what is the best way because At first I was like,
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: I just want to just talk and then I'll take it from there.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then when you have a video like that in the editor and you're like,
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: what am I... What am I intending to say?
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then you start creating some structure and then I go a little far the other way
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: and I try and have it really structured and then I'm not feeling it.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I go back and forth.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: Honestly, I appreciate that.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: I appreciate that it's not this...
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: This fucking like TikTok video where it's just laying out point by point.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's, it's exploring and sometimes contrasting,
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_02: you're sometimes you can contrast yourself a little bit
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: because I think we all are right now.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: We're all trying to kind of figure
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_02: things out.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I appreciate that.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think,
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's,
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: there's, um,
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: on, on one hand, everybody is on, on social media, people are so Up for a game now.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: People are so qualified.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: The people that you see on social media are so qualified on social media
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: because they study it so much in detail.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: They're so particular with everything and you can just get really into the nitty gritty of it.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: What happens then is that everything becomes kind of the same
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: because everybody studied the same stuff and whatever works,
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: everybody, everybody studies and they, they try and repeat it.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, to,
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: to find some sort of nuke in there where you can just express yourself
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: and get enough feedback for it to be interesting for yourself.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: I think that that's the true art and that's,
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: that's the true way of dealing with social media today,
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: because This whole thing of trying to make it on social media,
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's just...
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: No, it's pointless because it's always going to change.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_02: The algorithms are never going to, you know, let you run away with it.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: They're always going to push engagement above all else.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_02: It's not about, you know, voice.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but then... And it's...
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: In one of the videos, I actually talk about it.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you can spend so much time on everything, which is kind of the circumstances, no?
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: The technicalities...
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: Which doesn't have to be about camera or gear,
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: stuff like that,
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: but more in how you approach the hook and the storytelling, the this and the that.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like a full-time job.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: And then what happened to what you wanted to say?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: You will somehow put more time and effort into stuff
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: that is not really what was your initial desire, what you needed to get out there.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's unfortunate.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I think to balance it is really important.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's really difficult,
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_02: to kind of get your voice out there when there's all this kind of avalanche
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: of shit all around, you know, just drowning your voice out.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_02: So it's hard to break through.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: I give you credit because it seems like you are.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_02: What are the ideas of what you're kind of exploring in these videos and writings
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_02: of Are this related to figuring out the book you're writing?
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm trying to connect the various, because I have like three things going on.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: I have the book, then I have the YouTube videos, and then I have the Substack.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: And to some extent, I'm trying to connect the three.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: So when I'm wondering about some things and I'm thinking
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: about it primarily should be for the book,
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: then I can sometimes Make that into a video where I discuss it a little bit
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: with myself and then that hopefully ends up being some sort of written piece.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: The trick or the tricky bit is that people have different expectations
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: on different platforms and it's hard to sort out what is The best return
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: of investment as in watch,
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: how long,
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: because if I, if I,
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: if I make a soft stack piece that is like a stream of thought video,
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: it's going to be like,
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: nobody's going to read it because you, you,
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: if you don't have the energy of someone saying these things,
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: because a monologue can have a lot of energy, right?
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: And you can,
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: you can still people,
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: the retention is also difficult there,
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: but, But in writing, you have to have some structure.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: So my current way of dealing with it is that I start with the video and
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: then I end up in Substack because I hope that by somehow building some sort
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: of audience on Substack,
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: that will be an audience that is interested in a book one day.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's sort of the strategy if there is.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_02: But are you also like refining these ideas with,
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: with the, for the book of, you know, of like the videos and the subset?
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: They're more, they're more like, you know, flares.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: I just shoot them up in the air and see, and see what happens.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's just things that,
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: and what I find that the video gives me,
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: it gives me conversation,
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: even though I'm with myself,
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: when I talk about things, I go to places because it goes much faster.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: And when I write, when I write, I can just, I just sit there.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: But in conversation,
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: I kind of fill out all the silence and then I go to places and that's interesting.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I can sort of,
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: it's kind of like an exercise where I come to think of something that
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: then can become useful for me.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not like, oh, I have this thing, I want to talk about it.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's more, it starts somewhere.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: I start talking about it and sometimes I can benefit from it.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: That said, the book is more personal.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm a little uncertain with how much I can reveal from it in a YouTube scenario,
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: in terms of what makes sense in relation to where I'm at in the process now,
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: because I still don't have a signed deal.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm kind of leaving it a little bit undefined when I talk about it
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: on social media,
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: because since I started the process,
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: which is now, well, We got one and a half year ago.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's already changed.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's morphed.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's completely different than what I started with.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm not going to be there saying I'm doing this and then no, no, I'm not doing that.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: Do something else and so on and so on.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: I finished the book that was also very personal and it's very different,
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_02: you know, two years later from when I started.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like, it's totally different.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: Like the ideas in it are, you know, They didn't exist two years ago.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: Is that a memoir?
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's not a memoir,
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_02: but there are a lot of personal details in it,
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_02: and it is me telling a story rather than writing a cookbook.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there is also a reason why there are different formats, right?
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: They connect with audiences in different ways,
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: so to do the same thing in different formats doesn't make sense either, right?
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Or to try to.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I have a question about
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: what's your experience of being so active in
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: the hospitality and restaurant industry,
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: hands-on for so long,
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: and now theorizing about it,
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: reflecting about it, the potential gap in between theory and practice, because...
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: So the theory reflects about what's happening, right?
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: In the real world.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: But then when it goes back to the practice, somehow something happens.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't reach back or it doesn't have an impact.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a constant frustration, for example, in academia, right?
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: That reflects about the world.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then what happens with all that work that is produced?
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Does it have an impact?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean,
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: obviously,
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: what you're doing is Well,
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: addressing the philosophy of hospitality and the restaurant industry,
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: the economics, the politics, the culture, I mean, all of it.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: How do you feel about that connection or disconnection?
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Is it frustrating?
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Is it motivating?
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's all of it.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Have you wondered about it?
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think the point is very valid.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: The problem,
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: so to say,
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: for a person like me,
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: Is that when I live the hands-on life, there's barely any more time to think.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to kind of take your career in bits and say, now I'm practical and now I'm thinking.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: Because doing both things at the same time is almost not possible.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: That said,
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: I've always been,
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think, reflecting more About what am I doing and why than most of my peers.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not to say that that's a good thing because that's the same thing
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: that has,
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: borderline driven me crazy over the years because I spent too much time thinking
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: about it.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: Overthinking is also a thing, right?
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I have always been very interested in being capable of Connecting the hand and
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: the mind,
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: which I think is both extremely valid in terms of philosophy,
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: like practicing a philosophy instead of just theorizing about philosophy to
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: the point where no one can have any use out of it.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: The same way, how do I inhabit the world that I'm in?
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like physically, what am I doing here?
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: And how does that connect to The philosophy I want to represent or the culture
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: that I feel I represent and so on and so on.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I've done that for many years,
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: but now I'm just tipping the scale in a way where,
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: well, yeah, I'm not there anymore, but I have been for many, many, many years.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I really like this idea of if I'm speaking to anyone,
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just speaking to who I was just a moment ago.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's useful for someone.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: Someone is there where I was a day ago, a year ago, five years ago.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because I've learned many lessons.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: And those are based on both theory and practice.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: And someone might benefit from it.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: And that is, I think, the beauty of the social media landscape.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: Now, there's many ugly sides.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: But the beauty is that someone can find use for whatever experience you want to share.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's a guarantee.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: And the algorithm,
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: you can even see it as something that can help you in that and then in
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: the other way.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I am tipping the scale in a different proportion than I have been,
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: but I also find a longing towards having my hands in it.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: Because as I was saying before,
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: conversation makes me go to places And being in things inevitably makes me go
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: to places and think about it, right?
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: So ideally, what I do now would have maybe 10 hours a week
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: cooking professionally somewhere.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: But the reality is I don't even have those 10 hours.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, but I 100%
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: Agree that staying connected is, is, is key.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I've thought about,
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: I've thought about staging actually,
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: you know, just go, go places I like and say, Hey man, do you mind just two days?
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: I just want to hang out and just, I don't know, make pasta on the back or whatever.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: I just, I love the being bottom, bottom rank, like just going out with the trash.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm not saying, I want to do that for five years.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: But being in that situation, just getting that vibe, I love it.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: I feel extremely competent in that situation.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I thought about it, yeah.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: But also by talking to other people and serving as a voice of other people,
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: seems to me that you have an additional challenge now,
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: which is not only How do you connect practice and theory for yourself
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: that apparently is kind of natural for you or easier than for other people,
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: but how people cross that bridge with whatever reflection you are doing.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's what is challenging for a scholar or a thinker, in this case, you.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: As you say,
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: you are,
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: you know, So I don't know,
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: in the feedback you get,
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: what is your sense of how people are absorbing those reflections?
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: I think I'm completely overwhelmed with the response I get from
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: everything I do.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: Of course,
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: there's some people trolling and hating,
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: and I'm like, I don't understand why you spend your energy there.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: But people,
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: and I think particularly that this really gives me,
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: you know, I rank YouTube and Softack much higher than Instagram.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I can just do so by the interactions that I get.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: People on YouTube write me comments that I'm like, shit, man, this took you 20 minutes.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like, this is, like,
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: you're really,
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: first of all,
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: you spent 20 minutes watching the video,
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: clearly, because you've seen all of it, how you refer to it, I can tell.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then you wrote a super long, like five paragraph long comment.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like, whoa, this meant something to someone.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I so appreciate it.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: And getting 10 of those comments,
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: 10 of those comments on a video, it's like, well, it's worth the time spent.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: So there's that.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then to me,
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sometimes thinking, again,
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: if I look at what people tell you to do On social media,
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: everybody tries to say, well,
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: speak like you're in fifth grade so everybody understands and tell people what
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: to do.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: You have to be very concise.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: You have to be very precise, make practical tips for people to learn things.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm like, that's your job.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if I...
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: I don't get anything from trying to have you do things.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that that's my role.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: If you say that I'm a thinker, I can think.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: And if I can express myself better, then it's your job to listen to what I say.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: If you find it interesting, how do you put it into practice?
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you don't put it into practice,
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: if it doesn't move anything, Then you wasted your time.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: You probably would have wasted your time on something else, on the scroll, whatever.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: But it's just to say that I don't find that I have any responsibility for people
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: to take action on what I say.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: I did a post about it the other day because It's really what you're told all the time.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you have to give people...
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: I don't like telling people what to do.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, because you are posing questions.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly, you're posing questions.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have the answers because everyone is in a different situation.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's the point, right?
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm just curious of...
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that you need to solve it.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can't solve it for people to start with.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: And second, the point is to ask good questions, right?
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's...
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: But my question is more, how have you seen people observe that and use it in their life?
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: Not that you have to do that for them.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you have seen examples of that,
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: I guess you see it in the comments, which is, you know, it's a barometer.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: You can tell people are engaged and they are telling you something back.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just curious because these are reflections that are meaningful.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, I have a background in philosophy, so I can tell.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just curious how people use those questions.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's a curiosity I have.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you see it, let me know.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the engagement that you have is,
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: you know, it is parasocial, you know, it's not like, it's not there.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: I don't see people on Monday and see how it's going.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: I have to say that I have been receiving quite a few requests
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: on like one-on-one sessions and people want to talk to me and asking
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: for more specific advice.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I think, yeah,
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think,
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think what's going on is like people, Again,
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: the social media way is to give people the sense that you have something
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: that you can sell them.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: And it's much easier to sell them an answer than a question, right?
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how it is.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: But if you ever go to therapy, you realize you have to come up with all of it.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: The therapist is saying, the better the therapist is.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: You just go at it, right?
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: And they make you think the right things.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I have a hard time saying,
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: these are the five things you should do when you open a restaurant or some shit like
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: that.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying I will never do it,
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: but I just think it's very difficult to be so certain about things.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: Also, because when you
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you give me a restaurant situation or problem,
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: I would have immediately thought on what I think, right?
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: But here you are speaking on YouTube to who knows what people think a restaurant is,
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: first of all, which is very varied.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: And giving very particular advice I find becomes
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: kind of useless for most people.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: And more than anything, for me.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: So my video that did the absolutely best,
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: 100% better than anything else,
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: is like 500,000 views, is me saying why I think fine dining is dead.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: And it's because I make a list of seven things that I claim are
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: the reasons why fine dining is dead.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: And this is stuff that I make up in half an hour.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: This is just my thoughts.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: This is what I think.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: But it becomes that, right?
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: It becomes the answers.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: These are the answers.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: To why fine dining is that?
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: Which is, they're not the answers.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's what I think, right?
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't know.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: Again, this is another balance to find.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, to give close to that topic,
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not pointing to what is your role in the end,
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: but it's more a curiosity of how people build that bridge in between theory
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: and practice.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think one of the risks of social media itself Is this back
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: and forth conversation stays in a meta level or superficial level,
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: abstract level, depending on what.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: And you can see that in the comments and the feedback.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: And the reflections back are really interesting, meaningful, deep in depth, insightful.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: Do people go and apply that to practice?
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: That is my, you know, and I'm not, Asking you to solve it right now is just a curiosity I have.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the risks of these different levels in which we are interacting,
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: which is social media, right?
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_02: Since you brought up,
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_02: you know, fine dining being dead, you say fine dining isn't dead, but the fun is.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_02: What do you mean by that?
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think if you say fine dining is dead,
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: then we must assume that you mean also that it's not financially viable.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that's wrong.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think financially it's great.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's doing great.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: But it's more and more at the top that the cream has risen to the very top.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: So it is the most expensive.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: That can do very well.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: And that layer underneath that, where I think the fun is, has a very hard time.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I think this is just going more and more in that direction, as with everything else.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's just concentrating.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: And within that process,
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think restaurants appeal at the very top to a very limited elite that Honestly,
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: are not the ones that have the best taste or the greatest interest or
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: the deep understanding of gastronomy and therefore require less interesting food.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where things become either to me boring or completely out there.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like all the stuff in between, I find it more difficult to find.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: That doesn't mean that you cannot find some people say, oh, but you haven't tried that.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, you don't understand.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying that you cannot go and have a great culinary experience,
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: that you can have a great gastronomic experience,
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: but I find it to be much more probable in a level of restaurant that is not
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: a fine dining restaurant as such.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think within the fine dining restaurant term, there's a level of luxury.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that has taken over the gastronomic part.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: You have the two sides of it, really.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there was a period of time between maybe 2015 and 2020
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: where those two things were merged very well.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: And you had a spectacular restaurant that balanced the two.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I find that it's tipping towards being More and more expensive,
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: therefore more and more focused on luxury,
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: therefore more and more richer clientele, therefore more and more boring.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: And like out of reach.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like Alchemist, which is like an example of a restaurant that is not luxurious based.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, yeah, but I can't go.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm rich.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm wealthy.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to go spend 1,500 euros for me and my wife.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just not.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_02: what I mean?
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's an insane amount of money.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why I was actually in a debate.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: Speaking of putting things into practice,
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: the video that I made became the Substack that I wrote,
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: then became a debate on Danish national radio for one and a half hour
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: with Rasmus Kofod from Geranium,
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: and Søren Frank,
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: a reviewer, and another Danish reviewer, and two foodies that travel.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: So we had one and a half hour debate on this topic, on whether fine dining is dead or not.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: And my point more than anything, is it culturally relevant?
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: Because it has been,
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: and in You have to consider that this discussion is very particular in Copenhagen,
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: where there was a before and after.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: Gastronomy all of a sudden became a thing.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: So once this really became something that defined this country,
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: and now I believe that it's much less so.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that is a problem.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: Culturally, because I think people should have access to culture to some extent.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: Therefore, gastronomy should be considered something that people should have access to.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: And the fine dining restaurant is no longer a gastronomic cultural institution
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: if no one can afford it.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: Then it's not.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think you're right.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think this points more to the accessibility of it and how frustrated people are
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: with it, more than if fine dining is dead or not.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because since it's attached with luxury,
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: there is always going to be something like luxury and fine dining in that sense,
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: always.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_02: People are always going to want a special meal.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: There is always going to be a more refined, expensive, exclusive, right?
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that's the point.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's expressing a question, again, of accessibility.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: What is this for?
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: What is the point?
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: Who can access it or not?
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: Is that the point of gastronomy?
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: Why or why not?
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, it's just like trying to see what is the question underlying.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the real discussion, right?
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: And this is another thing that a lot of A lot of the commentary on my video is
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: about, yeah, fine dining is shit and who wants, you know, stuffy environments.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: But like, I'm not, I don't hate fine dining.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: I love the fine dining.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: I spent decades in it.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: But that's why I say it's not that, but the fun is, it's not as it used to be.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like to me,
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: I always have this thing,
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was Henry Ford saying that,
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you wanted to make cars that people could buy.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: People that worked in the factory could buy the car, right?
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: The Model T. That was my same thing with Relay.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted people that work in the kitchen to be able to go out and come in,
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: both financially, but also culturally.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like you should be able to feel that this is for you.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: And it was for you because we wanted to make a restaurant with an environment
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: that was for the people in it.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: And that was the good thing about it, right?
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: That was the special.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: Vibe that it created.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not saying that all restaurants used to be like that.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: Now they're not.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: But that's what I think could, like, that's to me the optimal.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: This is the ideal that the restaurant should strive for.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I just think that it's tipped to the point where it's,
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: you know, just a bunch of people working for free, doing idiotic things.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like that are pointless because this is another thing that happened was when I was
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: a little bully in 2005, we worked for free and we did idiotic things, okay?
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: When I arrived at Noma in 2007, the kitchen was like seven, eight, nine people, right?
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: But by the end and like the year after, boom, it exploded into 50 people.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because the restaurant becomes extremely popular.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody wants to go check it out.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: So people want to go work for free.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: They come and they work for three months and two months and one month.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I saw the beginning of that when I was a sous shifter.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: What happens at one point is that,
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: you know, well,
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: you have 10,
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: 10 stagiaires,
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: but whenever you have 10 stagiaires,
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: three of them are no good because that's just how it is.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: So you start taking in 13 stagiaires just in case.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: Then some of them don't show up.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: So we need to get to 15.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: All of a sudden you change the menu.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: You no longer have raw shrimps or peeling of walnuts to be done.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: So then what are you going to do with these 15 people?
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because this time the three bad ones are not that bad and everybody showed up.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: You have a bunch of people and you start making things because you don't change
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: the menu into something more simple.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's never going to happen.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: Everything just becomes more complicated and more manipulated because you have the hands.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: If you have 30 hands, you need to occupy them.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: And this is how things became more and more and more and more intricate to the point
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: where it's a little, I don't know, like, what is it really?
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like, are people making
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: things or?
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not saying it cannot be a great meal.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: It can be a great meal.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: But just looking at it,
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: both from the inside and from the outside, I think, what the hell is going on?
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_02: But Noma's one place.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_02: What happened to everywhere else?
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_02: How did everywhere lose their way?
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: Well, in the sense that I think that Noma has been leading as a
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: As a bully did before.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: But I think that what has been leading more than anything was not them as
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: a restaurant, as much as it was what they have broadcasted as a type of food.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: So when 108 opened,
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: a little second restaurant with Christian Baumann,
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: it was supposed to be a casual restaurant.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: You should look at the dishes that they did back then,
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: where putting You know, petals or flowers in certain ways like that.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: The intricacy with the visual side of things goes well together with a lot of hands
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: and Instagram.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it just makes everything extremely geared towards a visual experience much more
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: than a lived experience.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because It's fine.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: You can make dishes, cold dishes that are beautiful, fantastic, with all sorts of shit going on.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: But what happens is that sometimes the food just becomes completely void of any soul
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: because there's none of that energy that food also requires,
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: particularly when it's cooked foods.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: There's a timeliness to it.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: There's a heat.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_01: There's an element of fire.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: That shit, you cannot be 50 people for 40 minutes on a dish and get that.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: So that is necessarily lost somewhere if everybody wants to make petals or flowers
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: that looks good on Instagram.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that energy is,
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: also because it's just not, Appreciate it as much because that's the other side.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: The guests that come have expectations based on what has been broadcasted,
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: what they have seen around,
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_01: and they want to sit there and take pictures and say, oh, look at what we got.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: But you lose this part.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: The mouth became this.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: The palate became this.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: And you have less and less nuance here and more and more nuance on
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: the superficial side because it's very hard for us to discuss
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: How things taste, even when you are an expert on it, it's difficult.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_01: Imagine people that are not just, you know, broadly sort of interested in it.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_02: Did you ban tweezers at Drillet?
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_02: Is that true?
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_02: Why?
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: There was never a tweezer.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: I had that, and people say, oh, you fucking idiot.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_01: You did this your whole life.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: What do you mean?
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: No, never, never, never.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: I hated them from the very first moment.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: It was not a thing when I was a little bully.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know when this came,
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_01: but it must have been in probably like Well,
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: Relay opened in 10, maybe like 11, 12, 13, the tweezer started showing up, right?
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's a surgeon's tool, right?
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's where it's from.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: But it was not a thing at Noma either when I was there in those years.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: So it must have come in the years after.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, no, I don't want this.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because again,
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: it's a little bit like with the 15 stages,
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_01: then you start doing things in a certain way.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: If you start using the tweezer, Then you start doing things in a certain way.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: And all of a sudden it becomes to me more limitation that is not good.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_01: Then it becomes something that improves things.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: Because for me,
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_01: I loved being capable of using both hands,
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_01: putting your hands in stuff and plating it.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_01: Rene, for example,
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: like when I started at Noma and I saw Rene plating dishes,
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, What the fuck?
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: How does he do that?
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it was hands.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_01: To me, if you put the tweezer between you and the dish,
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_01: you detach from it and you create a distance that does not benefit nor the dish nor
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: the guest.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think getting in there requires you to get the hands.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_01: No, it doesn't mean you cannot take something from the pan with a set of thongs
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: and stuff like this.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: It is the plating carefully.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_01: Because why do you want to play things that require you to use tweezers
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: that you cannot do with your hands?
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's a choice, right?
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_01: And the way that they just become everything, I think it's a very bad choice.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_01: For me, it's something that, it's a red flag.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's what they call it.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, no, it's no good.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_02: But it also adds cost, right?
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_02: Like having somebody on your staff takes so much time to plate something.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_02: That adds cost to fine dining.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_02: And especially when you have 20 courses and every plate is like that, it drives up the price.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_02: Like I saw this video the other day.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like 50 best Instagram or something
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_02: and it was announcing some restaurant winning whatever award
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_02: or I don't know what it was,
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_02: but it was this extreme close up of,
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_02: of tweezers putting this like little twirl of green onion on some kind
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_02: of like maki something there wasn't maki and it was like.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_02: Eight seconds or 10 seconds of trying to place this little sliver of onion
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_02: that really had nothing to do with the taste of what was underneath it
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_02: and all this dramatic music behind it.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_02: They were fucking planting a flag on Mount Everest.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_02: It was absurd.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just watching it.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_02: That's why my fucking food costs so much money.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: It becomes nonsense.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_01: To me, what one has to consider is that the very top
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's always looking for perfection
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_01: also based on the insecurities.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_01: As the more insecure you are,
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_01: the better off you are just making everything so fucking square
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: that there's no doubt about anything.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's when the tape gets cut.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I was never a tape cutter or cutting tape.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, it's a lot of time and I get it.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_01: I was never Thomas Keller guy,
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: and I have respect for people saying that this is something that,
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: you know, it's a ritual for us.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, but you know, they cut the tape all nicely.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_01: That also takes time, right?
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_01: And is it, how much does it do?
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Just to say, when you are insecure, you want to remove any potential risk of making a mistake.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: what I like is whenever you are in that moment where there's a potential for you
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: to make a mistake, we're vibing.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_01: This is when we do great shit because it's dangerous and you are completely in it
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_01: and you're focused and you create something special that is difficult to replicate.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_01: All the other stuff becomes very sort of compartmentalized, very square.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_01: Very easy to replicate.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_01: Again, you need a lot of stages and the stages have things
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: that they are shown exactly how they do and they can repeat.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: You cannot take a person like that and put them in a restaurant
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: where they're just fucking and everything just going crazy like this.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: Just do it.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: How do I do it?
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: It takes a lot of time.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that is lost because it's not valued as being high level.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because it doesn't have the tweezers with shit on top.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: Makes no sense.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: To me, it makes no sense.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but the nonsense, I never thought about it in this way.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we see it in social media, it's clear.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_00: When there is demand for it, people start to do silly things in order to respond to the demand.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like, now what are you going to come up with, right?
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what are you going to do?
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: And people start Because they have to come up with content, right?
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_00: We see that clearly in social media.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_00: But it seems to me that to some extent that has happened to restaurants.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: There is demand.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then chefs feel that pressure.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_00: How are we going to differentiate?
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_00: So you either become mainstream or you try
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_00: to differentiate using this creative outlet at the level that it becomes nonsense.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: Or...
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: Increasing the price or both because they are connected.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: So it seems to me that it's not,
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_00: I always thought for some reason that it was the eccentricity of chefs just using
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_00: that creative outlet to a point that it becomes a bit silly, right?
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_00: And performative.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_00: But it might be the demand to, and then they respond to this pressure.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when the,
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: The thinking muscle of chefs and restaurateurs and all the actors in
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_00: the hospitality has to start to be active and put some boundaries.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, no, okay, enough.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_00: Let's recalibrate this thing.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_00: But it's a response to the demand, I think.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I never thought about it.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's so clear in social media, so clear.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_00: But that might be part of it.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's always good to revisit and, you know, revise.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_00: And why is it, where is it that we become, you know, we came to use Twizzers and whatever.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_01: But it's simple.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_01: Everything is content.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: Everything is content.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_01: Even I read something where that's how they talked about politics in America.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like literally it is.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever, you know, it was ice raids and stuff like this.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: It was like it was content.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's made to create something that then can go out online and get people riled up.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_02: No, but what's scary is that there's people controlling that content.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_02: They're directing it in a certain way and they're fucking all over,
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_02: you know, like everywhere in the world.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_02: Like you saw what happened in Brazil, you know.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_02: Bolsonaro almost won, like nearly did because content.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_02: Scary.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we could talk all day about how fucking like annoying some things
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_02: and fine dining are, but you know, what can change?
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like how, how do we all make it better?
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_02: How can it be changed for the better?
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think,
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think that I also tried in my soft tech piece about that to say,
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: you know, it's,
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's about supporting those that are mad enough to make restaurants that have
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: the right balance between doing something that they are really precious about,
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: but they also have maybe a little creative Voice.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_01: They have particular ideas they want to share.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_01: They have some particular traditional way of cooking things
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_01: that they find interesting and they want to share that.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that there is plenty of that.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's just so far from fine dining.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I just think that the spotlight should move on.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I think
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_01: that that has been particularly bad in Denmark as in I see Denmark as
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_01: a sort of a young gastronomic nation, despite the great success.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_01: It was kind of new culturally, of course.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of great chefs.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody cared.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, normal people, nobody knew anything about anything.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: So in that sense,
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it has matured to the point of understanding that you don't need to be
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_01: a Michelin-starred restaurant to do
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like the best, whatever.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_01: I find that to be a little more
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_01: in a different place, both in France and in the States.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like you can see like Estella being a popular restaurant as it is,
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_01: which you could discuss whether that's a fine dining restaurant or not.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_01: I think having some of these people
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like Repo from Satim also, rest in peace.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know,
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_01: some of these people that do restaurants a little less stuffy with a little more of
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_01: a analog feel to them, authentic feel.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that like everything else, there's a counter.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_01: There's like the pendulum just swings the other way.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_01: It is what it is also in social media.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_01: As you talked about authenticity, there's a huge demand.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_01: But there's people doing videos that is in the shittiest lighting,
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_01: worse than I have here,
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_01: are just talking for hours,
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_01: saying whatever comes to their mind with enormous following.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_01: Because people are just burning with desire for connection to real human beings.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_01: And what I find gastronomy has that nothing else has is that to really live it,
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_01: you cannot not be there.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_01: You have to put things in your mouth and you have to engage with food and food has
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_01: to come from somewhere.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_01: So within its limitations is also its uniqueness.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that is in the end something that probably because
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_01: of everything else culturally will be requested more and more and needed more
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_01: and more to have like real, real life experience.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_01: With as many of your senses as possible in a colloquial setting with other people
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_01: that is social and just incredible.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that is what gastronomy is supposed to do, right?
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's supposed to have you have an experience where all your senses just get fucked up.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it might be forgotten at a certain level,
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_01: but I'm certain that that can happen in many different places.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not that I never go out and have a good meal.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_01: A hundred percent I do.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_01: That happens all the time,
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_01: but it's just not a scene as I think it was at one point when it comes to
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_01: the creative, innovative side.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_01: I think now it's innovation is probably being more cut to the bone,
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_01: actually having the courage to serve you things that are not Instagram worthy.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that would be the most courageous menu, right?
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_02: Do you think if 50 best and,
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_02: all these other awards and ranking things just went away,
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_02: it would solve a lot of the problems?
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's a, it's a very hypothetical question and I don't know.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_01: No, but there's, I, I just, I think it's fine.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_01: I just think it's, uh, what I, what I don't like is, is if people are not
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_01: Clear about what it is.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think the same with the Michelin Guide.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think,
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_01: the Americans,
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_01: they just print money, you know, when there's a debt, they just print money.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_01: And it seems like the Michelin Guide just prints out more Michelin stars.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's just devaluated just everywhere.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I was, because Michelin was so...
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_01: Representing the conservative old school sort of French gastronomic restaurant.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_01: everybody was scared to shit of them and you never knew when they came and what
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_01: and whatever.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_01: It was always about the toilets or the cutlery or the shit like this.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody hated them.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_01: When I was just about to open my restaurant, everybody feared the Michelin Guide.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_01: But now I'm like, oh, man, I wish they would be like they used to be.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because now it's just clearly such a marketing machine.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_01: And people will forget that they are put in the world not to help the culinary community.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_01: They are there to sell tires.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that's fine.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_01: But just know it.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_01: Just be aware of what is going on.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_01: Relay was on the 50 Best
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_01: Three years and the top hundred a couple of times before that.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_01: When I was around the Noma world, I got to go to London when it was in London.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_01: I got to go to London when it was, and those were boring.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like back then it was boring.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_01: And also for coming,
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_01: you just went,
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_01: had lunch, went for the gala, went for a party, went home the day after.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_01: Then when Relay was in the 50, it was in New York.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, we're going to go and we're going to burn down the city.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_01: We're just going to enjoy this as much as humanly possible and realize
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_01: that it probably never happens again because this is completely out of our control.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_01: It is complete nonsense.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_01: But if everybody wants to celebrate with us and we're going to be there with Ferran
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_01: and Alain Ducasse and EMP and I don't know what, let's go.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_01: Go to the party, but know who's paying for it.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's the thing.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_01: Don't tell yourself that it's something else than it is.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think that that's the issue that a lot of people have and that's
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_01: when they get disappointed and that's when they fuck up.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I saw also with the 50 best.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_01: You have people that go to the top 30 and they're like, oh,
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_01: let's just invest 2 million euros in the restaurant and then we'll get to
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_01: the top 10.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_02: Who knows?
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_02: And then you don't.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_01: And then what happened?
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's politics.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's so many other things.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_01: Just don't.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_01: Take it for what it is.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_00: Also, I mean, again, Nick,
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_00: the question about this is interesting
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_00: because I think that's how our brain is wired.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_00: Just counting.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, listing is natural to us, but then it comes to critical thinking again.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's like,
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_00: be aware of what that list means,
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_00: where it's coming from,
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_00: what is the context, what a Michelin is, who is, you know, founding that list.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, a sort of, it's information, right?
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, but listing in itself, I think it's unavoidable.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_02: But it's like, I feel like those lists are so powerful now.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_02: Like, they're so widespread that It becomes such a great percentage of
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_02: the information that's getting to us.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_02: It fills all of our channels with information about these 50, 100 restaurants, whatever.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_02: And it's just like nonstop.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_02: There's like 700 awards at this point.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_02: It just becomes that in everything else.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_01: Asia and back and forth.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_01: And there's also pizza, 50 best pizza and 50 best chefs.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_01: But again,
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_01: the people that do it,
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_01: they see the opportunity to have fun with this and get a lot of sponsors doing it.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_01: And the sponsors see that it has great exposure and the media has
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_01: an easy time saying this is the world's best restaurant or this
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_01: the world's best pizza.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it just works.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_01: I've sent out a lot of press releases from the restaurants and I just know That
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_01: if you could say,
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_01: now base this among the top 10 in the world or whatever,
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_01: it would just get out there immediately.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_01: And people are going to go.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_01: And this is, again, the critical thinking.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think the world just seems so incredibly complex.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_01: Seems because we are completely overwhelmed with information
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_01: that we can barely digest anything that is not structured on a list
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_01: because there's no time.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how they win.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that it is what it is.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're an expert in the field, you know it's bullshit.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't know it's bullshit, you cannot call yourself an expert on the field because it is.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_01: Of course it is.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_02: If these lists suddenly go away,
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_02: you already see like Anna Ross and like Bruno pulling out kind of and,
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_02: you know, saying they're not interested anymore or whatever.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_02: Do and suddenly it all collapses.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_02: Do a lot of restaurants close because of that?
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I don't think so.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_01: You don't think so?
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_01: No,
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's just one way of gathering attention and the lists are just gatekeepers
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_01: for that attention.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think honestly,
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_01: YouTube is a way for a restaurant to go.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_01: You can see Fallow in In London that has like 2 million subscribers on YouTube,
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_01: a restaurant I had no idea existed within my gastronomic sort of circle.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then I realized that it has an enormous following on YouTube and it has created
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_01: an enormous business for the restaurant.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_01: There's another example of a person that does that in Denmark that has a big YouTube channel.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's one way.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_01: You have the chef's table, Netflix, TV shows, TV series.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, when you're at the top,
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_01: whether you invest your money on a marketing team that just runs after
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_01: the 50 best voters or a production team that makes your own TV show, same thing.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's just about getting it out there.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_01: And the more you can invest, the more you can reach a lot of people.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how you get The attention of the people that will travel for you.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_01: And there you go.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's just a natural way of that hierarchy to shape itself.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_01: But again, I just don't think it's very interesting.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_01: The whole premise of saying when it collapses, I think it collapsed.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know who's on the top 10 on the 50 best list today.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, personally.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_01: Because I just lost interest.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_01: From when they started...
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_01: Pushing the restaurants out after they won,
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_01: once they became number one,
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_01: then it's just because it was clear that the list had come to
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_01: a certain point was like, so now what?
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_01: You can't just keep having the same restaurants out there all the time.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_01: I understand I had to renew,
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_01: but to me,
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_01: that was the end of it because then it just started getting all sorts of restaurants
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_01: and all the best restaurants in the world.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, it just, There's a time and place for everything.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the time for the list, they have played it out.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because like the Michelin guy,
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_01: they are just devaluating their stuff with more and more wards,
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_01: more and more and more.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_01: Because again, they have to create enough interest for their sponsors.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_01: That makes sense.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's what they're there for.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what we need to keep in mind.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_02: Do you feel kitchens are better now than they used to be, fine dining kitchens?
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_01: In what way?
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_02: Just, you know, less, they're better workplaces.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, for sure.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_01: For sure.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think one thing that has changed dramatically is that there used
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_01: to be this strange
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_01: way where the higher the level, the lesser the workplace.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like, The higher the level,
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_01: the more you would be ready to do whatever and get as little pay as whatever
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_01: and get treated as dirt.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I think now the reputational cost is just so high at the top
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_01: that no one can afford at the very top not to be very conscious
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_01: about what they're doing and how they treat people because everybody has
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_01: a potential voice in this day and age.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think that that has changed a lot.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_01: I do think that the mid-level suffers from that much more than the top
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_01: because I think a lot of this comes from, to me,
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_01: an Americanized human resource culture where everything has to be safe spaces.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_01: The guy that wants us to be in the heat of things without tweezers
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_01: With potential burn marks is not the guy that thinks that the kitchen should be
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_01: a safe space, right?
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_01: To me, there's some inconsistencies there that makes very little sense.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_01: There used to be a time culturally where the people that were in a kitchen,
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_01: where people that were kind of out there because of what the kitchen required of you
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_01: to do.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_01: So the people that were kind of out there had actually a place they could Do well,
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_01: where they could excel.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that my worry is that those people have no access to the top
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_01: because you have to be politically correct, not nice.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because what you have to remember is you cannot remove the assholes of the world.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_01: The assholes of the world are there.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_01: The question is, are they aggressive and jerks or are they passive aggressive and jerks?
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_01: They will still be there,
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_01: no matter whether the human resource department is well-funded or not.
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I just think that people that would
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_01: need a place where you could really be in
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_01: the heat of things,
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_01: they probably won't do well in restaurant at a certain level where you have
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_01: to be much more scrutinized in how you act and
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_02: how you talk and how you
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_01: how you behave, so to say.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying that you shouldn't behave well,
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_01: but I just think that some people,
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_01: we should tolerate everybody, including the ones that are a little out
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_00: there.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_00: There is another level of this.
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's like we are constantly negotiating what is our public and private life.
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_00: And restaurants are part of this constant, you know, moving along the spectrum of that.
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_00: How performative, how public, how genuine, how spontaneous, how familiar, how.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_00: So it's part of it.
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's part of our nature.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like what it's allowed to do and what it's not.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_00: As you say, do you behave?
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_00: You don't.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that creates tension, relaxation, or connection, or disconnection, or alienation.
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it's complex.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_01: I think the one thing that is sometimes lost in the discussion, pressure is not inherently bad.
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_01: You have to accept some level of discomfort to be capable to work under pressure.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_01: Now today,
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_01: it's kind of become this goal That we need to remove all sort of discomfort
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_01: from any type of relation or position or workplace.
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_01: In a kitchen,
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_01: if you remove the discomfort,
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_01: you also remove the potential of having the great working experience
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: that it lies sort of at the end of it or on the other side of it.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_01: Because my greatest experience As a chef in a kitchen has always been to get through
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_01: a night that seemed fucking impossible.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, we just made it.
• 1:06:22
  SPEAKER_01: We just made it.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_01: The way the beer tastes that night is different, but something has to be before it.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_01: You have to go through something.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_01: The great thing about this is that you can only achieve
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_01: This fully as a group.
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's not something you can do on your own.
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_01: When you as a group confront something that seems like a bigger challenge
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_01: that you have faced before or that you are capable of facing,
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_01: and you overcome it as a group, it is the greatest feeling ever.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_01: To do so, everyone needs to be ready to sacrifice for that group.
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_01: That mentality is deemed toxic.
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_01: Today, which means there's no end of the rainbow for you if you cannot get there, you know?
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_01: So kitchen life used to suck, but at the end of the rainbow, sometimes the beer tasted good.
• 1:07:29
  SPEAKER_01: Now kitchen life just sucks without you being able to get to the other side of the rainbow.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, when the challenge becomes toxic, do you think?
• 1:07:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because there is a part of the challenge that is.
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that the challenge is toxic at all.
• 1:07:47
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think the challenge can be toxic.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that.
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think that the whole world of things be like,
• 1:07:56
  SPEAKER_01: I suppose that what people try to say is that some people are behaving
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_01: in toxic ways.
• 1:08:05
  SPEAKER_01: But that's not creating the team that gets you to the other side of that rainbow.
• 1:08:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's misunderstood.
• 1:08:13
  SPEAKER_01: They fucked it up.
• 1:08:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's not that's not good.
• 1:08:16
  SPEAKER_01: No one wants that.
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_01: Why is that?
• 1:08:19
  SPEAKER_01: But if what is on the other side of it is that.
• 1:08:24
  SPEAKER_01: You cannot if you cannot rally a team.
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_01: Because they are grown suspicious.
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_01: A priori before anything,
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_01: just as a fact, if I require of you now tonight, we just have to fucking go.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_01: If that is toxic, I cannot rally a team.
• 1:08:46
  SPEAKER_01: If I cannot rally a team, we cannot win the big games.
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to be with the trophy, you'd have to want to win the big games.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 1:08:58
  SPEAKER_01: Tell the people walking into the Champions League final in the corridor
• 1:09:06
  SPEAKER_01: that what it's about is not to be toxic.
• 1:09:09
  SPEAKER_01: They don't give a fuck.
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_01: Who's toxic.
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_01: They are dialed in because they are a team.
• 1:09:15
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, there's a lot of conflicts in a team like that.
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_01: They are not useful for the team.
• 1:09:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's why you have a coach that sometimes as an authority breaks down whoever is being toxic.
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_01: the times that I have been the most aggressive in my kitchen has been to people
• 1:09:39
  SPEAKER_01: That have been abusive to other people.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_01: But you could... Well, there was an example of someone that...
• 1:09:53
  SPEAKER_01: There was a female waitress that came to me and said,
• 1:09:56
  SPEAKER_01: you know, this guy, I'm standing in the dish pit, really was very small.
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_01: So the dish pit... And, you know, he had sort of snuck up behind her.
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_01: Which you could have to do, but there's ways of doing it, right?
• 1:10:14
  SPEAKER_01: And she said to me, listen, he literally, it was not okay.
• 1:10:19
  SPEAKER_01: I lost my shit.
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_01: I grabbed him, brought him outside.
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_01: I said, if you ever do this again, you're done.
• 1:10:26
  SPEAKER_01: Never again.
• 1:10:29
  SPEAKER_01: Was I toxic towards him?
• 1:10:32
  SPEAKER_01: You decide.
• 1:10:34
  SPEAKER_01: But you have to have,
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_01: if the pressure's high,
• 1:10:38
  SPEAKER_01: You have to have some level of authority that can discipline the group
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_01: so they're not toxic.
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_01: What happens with the human resource-based American thing where everybody is kind
• 1:10:53
  SPEAKER_01: of uncertain,
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_01: nobody wants to sacrifice themselves because they're a little suspicious
• 1:10:58
  SPEAKER_01: about everybody and nobody dares to say anything to anybody
• 1:11:03
  SPEAKER_01: because it could be misunderstood.
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_01: What happens if It becomes extremely toxic because no one says anything truthfully.
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_01: So no one has the courage to sacrifice themselves for the group and they don't go anywhere.
• 1:11:23
  SPEAKER_01: It becomes like you're afraid of what's going on.
• 1:11:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's not healthy either.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's just passive aggressive.
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_01: So in my and I'm, I know I'm old school.
• 1:11:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying anybody should be yelled at,
• 1:11:38
  SPEAKER_01: but I prefer one guy with the capability of yelling at people
• 1:11:43
  SPEAKER_01: that keeps everything peachy and in order and everybody dealing
• 1:11:48
  SPEAKER_01: with each other nicely than no place of authority,
• 1:11:53
  SPEAKER_01: nobody capable, and everybody bitching.
• 1:11:57
  SPEAKER_01: That is horrible.
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen that too.
• 1:12:01
  SPEAKER_02: That is horrible.
• 1:12:03
  SPEAKER_02: I agree that like a lack of kind of Structure and authority can just lead
• 1:12:10
  SPEAKER_02: to more chaos in a kitchen.
• 1:12:13
  SPEAKER_02: But aren't there better ways sometimes of doing things,
• 1:12:17
  SPEAKER_02: of making it less about yelling and frightening people?
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 1:12:24
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 1:12:26
  SPEAKER_01: But there are better ways.
• 1:12:27
  SPEAKER_01: But you can also say, well, you can play football or you can be messy.
• 1:12:34
  SPEAKER_01: So from playing football to being messy, there's a long way up there.
• 1:12:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I wish for everybody to be messy, but not everybody is.
• 1:12:43
  SPEAKER_01: And at one point, we have to ask ourselves, how much can you ask of people?
• 1:12:49
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they have to be good cooks.
• 1:12:50
  SPEAKER_01: They have to be gentle.
• 1:12:53
  SPEAKER_01: They have to be kind.
• 1:12:54
  SPEAKER_01: They have to be...
• 1:12:57
  SPEAKER_01: Empathic.
• 1:12:57
  SPEAKER_01: And they also have to be creative.
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_01: And they also have to be in social media.
• 1:13:00
  SPEAKER_01: And they have to, there's so much shit required of you.
• 1:13:05
  SPEAKER_01: And the last person in the door has,
• 1:13:08
  SPEAKER_01: you know, maybe a little wrong sense of entitlement of, you know, what am I?
• 1:13:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just the newest.
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm the apprentice here, you know, facing a head chef that has been there for 20 years.
• 1:13:21
  SPEAKER_01: And in his or hers apprenticeship had to,
• 1:13:24
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:13:25
  SPEAKER_01: peel potatoes,
• 1:13:26
  SPEAKER_01: For the first two years,
• 1:13:27
  SPEAKER_01: and then the last appendage that comes in says,
• 1:13:30
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want a few potatoes because I came here to cook.
• 1:13:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's not cooking.
• 1:13:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's a lot to require from this head chef to deal with this situation in a way
• 1:13:39
  SPEAKER_01: that this person does not feel offended.
• 1:13:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's very difficult.
• 1:13:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I do think that there's better ways,
• 1:13:47
  SPEAKER_01: but there's also an assumption that we're making when we say that,
• 1:13:51
  SPEAKER_01: is that everybody requires those better ways.
• 1:13:54
  SPEAKER_01: My point from before was that some people are left out because they require other ways.
• 1:14:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I do martial arts three times a week,
• 1:14:04
  SPEAKER_01: and it's quite close here, but the neighborhood is kind of near, you know?
• 1:14:08
  SPEAKER_01: And you see people in the martial arts club,
• 1:14:10
  SPEAKER_01: in the gym,
• 1:14:12
  SPEAKER_01: that I know that the reason why they are so well within that environment,
• 1:14:20
  SPEAKER_01: they're doing,
• 1:14:20
  SPEAKER_01: they're chilled, is because there's a level of aggression around them.
• 1:14:25
  SPEAKER_01: There's a clear, authoritative structure that they feel confident.
• 1:14:31
  SPEAKER_01: Those people,
• 1:14:32
  SPEAKER_01: if you put them in that nice workplace,
• 1:14:35
  SPEAKER_01: they would fail immediately because not all of us have
• 1:14:42
  SPEAKER_01: these sort of the same needs.
• 1:14:46
  SPEAKER_01: And also not all of us can then perform under a certain level of pressure.
• 1:14:53
  SPEAKER_01: And those two things,
• 1:14:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think,
• 1:14:54
  SPEAKER_01: go along because a high level of pressure,
• 1:14:58
  SPEAKER_01: I believe, often requires a certain type of people to really do well.
• 1:15:04
  SPEAKER_01: And they not only do well, but they benefit from the level of pressure.
• 1:15:08
  SPEAKER_01: And those kind of people,
• 1:15:09
  SPEAKER_01: if you put them in the passive-aggressive environment,
• 1:15:12
  SPEAKER_01: they fail badly because they cannot play the social game.
• 1:15:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that's a shame because where are they going to go?
• 1:15:21
  SPEAKER_01: And are we getting better kitchens out of it?
• 1:15:23
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 1:15:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think we're displacing some people in favor of others
• 1:15:28
  SPEAKER_01: that honestly do not necessarily earn that place.
• 1:15:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's fine to want things better, but you need to earn that place and better it.
• 1:15:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 1:15:40
  SPEAKER_01: I saw things during my apprenticeship,
• 1:15:44
  SPEAKER_01: during my stages,
• 1:15:45
  SPEAKER_01: during my career that I very,
• 1:15:49
  SPEAKER_01: very, very clearly told myself, I was not going to repeat.
• 1:15:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I did not.
• 1:15:55
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how kitchens improved.
• 1:15:58
  SPEAKER_01: Step by step, they've become better.
• 1:16:00
  SPEAKER_01: But we have to ask ourselves sometimes, is there a trade-off?
• 1:16:05
  SPEAKER_01: And who pays that cost?
• 1:16:09
  SPEAKER_01: There has to be a
• 1:16:10
  SPEAKER_02: limit, though.
• 1:16:11
  SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
• 1:16:12
  SPEAKER_02: There has to be a limit.
• 1:16:14
  SPEAKER_01: Aggression of this.
• 1:16:17
  SPEAKER_01: Of course.
• 1:16:18
  SPEAKER_01: There's a limit to anything.
• 1:16:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not for aggression.
• 1:16:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just saying that if you remove it entirely,
• 1:16:27
  SPEAKER_01: 110%, what you get is just a different structure.
• 1:16:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not necessarily better.
• 1:16:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think when you have an authoritative structure...
• 1:16:37
  SPEAKER_01: It is there to create some level of order.
• 1:16:40
  SPEAKER_01: And what I find people always need much more or what I would say
• 1:16:46
  SPEAKER_01: that will always define a good working environment for the vast majority of
• 1:16:52
  SPEAKER_01: the people I've ever worked with is that the communication is very clear and
• 1:16:58
  SPEAKER_01: that you know what is expected of you.
• 1:17:01
  SPEAKER_01: But see, that in itself can create conflicts with some people.
• 1:17:06
  SPEAKER_01: This is where we are at.
• 1:17:08
  SPEAKER_01: So in the same way that aggression, of course, there has to be a limit.
• 1:17:12
  SPEAKER_01: There has to be a limit to the other side, to its opposite as well.
• 1:17:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you cannot demand anything of people without it being,
• 1:17:21
  SPEAKER_01: or I cannot deal with this, then how are people expected to get a job done?
• 1:17:31
  SPEAKER_02: Do you find that this is something with younger generations
• 1:17:35
  SPEAKER_02: or is this something that's always existed, younger generations?
• 1:17:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think it has always existed for sure,
• 1:17:40
  SPEAKER_01: but I think the young generation has,
• 1:17:43
  SPEAKER_01: the Gen Zs have, like,
• 1:17:48
  SPEAKER_01: they more than anything have a very,
• 1:17:52
  SPEAKER_01: very difficult time managing themselves because I've had Gen Zs having
• 1:17:58
  SPEAKER_01: to manage Gen Zs and good luck with that.
• 1:18:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's impossible.
• 1:18:06
  SPEAKER_01: There's some sort of expectations toward the circumstances that is very heightened.
• 1:18:14
  SPEAKER_01: And there's very, very little intention to sacrifice yourself for those circumstances.
• 1:18:22
  SPEAKER_01: So everybody would love the flexibility of getting the day off,
• 1:18:26
  SPEAKER_01: but no one wants to take the shift.
• 1:18:30
  SPEAKER_01: So how are we going to do?
• 1:18:32
  SPEAKER_01: You don't like it when we're understaffed, but you demand to go on vacation next week.
• 1:18:40
  SPEAKER_00: How am I supposed to do it?
• 1:18:42
  SPEAKER_01: And when you have a Gen Z that feels that,
• 1:18:47
  SPEAKER_01: yes, I'm a manager, but if you want vacation next week, I should give it to you.
• 1:18:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then comes to the owner or the whatever general manager and says,
• 1:18:59
  SPEAKER_01: we're understaffed next week.
• 1:19:00
  SPEAKER_01: What do we do?
• 1:19:02
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, whoa.
• 1:19:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think the Gen Zs have been brought up with an idea
• 1:19:10
  SPEAKER_01: that they should be very skeptical and very suspicious and really take care
• 1:19:17
  SPEAKER_01: of not ever being exploited.
• 1:19:19
  SPEAKER_01: But I think they suffer from it more than they benefit, to be honest.
• 1:19:25
  SPEAKER_02: You wrote about Bourdain recently, like a month ago or something.
• 1:19:31
  SPEAKER_02: You said It gave chefs a voice, you know?
• 1:19:39
  SPEAKER_02: Can you talk about that a little bit?
• 1:19:42
  SPEAKER_02: Why did it give chefs a voice?
• 1:19:45
  SPEAKER_01: Because it was a subculture that nobody cared about.
• 1:19:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that Bodane was a big part in making it cool.
• 1:19:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like you had at the same time sort of chefs started to appear on TV.
• 1:20:02
  SPEAKER_01: But they just had this polished look to them,
• 1:20:05
  SPEAKER_01: all of them,
• 1:20:06
  SPEAKER_01: like the Jamie Olivers,
• 1:20:07
  SPEAKER_01: but also if you looked at Joël Robuchon on French TV and stuff like this,
• 1:20:13
  SPEAKER_01: it was just a completely different world.
• 1:20:16
  SPEAKER_01: And you could maybe make the case that that was more like fine dining chefs,
• 1:20:20
  SPEAKER_01: actually, while the vast majority don't work in those polished restaurants.
• 1:20:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that the way that
• 1:20:32
  SPEAKER_01: He described the hard work and the life and the culture behind it was
• 1:20:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think of
• 1:20:44
  SPEAKER_01: a great importance for people that worked in kitchen
• 1:20:48
  SPEAKER_01: to feel like seeing like this is actually how I live my life and nobody has put that
• 1:20:53
  SPEAKER_01: into words before.
• 1:20:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that's what made the success and that's what made it You know,
• 1:21:02
  SPEAKER_01: like the whole pirate chef,
• 1:21:03
  SPEAKER_01: the whole rock and roll,
• 1:21:05
  SPEAKER_01: that just became a thing and much because of that, for sure.
• 1:21:10
  SPEAKER_02: But you say he was often misinterpreted.
• 1:21:14
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's this idea today that is more and more common that he is kind
• 1:21:21
  SPEAKER_01: of praising some sort of toxic.
• 1:21:27
  SPEAKER_01: Again, it's the toxic.
• 1:21:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think that that makes much sense because first of all,
• 1:21:37
  SPEAKER_01: to judge people with 20 years of relay
• 1:21:42
  SPEAKER_01: is a little off and that you can describe
• 1:21:46
  SPEAKER_01: a life.
• 1:21:48
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know,
• 1:21:49
  SPEAKER_01: as a writer,
• 1:21:51
  SPEAKER_01: how difficult that is to make people at all interested in what you're writing.
• 1:21:55
  SPEAKER_01: But if you can describe it in a way that is so lively,
• 1:22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Is in itself such a feat that saying that that is somehow potentially problematic,
• 1:22:08
  SPEAKER_01: I find it completely misunderstood.
• 1:22:10
  SPEAKER_01: Because to give some people a voice,
• 1:22:12
  SPEAKER_01: to tell someone's story, I literally cannot see how that is a problem.
• 1:22:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's like saying, well,
• 1:22:20
  SPEAKER_01: you shouldn't write about the Second World War
• 1:22:22
  SPEAKER_01: because that's not good what happened.
• 1:22:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, to me, it's just a very modern...
• 1:22:29
  SPEAKER_01: Way of wanting to misunderstand things or more than anything,
• 1:22:33
  SPEAKER_01: just morally positioning yourself by saying,
• 1:22:36
  SPEAKER_01: oh, this is not good without engaging with it.
• 1:22:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's essentially what I think happens more.
• 1:22:41
  SPEAKER_01: Because you see a lot of stuff, again, on Instagram, or Anthony Boudin was praising the toxic.
• 1:22:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, what do you mean?
• 1:22:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like, it's just, it's, they also talk about the brigade.
• 1:22:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's a military system and Escoffier did this because he wanted to exploit it.
• 1:22:57
  SPEAKER_01: You don't, like, it's,
• 1:23:00
  SPEAKER_00: Also, no one is multidimensional.
• 1:23:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I agree.
• 1:23:06
  SPEAKER_00: He was
• 1:23:10
  SPEAKER_00: experiencing contradictions in himself while he was living through them,
• 1:23:14
  SPEAKER_00: and that's what he shows in what he says about it.
• 1:23:17
  SPEAKER_01: It has to be nuanced.
• 1:23:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's like saying, train spotting, does that make people do drugs?
• 1:23:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:23:24
  SPEAKER_00: I hope not.
• 1:23:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 1:23:26
  SPEAKER_01: So why...
• 1:23:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it's just, I don't know.
• 1:23:31
  SPEAKER_01: I find that we are in a place now
• 1:23:35
  SPEAKER_01: where whenever people can get some cheap moral points by positioning themselves
• 1:23:45
  SPEAKER_01: against something that seems like it's an old school vibe,
• 1:23:52
  SPEAKER_01: then people run for it without thinking about it.
• 1:23:56
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I don't really care about that.
• 1:23:58
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, to me, I was never a big Anthony Boudin as in the No Reservations and the TV shows.
• 1:24:07
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't follow him that much.
• 1:24:08
  SPEAKER_01: I watched some of it more like around the bull years, like 2005, six, that kind of stuff.
• 1:24:17
  SPEAKER_01: But to me,
• 1:24:18
  SPEAKER_01: Kitchen Confidential,
• 1:24:19
  SPEAKER_01: like that's my thing because I read it in Maybe 2001 or some of this.
• 1:24:26
  SPEAKER_01: I read in Danish and it meant a lot to me.
• 1:24:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I just reread it a couple of months ago.
• 1:24:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's when I wrote it.
• 1:24:32
  SPEAKER_01: I wrote the thing.
• 1:24:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it was just like, whoa.
• 1:24:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I realized how it sat in me.
• 1:24:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like, without knowing.
• 1:24:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like, there was things in me that had lived that I remember through this book.
• 1:24:48
  SPEAKER_01: For example, the Bigfoot character.
• 1:24:53
  SPEAKER_01: That he describes as this head chef that was just omnipresent.
• 1:24:58
  SPEAKER_01: He was like everywhere.
• 1:24:59
  SPEAKER_01: He could do it.
• 1:25:01
  SPEAKER_01: I have had that as a sort of ideal I worked towards
• 1:25:08
  SPEAKER_01: because he seemed like he just had his shit together.
• 1:25:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like he was so good and he knew everything.
• 1:25:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, this is subconsciously what I wanted to do.
• 1:25:20
  SPEAKER_01: Get to at one point, you know, that's what I've worked towards getting to.
• 1:25:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now he has also,
• 1:25:26
  SPEAKER_01: apparently,
• 1:25:26
  SPEAKER_01: because I looked through some Reddit posts on the Kitchen Conference,
• 1:25:33
  SPEAKER_01: you can find a lot of interesting things and anecdotes and also discussing,
• 1:25:38
  SPEAKER_01: and I can't remember his name, but he was an actual character, obviously.
• 1:25:42
  SPEAKER_01: And he was also accused of being quite a dick sometimes.
• 1:25:46
  SPEAKER_01: So again,
• 1:25:47
  SPEAKER_01: you have,
• 1:25:48
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:25:50
  SPEAKER_01: But again,
• 1:25:50
  SPEAKER_01: people were actually portraying on Reddit,
• 1:25:53
  SPEAKER_01: saying I knew him and this and that,
• 1:25:55
  SPEAKER_01: and saying that he was a fantastic person that would be there if I needed rent
• 1:26:01
  SPEAKER_01: for my apartment, but he was also a dick.
• 1:26:04
  SPEAKER_01: He could be really rough.
• 1:26:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that this is something that is lost.
• 1:26:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that this is the beauty of the restaurant industry is
• 1:26:12
  SPEAKER_01: that there are just so many wildly interesting people.
• 1:26:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that's a That is what makes it unique.
• 1:26:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's not something that needs to get washed out.
• 1:26:24
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't want it to be like that.
• 1:26:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that no one should put up with abuse.
• 1:26:29
  SPEAKER_01: No one should put up with bullshit.
• 1:26:32
  SPEAKER_01: But I think we should try and tolerate as many people as possible and make sure
• 1:26:36
  SPEAKER_01: that there's a space for everybody.
• 1:26:37
  SPEAKER_01: There's a place for everyone.
• 1:26:39
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks, everyone, for listening.
• 1:26:40
  SPEAKER_02: That was Christian Puglisi.
• 1:26:43
  SPEAKER_02: Check him out on...
• 1:26:44
  SPEAKER_02: On Substack, A Chef's Perspective.
• 1:26:46
  SPEAKER_02: Keep an eye out for his memoir, which will come eventually.
• 1:26:51
  SPEAKER_02: And check out his YouTube channel with a lot of interesting videos there.
• 1:26:59
  SPEAKER_02: Again, pre-order, Eating the Amazon.
• 1:27:02
  SPEAKER_02: Subscribe to New Order on Substack.
• 1:27:04
  SPEAKER_02: And that's it.
• 1:27:05
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for listening.
• 1:27:06
  SPEAKER_02: Big thank you to my friend Pat Buzzard for providing the music to the show.
• 1:27:11
  SPEAKER_02: And see you soon.
• 1:27:14
  SPEAKER_02: Bye.
• 1:27:15
  [music]