Latest / Giant Ideas / Ikoyi Co-Founder, Jeremy Chan: What It Takes to Build a Global Top 50 Restaurant

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Ikoyi Co-Founder, Jeremy Chan: What It Takes to Build a Global Top 50 Restaurant · Giant Ideas

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: I've been very consistently disciplined.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't taken my eye off the ball for ten years.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: I've kept it laser focused for ten years, and it's still there.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I still think about it every day.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: I wake up every morning thinking about it, and I go to sleep thinking about it.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_02: Hello, and welcome to Giant Ideas with me, Cameron McLean, and me, Tommy Stadlin.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: We're co-founders of Giant Ventures, which builds and backs purpose-driven companies.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_03: At Giant, we're lucky to meet extraordinary people with giant ideas that are changing the world.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_03: This podcast brings you behind the scenes access to those ideas and the inspiring stories of the people behind them.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: We explore how one giant idea can kickstart a billion-dollar company, shape culture, and transform life as we know it.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_03: Today on the podcast, we welcome Jeremy Chan.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_03: Jeremy is a British-Canadian chef who grew up between London and Hong Kong and is the co-founder of Ikoi.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_03: In 2017, Jeremy joined forces with his childhood friend Irla Hassan O'Dokale, who had just left a career in insurance, and together they decided to build Ikoi.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_03: Ikoi is now a two-Michel-star restaurant in London, and it's recently been voted one of the world's 50 best restaurants.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_03: But Jeremy has not always been a chef.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, he studied philosophy with me at Princeton and worked briefly in finance.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_03: After leaving finance, he wrote to many, many restaurants asking them to take him on for some experience and ended up working at institutions like the two-starred hibiscus, dinner by Heston, and in one of the world's most famous restaurants, Noma.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_03: He's known for his creativity and his innovation.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_03: Jeremy, welcome.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_03: Um so Jeremy, let's start at the very beginning.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_03: You and I first met studying philosophy at Princeton, kind of quite a different setting, but you always had, I think, a very unique obsession that you applied to whatever you were focused on at the time.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_03: I remember distinctly at the time that was philosophy, and I think you went deeper and uh probably broader than I did, but you also then I think applied that to cycling at one point.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_03: Was it that you're very obsessed?
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_03: You were always in your lycra, walking around Princeton, which stuck out, and then later on to finance and now to food.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, what what is it about becoming obsessed with a with a topic and going deep into it that you think you really excel at?
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_03: And and how does the study of philosophy that you did at Princeton connect to now what you do with food?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think it's just part of my nature, part of my psychological, you know, way of mind.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe um I'm an obsessive person.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: I like I don't like small talk, I don't like going into things halfway.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think if I'm really interested in something and really passionate about it, I've always, you know, completely consumed that thing.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um and how did I end up in food?
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh well I think I've always been a very physical person, I've always been very into uh sports and exercise and movement, and at the same time I've always been very analytical and very structured, mentally, very organized.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I found cooking to be that perfect combination for something extremely physical and also something very uh mentally challenging.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: At the same time, like it brings in that uh element of creativity, which is I think I have a dualistic personality.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm kind of like in a way not like emotionless, but there's a there's a cold, like um calculated, like very focused, concentrated person that has uh an ability to kind of disassociate myself from emotions, and then there's another side that's very warm and very creative and very uh caring, and I think that's where the element of hospitality comes in.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's hospitality, it's creativity, it's figuring out what makes people tick, what makes people feel good.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's how I ended up in cooking.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's very dualistic personality and it's very dualistic type of work.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe just give us a little context on your journey from Princeton to to now to Koi.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I finished university, 23 years old, very, very uh in the prime of my existence.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think like when you finish university, you think you're the best in the world and you've done you've made it, but actually you're you're nothing.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I realized that very quickly when I went into the real world, and I wasn't surrounded by friends anymore, and I didn't have this spoiled like existence of just pleasing myself, and I realized that like actually this is it, like I have to really make it.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I tried some some things that I wasn't really destined for.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: I I worked very briefly in finance, I wouldn't even say I worked in finance, like to work in finance when you're 23 isn't working in finance, that's basically an internship for one or two years.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: So you only really work in finance when you've been doing it for five to ten years, and you're a real banker or something.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: But everyone that gets out of college and goes into a bank or something is really just a trainee.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't like to say that I had this career in finance, I'd say that I I dabbled with it very briefly and I felt like a caged animal, and you know, I had a tremendous amount of energy in in in university, like explosive and like limitless basically.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so to have to sit down and stare at something that like when it was when the work was finished, I wanted to do more, I wanted to do other things, but you're kind of limited at that age, you kind of have to sit there and just like the sitting's hard, like it's genuinely, genuinely hard.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd fantasize about escaping, and that's when I started thinking about cooking.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I was 20, you know, 23, 24.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: I really think that cooking is the only career that I've had, like, because I really started it as my own choice of what I really wanted to do.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_03: I remember you telling me that you were sort of cooking for your when you were just getting the the initial idea, you were cooking for your roommates, I think.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, actually, I've I've actually technically I've been cooking since I was about fourteen.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: My parents, um my dad is Chinese, my mum's Canadian.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: They're quite different culturally.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Chinese families are very food focused, flavor focused.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Canadian families are very unfood focused.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: They like food, but it's very simple.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's bland.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's bland, maybe maybe a bit neutral.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so I felt like the family dynamic needed like honing and optimizing.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: So as a kid, I would use I took over the cooking to make it more delicious, more like intense, so that my dad would be happy.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then I think that's where the like urge to cook came from, this idea of uniting my family, or at least improving the social interaction.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then I think that's where the instinct to cook came from, and then and then I figured this out when I was in when I was working, well, you know, dabbling in finance.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: I read as many books as I could about cooking, and I was very arrogant, and I was like, I read all these books, and I because I was obsessed with it, I remembered every recipe, every detail.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like you could ask me anything about any of these chefs, and I would know exactly which recipe, and I would know which restaurant.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that time there was no Instagram, wasn't that long ago, but that's when books were romantic, and I think I had it there was a romance about cooking, and I had this dream of the beauty of cookbooks and seeing these places that I had I couldn't really see, and now it's all exposed, it's all out there.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: But back then you could really delve into your imagination, and that's when I was like, this is something that I want to get into, and then so I left my career and my mini career in finance and started cooking and that was pretty like uh eye-opening because I realized no one gave a damn that I went to Princeton, no one cared that I had a top degree, that I was roll red, and it was can you peel onions or can't you?
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I felt quite old as well, at twenty-four, twenty-five.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like everyone else was 18, 19, and much faster, much more capable, much more intelligent in in ways that I wasn't.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so I kind of loved that I had to start from nothing again.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, I didn't have any support from my parents and they were a bit upset with me.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, You've worked so hard in this professional world to get to this place in this very safe professional like path, which is gonna set you off onto a really nice mortgage one day and like a stable family with a house, and now you're like doing this, and like are we gonna have we're not gonna pay for your lifestyle so that you can cook.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: So that was the best lesson that I learned was not only having to do what I want, but also figure it out on my own and like get there.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: I had to do all kinds of jobs, like I had to work in like massive catering companies or like uh industrial kitchens just to like make ends meet, pay rent.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um while my friends were back in finance making hundreds of thousands of dollars.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think it was uh that was uh a really good time for me.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: I I really liked that because it was pure work, it was like but it was also like psychologically like why did I have this education if I'm doing this now?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: But I think I think everyone should have that kind of experience in a way.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_03: Well it's it's it's working out for you.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_03: But I think yeah, it's it's interesting.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_03: I know you think of yourself first as an artist, I think, right, as a or as a chef, as an artistic chef.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_03: But you when you talk about the story, you exhibit a lot of the same qualities we would look for in our entrepreneurs, right?
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_03: Obsessiveness, uh complete commitment to like learning everything about the topic, a willingness to go against the grain, you know, particularly I think you know what your the safe the safe choice your parents think you you should choose.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I think hustle, like you hustled your way into into the Noma kitchen with really no really, I think, right to be there, probably at the beginning, right?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, hustle kind of getting in the right room.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_03: So there's a real entrepreneurial drive, I think, to set anything up from scratch, and that includes a high-end restaurant that's a very unique vision.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_03: And I think a lot of people would tell you that you're not gonna succeed in that, you know, you won't pull it off.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's really impossible.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and the odds are against you, right?
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_03: The odds are definitely against you.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um and and but you have a pretty unique philosophy of food that you've developed over the past yeah, I don't know, decade or so.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_03: What how would you try and describe that in in a few words?
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I quit cooking, I hated it.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: I hated working in kitchens.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: The things that I loved about it, obviously, the cooking, but I didn't like the culture of cooking, it was very patriarchal, very hierarchical.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't as meritocratic as I thought it would be.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: And there are a lot of like intense personalities in kitchens, and I think uh yourself, yourself in person.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Myself, but I think like they need to be managed, including myself.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: They need to be called out, they need to be managed, and they need to there needs to be a balance.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I think sometimes high pressurized environments, there's not always someone to say, like, calm down, everyone, like this is just just cooking.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: When you're living in someone else's like um dream, sure, it's and it's really intense, you know, it's probably not the easiest experience.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it depends what kind of personality you are, and I think I'm a dreamer as well.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're also a dreamer and you're in another person's dream, 100%, you you want to do your own thing, and so I think that's more what I'm trying to say.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but I think there are other personalities that like to follow and are really good executors, and that's that's fine too.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: But I just wasn't that type of person I've always been in the world.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_03: You need some of those to make dreams come true, but yeah.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I've always been an individualist, and then I so my best friend asked me if I wanted to open a restaurant and we didn't know what kind of cuisine and then we started looking at his heritage, he's Nigerian, and I tried his food from his uh where he's from.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: We went to Lagos and I got this inspiration for flavour from this part of the world, and it was really inspiration for cultural open-mindedness in cuisine, which I hadn't seen before, and that like Western cuisine, technical cuisine, refined cuisine was all centered around France, Japan, Europe, and that this is the like symbol of refinement.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I realized that there's a whole world out there of flavour, and like cooking is about soul, it's about people, it's about heritage, it's about personality, and I think like I realized that like I could use spice as the catalyst for my creativity and express my heritage, which was really about spice and really about complexity.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of how it started, and then now um it's grown into something very complex and even more undefinable.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'd say if I had to say what the cuisine was today, it's about it's about produce, it's about seasonality, it's about studying seasonality and using bold flavors and spices to give layers of flavor and complexity to seasonal uh cuisine.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: It has its own identity, its own aesthetic.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you'll see in the cuisine references to so many different ideas and things that you've experienced before, but you won't see in in the image of the dish something that you recognize, but you'll taste it.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a poem.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's like each dish is like a poem.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: You'll see something new, you'll hear something new, but there might be like history, time, you know, ideas, culture like embedded within the within the dish.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_03: I remember that I came when you just launched the restaurant, and uh one, I was excited to try the food, but I was also being a supportive friend, and I remember how you spoke about each dish uh and the story of the food of where it had come from and and really imbued it with yeah, I guess a feeling or an identity that was quite was quite unusual.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_03: And that was I think almost seven years ago now.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_03: Since then, you've added, I think, two Michelin, two Michelin stars, you've moved location, uh, you've been, I think, awarded uh recently one of the top 50 restaurants in the world.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_03: What like how how did you, you know, what was the journey from from starting where when I came to to where you are now and how has it changed?
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, doing that type of cuisine, which is very difficult to talk about in a way, but in a way it isn't.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: Guests come to the restaurant, they say, What kind of food are we eating?
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm saying this is you know, it's hyper-seasonal cuisine and it's spice-driven, it's about flavour, yeah, it's about representing cuisine with spice, you know, something very unmarketable.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so we started, and when we opened, it was super busy because people were like, What is this restaurant?
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's quite unique.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Two friends, mixed cultural background, there's an element of like West African flavour to this restaurant because of one of the founders is Nigerian, but it's not a West African restaurant, but a lot of people thought it was.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: So so many Nigerians came to the restaurant, it was full of only Nigerians.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: I remember that, and me.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it was, and everything was getting sent back to the kitchen.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, everything.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Why are we eating sushi?
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Why is the beef raw?
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then we got a really good review from Sunday Times with Giles Coren, and then suddenly the whole restaurant was white.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: It was all uh women from uh different counties around England who'd like Giles Cran, and they all ordered the same thing that was in his review.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: No way, and then that period died out, and then we were dead.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: We had like no guests, we had like one guest at 9 p.m.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a really dark time.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: We were making like we were barely hanging on, and that's when I like realized that I was a very difficult person because I was unwilling to make food that was conventionally recognizable, like it had to be like my own, it had to have integrity and it had to be completely unique in my own thing.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I even remember saying to my business partner, I'm the reason this business is failing.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um what does integrity mean?
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think it means true to yourself and blocking out other voices, and I think that's when the food was its best when we first opened the restaurant because it was pure, it was like my pure soul.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: But as you get older, as you become more affected by what other people think, other people think, you know, lists, Michelin stars, customers, industry, what people think about you, you you start to mould your creativity around what works for society instead of just cooking for one.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so now I think the food is still stunning, but it's in a way it's been moulded by society a little bit more.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: So then the I think the food was the best then because it was in its raw form, but but we were empty.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I basically just held on for dear life and I like pushed and pushed and I pushed the food so hard that like chefs started to notice, so we'd be completely empty, but we'd have a three Michelin star chef from Japan eating, and it was so embarrassing because the restaurant was empty and I had to explain.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, we just had a quiet night.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: We had you know Magnus Nielsen from Favakan eat with his whole team, and he showed up at 8:30 p.m.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: and the restaurant was empty.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's not a good feeling, you know, when VIP guests come in and you're at you're empty.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember just feeling quite frustrated for many years, but I kept going and I think the word in the industry caught fire, and I think the restaurant started to get a cult following with chefs, and then I think that's how the survival um aspect started to kick kick in for the restaurant.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_03: That's that's amazing because that's even like I didn't know that.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_03: I I thought it was all sort of somewhat up and to the right type type type momentum, but so it actually went through kind of some some tough periods.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Big time.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_03: And it's still gone through tough periods, like I guess running running a running uh an institution like you do it is a is challenging.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean there's COVID, there was there's also like the attention span of like people that go to restaurants, and like are you if you're a creative restaurant, people are expecting reinvention all the time.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not reinventing yourself, people don't come back.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you change your concept, people don't come back.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: And we've changed our concept a lot.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: That is the nature of the restaurant, it never stands still.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a demon.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: This is how I would describe it.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a demon that consumes cuisine, it consumes cultures, ideas, and it gets bigger and bigger, and now it's this enormous thing, it's huge.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like the creative, like like energy that's behind Ekoi is this like enormous like wealth of experience and details and like observations and all of these like minutiae of like thoughts go into everything in the restaurant.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: So the way that we look at cabbage now is not how we look how we look at cabbage.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: We used to look at cabbage when we opened the restaurant.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: When we opened the restaurant, we saw it from a very beautiful perspective.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: Roasted and turmeric butter, like stunning.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: But now we see it from like many, many, many other perspectives, which are collective experiences from myself and from my team that we've gathered, so that now we have all this experience and we enrich in the food all the time with it.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how it's different to another restaurant, say French cuisine, which is a more set in time or like set, and it can't really expand beyond that realm.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: You can't really like to an extent you can, but you can't really embed other experiences into a dish that's supposed to represent authentically a specific culture.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: But if you if if you're a restaurant like us that doesn't claim any authenticity other than itself, you can you can use any tool you you like to to um expand the cuisine.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: We call it self-rent referential now, in that when we started the restaurant, we used to look for external uh references to guide the creativity, and I think that's when anyone's starting a creative journey, you need to emulate something.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, of course.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: You need to emulate someone or something, and it's like a patchwork of like different people inspirers, and you look at their styles and you kind of blend them together to create your own style.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: You emulate them that once your style's up and running and you have iterations of executions over the years, now what we do is we we reference old executions, but we we don't recreate them, we combine them and we expand on them, and we use we use previous new ideas as inspirations for current new ideas.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: So they're almost like self-referentially created.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_03: Let's talk about what it's actually like to run a restaurant.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_03: So you're both an artist and the creation of the food, then you are running the restaurant itself as something of an entrepreneur, of course, with your partner taking on some part of that role.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_03: It's an interesting time to be building the business, right?
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very difficult time to be a restaurateur.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's probably the hardest time that there is because we're set up against so many challenges.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: Technology, consumers, lack of um attention span because of the content that's being bombarded with them.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard for people now to differentiate the truth.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: There is no truth.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's all just been atomic bomb with technology.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we've gone from 15 seconds of fame to like 15 milliseconds, I think, isn't it?
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: And like, how can you differentiate from all these videos what's actually good or not?
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, everyone's being paid to influence and create content for so I think it's really difficult, but I think we got in at the right time, just before this started, and we've managed to build a cult following.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I think of businesses now, I call it um real conversions.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: So there's there's a technology conversion where people see you on Instagram, they come, they take the fit pictures, they post about it, and they never come back.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want those kinds of customers.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we do, we welcome them, but generally they don't the ones that tend to come back.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: But if you think about a real conversion customer, that's someone that you make a genuine human connection with, but it has to be so powerful that they will remember it for the rest of their life and they will come back.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that's if you keep on building that, it takes years and years.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: But now the restaurant is full of regulars because we've been doing this, we've been working on real conversions, which is making very strong human connections, friendships with guests, remembering their name, remembering.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: What they like to eat, changing their cutlery, personalizing their cutlery, altering their menus every time they come back.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_03: It's interesting.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_03: It reminds me of Paul Graham, who's the famous uh founder of Y Combinator, and his big advice that's sort of I would say you know embedded in startup lore at this point is you know, find your first 10 to 100 customers that really love you.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_03: Don't don't try and scale to tens of thousands, just find, you know, even ten that just truly, truly love what you do, and then you're on to something.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_03: And uh obviously completely different uh you know f type of building, but kind of the similarities.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's a safer way, and I think it's the only way a restaurant can survive and have legacy.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, if you're competing in the noise out there, you're competing in the world of technology, you're gonna lose a lot of money and you're gonna be fighting this battle that you're never gonna win.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: I would say that it's gotten harder as I've gotten older.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's not a glamorous job.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like, people look at the restaurant, it's it's a beautiful restaurant, they think it's very glamorous, but actually, you know, I work 18-hour days, sometimes 20 hours.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: I work on my days off, you know.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's a labour of love.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's a labour of love.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm heavily involved in the prep of the restaurant, and that's something I've not been able to extricate myself from because the execution of the end product is is related to my um my vision and my like take on what produce we're using, and because we're using such perishable, like my um refined ingredients, especially we do a lot of aging.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: We age a lot of meat, fish, shellfish.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: We work with lion caught fish only, we work with incredible farms in Cornwall.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: All of our beef is handpicked for us, it's grass-fed from one farmer.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we have really amazing relationships, and I've been to all my suppliers, even um our caviar supplier in Munich.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: I drove there to pick our caviar for the restaurant in between days off between services.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_03: It's like so you can't really delegate or scale without losing the essence of what I can to an extent.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like I I have my head chef who's incredible, he's like almost my twin.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: We like execute on a very similar level, but there's some things that he does that I he he I can't do, and there's some things that I do that he can't do.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_03: So when you and I um when I watched the movie, I think it was with with with Ralph Fines.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's called Chef.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: I thought you're talking about uh it's called um The Sh no.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: I know the one you mean the he ends up killing everyone.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_03: He ends up killing everyone.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_03: The menu he ends up he ends up uh he hosts he hosts a wonderful dinner.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_03: You know, there's all these sort of all the characters you sort of just described, the the Instagram people taking pictures of their Instagram, the sycophans, the the true fans.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_03: He makes the meal, I guess, his perfect meal.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um his his his last kind of contribution, and then he kills everyone.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_03: I watched that movie uh and thought thought of you and thought I wouldn't be surprised if Jeremy um that was Jeremy's final fact.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_03: You and I have had some obviously um intense discussions about when we first met each other and both intense personalities.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_03: But how are you are you Ralph in the kitchen?
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely not.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely not, that's not you.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_03: Because you're not because you're much mellow, or you're not gonna kill everyone.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: Combination of both.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um as I said before, I think like I think I can be really brutal, but it's more about the work, the love of the work, the passion, and it's about like sometimes communication can be direct, it can be intense, but overall, like you know, I think I have a very caring personality and I really want to like nurture my team.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think it shows like my there's no one in my kitchen really who's or two new guys joined, but everyone else has been with me for three to six years.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um my last sous chef was with me for seven years.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think people stay for quite a long time with me.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um do you have any specific values that you sort of are explicit about in the kitchen?
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um share them, come on, uncompromising.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uncompromising, yeah, like never relent.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like we'll never ever like not call someone out on something and we'll always push, like every day we always push.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_03: You know, Mike Mike Moritz, the famous uh investor from Sequoia, said when asked how do you build great companies, he said the relentless application of force.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: Pure pressure all the time, pure pressure, but also kindness, like when there's the right moment, when something beautiful happens, I will always say.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: If it's beautiful work that's taken place, we'll always say, but I'll always say when it's not.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: Just pure honesty the whole time.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: Pure honesty.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_03: But um and do you think do you think people are willing to go on the the hundred-hour week journey with you?
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_03: Do you find that?
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_03: No, they're not.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: They're not.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that's okay, because it's not your business, it's not their business, right?
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm and I and I think that like chefs should have chefs today, like young chefs, they they get paid a lot more than they did five, ten years ago.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: The minimum wage has gone up, the standard of living has gone up, as it should have.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: But I think like to work in a restaurant is a very broad topic.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's like saying I'm a musician.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, okay, are you Beyonce or are you like, you know, like just recording some things casually?
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, like it's it's it's the same in kitchens.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's like if you work at somewhere like Icoi, I have extremely skilled, like very, very talented people, and I think they deserve to be paid well.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so we pay them very well, and I think that they should have a good lifestyle as well.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you work at Apple or Google and you're a senior engineer, should you be paid the same as someone at a smaller company that's just starting out?
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe not.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think like hard work and like sacrifice and achieving like a standard should be compensated well.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I think in other industries it is, but in cooking it's not.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so it used to be the thing that you work the higher the restaurant you went, the less the pay, because you were paid in the kudos of having the experience of having been there.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: In some cases, you don't get paid, but if you work in a hotel or you work in a big brasserie or a bistro, you get paid quite well because they need the manpower, and your hours are better because maybe the quality of the work isn't as good, and it's not going to necessarily like take you places.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_03: So it always struck me that Noma, the I think probably the most famous restaurant in the world, uh arguably, I think, I or reportedly never really made a profit, just broke even every year.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_03: And I remember hearing that being like, Wow, that's insane.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_03: That is the that is the absolute pinnacle of food, and they're just making ends meet.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_03: I think he he shut down the restaurant because he said he couldn't really make ends up.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_03: He's still going.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_03: He's still going.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: He's still going.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think he managed to.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's been very challenging for him.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, he's like one of the most inspiring chefs of our generation.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think he's he's in many ways incredible, he's a force of nature.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I think they managed to, you know, I honestly couldn't speak to what they do in their how their business runs, but it's still an inspiration, and so people are still going there.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: One of my chefs who left me recently has gone to go work there, and I think like that is a restaurant that's like demonstrates pure grit and like explosive energy that's just you know turned into something very unique and creative.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_03: And it was way ahead of the curve, I guess, instead of trying to be more mindful about where we get our food from.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_03: Now we think about food, now that's obviously become a yeah, a popular topic in mainstream culture, but it was way ahead of the curve.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_03: Definitely.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_03: And and where where does where does is there a finish line?
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_03: Does is there a point in which you say I've I've achieved I've d what I wanted to achieve, I've delivered to the world what I want to deliver?
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um there's no such thing as perfection, but is there is there is there a moment where you feel you've I feel physically drained and very tired all the time.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like as I'm getting older, it's harder to do what I'm doing.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: I used to recover quicker.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: I watched Novak Djokovic playing tennis.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_03: It's a bit sad.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_03: The great the great man.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: I feel a bit like him.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: Not that I'm as I'm nothing like him.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: He's he's great, but I mean I've done well anyone relatively in my in my field, and I'm pushing still, but I feel like there is a finite time limit to the amount that I can push.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I think at some stage like I might have to change the way in which I work a little bit, but I don't think my journey's over yet.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm kind of keeping an open mind.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think I would I think I'm just living in the moment and I'm still learning and I'm still enjoying the craft of cooking, and there's many things I want to express which I haven't done yet.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: In some ways I feel like I'm just beginning, yeah, and I'm still at the end.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I think there's a lot, there's a lot more to express, and there's a lot more to go, and I think the world is changing so dramatically, it's kind of terrifying.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like people don't even notice how much is changing because they're too distracted.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: But economically, socially, the way we're behaving as people, it's just like, and we're just drones, we're not even taking we're not even noticing it, and so I'm just kind of going along this journey curious.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just curious about how much more will life alter and can I survive it?
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of my daily feeling.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's one for there's a sense of hopelessness in it, there's a sense of hopelessness, and but there's also a sense of humour and like uh enjoyment in the in the process, of course, staying curious.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, the Novak thing, you know, that that I also watched that one.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_03: He was played in the Annex Cinner, and he went on it a couple weeks ago.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_03: And there's this thing in tennis, I think, because it's so intense, like one man mano, mano, a woman against women, what two people on the court, and he you know, it always seemed almost indestructible, right?
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_03: At his peak, it was just like no one could touch it, not Federer, not Nadal.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_03: And then suddenly, at the peak of the seemingly indestructibility, some young fellow or or just or woman just sweeps up and and and kind of breaks the the kind of yeah, I guess the mirage of indestructibility is kind of a fascinating thing to watch.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um where does this drive come from?
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_03: One of the things we've we've noticed with uh many people on this podcast is there often is some deeper drive, oftentimes rooted in childhood.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_03: We had Alain de Botton on the podcast recently talking about that.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um, for you, this this desire to create, this desire to create something beautiful, lasting, leave a legacy, um, be your own person.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_03: Where do you think that comes from?
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um be honest.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: These these issues always relate to childhood, don't they?
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: Typically.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think like it's a combination of things.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_03: I think what was your choice?
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's my energy levels are very high.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm inclined to do something that like allows me to release energy.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think like having a very like mixed background, having parents that are like quite culturally different, has given me a sense of like wanting to unify and bring people together.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's probably the essence of this drive.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's like rooted in this like need to unify, a need to perfect, like create some kind of harmony out of chaos.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I think that's probably where it comes from.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very eastern idea as well.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but let's let's go let's go level deeper on actually running the restaurant as well.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_03: So I don't know, you let's give people a bit of a glimpse behind the curtain.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_03: You've got say 40, 30, 20, 25 young, hungry, brilliant people working for you.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_03: I typically I think the kitchens are quite small, always, at least that's what I sort of glimpse from from the restaurants.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_03: What's that kind of like?
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_03: What's the what's the vibe?
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_03: How do you keep everyone running on time?
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_03: It's it seems like an incredibly complicated, precise operation that needs to be run every night.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: It needs to be running night and day.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: Night and day, yeah.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's a full-time operation because we work with we don't work with big wholesalers when it comes to prime ingredients.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: We work with lion caught fishermen.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: We work with lion caught fish, sorry, um uh this incredible farm, uh butcher, farmer butchery.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: You've created your own unique supply chain.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: We have like very niche ingredients.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: We work with this like um citrus farm in the Pyrenees, um, which we've also driven to.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um we meet all of our suppliers and we try to like develop very close relationships with them.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: The vegetables they're grown um around the UK.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um I take my team to visit them uh at least once a year.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so we really understand nature and we understand like what's like in the moment.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that's also part of the essence of the restaurant.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_03: And on and in like when you're actually like in the kitchen, are you like who's who's telling who what to do?
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_03: How how are you making sure that it's all done?
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: The reason why I talk about the produce is because like that's that is the like life force of like the restaurant takes care of itself.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I think like I that's myself and my head chef and my two sous chefs or four of us are like constantly managing this net this supply chain.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: We can't just show up at 9 a.m.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: and hope that things are there because every day we have people coming in expecting something stunning.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I can't just call a wholesaler and say, Can I get some seabus, please?
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna send me sea bus, but is it gonna be any good?
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then we have to serve like something uh unique, something personal.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: So ours will be uh one stunning Ikajime line core age sea bus that we've ordered two weeks ago and we've aged for that specific day.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: So every day I have different chefs coordinating, ordering specific produce, planning for weeks ahead, sometimes months ahead.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's the first element.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's like the produce planning around the restaurant menu.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: The guests that are coming in.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you were to come in and eat, I know that you've been before because we've had this interview.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to do something quite special for you.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd look at the diary and I'd say, Cameron's coming, we're gonna do him the beautiful chestnut fed pigeon.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get two aging for him and his family, and we'll put those aside.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: So we'd think about that.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the first element of organization is the produce the produce um systems and allocation.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: So every day we meet in the morning, we meet at 7 30, 8 a.m.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: and we go through every single guest, we go through every single dish, and we go through every single garnish.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: There's a weight, there's a gram to everything.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: Sauces, vegetables, caviar, truffle, you name it.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: We've uh dialed in every single dish, all the dietaries, what are people having, what can't they have, what's the substitute.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: So imagine you have this list with hundreds of elements on it, and we meet and we go through every element with every single chef.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: So already the day starts with this like intense focus.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: And if and everyone has a notebook, everyone has to be writing things down, we have a discussion on what we're gonna be doing, we talk about how we're gonna cook things, and sometimes we have new produce coming in, so we need to discuss how it's gonna be prepared.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's a real team effort, it's really intense.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's every morning, and today I missed it because I'm here, but um, so that's I think that's uh how the discipline starts.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's like me being there, my head chef being there at 7:30 every day.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and just having this like meeting.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: But before the meeting, we clean, we scrub the floors, we pack away the produce, and we have a very like rigorous uh way of packing away ingredients.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: So everything comes in is trimmed from the farms.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: We don't just take veg and put it in the fridge, which a lot of people do.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: We take the vegetables, we run them under cold running water to release all the soil, and we trim anything inedible and we prep it to 95% with within um eating uh kind of state, and then we pack it away so it creates minimal work when it comes to the actual execution.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that way this way of working with produce keeps everything in its heightened state.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the discipline that we're instilling every single day.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then the day starts and it's just uh relentless all day.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: There's so much to do.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's never a moment when anyone is like, Can I have something to do?
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: And the workload is is is insane.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I think it's it's a journey that we're on together, and I think people that work with me, I'm very lucky that a lot of them have come from abroad, from Korea, Japan, Australia, Iran, Greece, Italy, USA, Guam, Canada.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like my team is all international.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_03: So some people listening to this podcast might think, well, you know, the world as it is today, why does this all matter?
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's uh you know, a high-end restaurant, you know, serving you know, probably 50 people a day.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_03: Why is it important?
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_03: Why do you think what you do in Aquari does is important for the world?
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think like one thing is we create a community, an amazing community of diners, of people that work in the restaurant, of values.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: We create like this incredible, it's not just a restaurant, it's it's a work ethic.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: The restaurant is a work ethic, it's it's like an emblem for caring for people.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's about hospitality, it's about experience, like that is all we have life experience.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's everyone lives for like what's next and like what's on their phone, but really all you have is what's going on right now.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I always think about think about it.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's quite simple, really.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: Let's make a really like loving, passionate experience for people so that they feel amazing and that they remember this, and it's like that's all they'll have is their memories and their experience.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: So let's give people the best memory that they ever can possibly dream of in terms of food, in terms of warmth, in terms of caring, and that's it, that's what it's about.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_03: Let's go a layer deeper into your actual creative process.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_03: How do you you know you you're staring at uh the I guess proverbial blank plate?
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_03: How do you create a dish or come up with a dish from scratch?
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very difficult question to answer.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um it comes from I think it comes from somewhere very subconscious, somewhere very um deep down.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: Did you think I think no, I think I start with um what in what ingredients inspire me?
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like what ingredients do I see opportunity for deliciousness?
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's the first thing.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like things have to be delicious, things have to be relatable.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I look at seasonality in a very broad spectrum.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: I look at all the raw materials.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: You can't have a dream and an idea of uh an execution without the raw material.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: So you need to start with the raw material first.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's the first thing.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: You can't exist, you can't create in a world without you know the the the building block.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I start with the raw material and I think what raw materials uh are are are in my universe?
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: What raw materials relate to me?
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: What raw materials do I see opportunity in?
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so um let's talk about muscles.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'll talk about one dish and how I create created it.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: We we make this dish.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: So mussels.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think mussels, why do I want to put muscles on the menu?
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because in the UK we have some of the best mussels in the world, right?
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: We have some of the most incredible seafood in the world in the UK.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: UK is not really known for gastronomy as as much as say France, but honestly, I think we have some of the best ingredients on the planet.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_00: We have incredible old farmland, we have amazing, you know, cold waters, we have the the most stunning seafood fish.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's just it's a paradise for chefs.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I started with mussels.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'll start with mussels, this will give you an idea.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought I have to have mussels on the menu because they mean so much to me, they're so sweet.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then I think about sweetness.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: What is it about sweetness that I love about mussels?
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then I think about desserts.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I think wouldn't it be nice to like wouldn't it be like inspiring to kind of take this element of sweetness from the muscles and like create a reference to something dessert-like?
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's that's the the the essence of the idea.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then I think well, what goes well with muscles?
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_00: What does mud what are muscles relate?
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: How do I relate to muscles?
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then my idea, and then I just started thinking about bouillo base.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's my favorite uh French um soup, uh seafood soup.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: Why do I like bouillo base?
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because it has a spice in it, it has a saffron, it has a smoke paprika, it has this like seafood shellfish, you know, um richness and depth to it.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: So this is these are the associations that started to form around mussels.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, okay, I have a bouillo base and I have mussels and I have a dessert.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then I was like, well, if I want to create this essence of dessert like texture with the mussels, why don't I make a creme caramel?
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because creme caramel is a very like silky thing, and I think if I blend the mussels with the spices from the bouillo base, I can create this beautiful velvet texture.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um so we made a creme caramel of mussels and saffron.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so when you taste this dish, you have the like sweetness which and the umami flavour from the mussels, and you have that like smoky uh saffron taste from the buyo base that comes through in the in the seasoning and it's bright orange so it has the texture and has the texture and the uh and the the colour of the flesh of muscles but it's very smooth and very silky and it has a natural sweetness we don't add sugar or or honey uh to it the natural sweetness comes from the muscles um so it started to kind of being incredibly mindful about yeah the building blocks and then you sort of expand from there expand some creative associations from there and perhaps invert some yeah and I think like the idea of a creme caramel came about because we wanted this to be a uh caviar serving so caviar goes really well with eggs and that's why I wanted to incorporate this idea of a creme caramel which is a steamed flan made with eggs so it's an it's a saffron and mussel uh custard essentially that's set like a creme caramel and we serve it with caviar and then we enhance it with more shellfish but so getting back to the question I I just wanted to illustrate it with an idea with a with a specific concept it starts with raw material and then it's raw it has to be raw and material that inspires me that I connect with I cannot pick like a guava I will never just pick a random ingredient and I think what's wrong with a guava guavas are beautiful but I don't have like I don't see beauty in guavas like personal beauty.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I think to answer the question again like in simple terms I think if you want to create something stunning and something beautiful you have to have a relative personal relationship with the thing in itself.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: You can't just say like I think this is where creativity can go wrong is when chefs or musicians or artists like they idealize something that they don't really know.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_00: You really need to know something in an intimate way you need to have a romantic relationship with it.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I romantically I'm romantically involved with muscles because you know I've eaten great muscles in Belgium I've eaten great muscles in England I've eaten great muscles in in you know the south of France and I think like all these different experiences of muscles have like enriched my passion for muscles and it's capturing that feeling and the dreams associated with that feeling and compressing them into the dish that's where that's how the creative process starts.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_03: So we finish every podcast Jeremy by asking our guests what it is about them that have enabled them to rise to the top of the field or their field.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_03: So what is it about you?
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_00: What is it about me?
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think I have a relentless um kind of consistency in what I do.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't stopped since I opened the restaurant in 2017 where we opened we started the process 2015 so 10 years now since I decided this is what I want to do I have not stopped I have not backed down and I will never back down back down.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: No not in an aggressive physical way but you know I always like I say to anyone that wants to start a business you have to fight to the death you have to sacrifice your lifestyle and your friends and your family if you want it to really work.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you and I think like I've just bought into that idea and I've like realized that like sacrifice is the most crucial element especially in the germinal stage of a business it's you cannot say oh but I want to still want to go on this holiday or want to do that.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: No I've never to get something from zero to one requires a hundred percent and I think consistency I've been very consistently disciplined I haven't taken my eye off the ball for ten years I've kept it laser focused for ten years and it's still there.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know I still think about it every day.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_00: I wake up every morning thinking about it and I go to sleep thinking about it.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: And you know and I'm hungry right now and I'm tired and I want to do things that I can't do because I'm too tired and I'm frustrated but I there is a list of things that I need to do for the business and they're gonna happen next weekend and I think that ferocious like drive is what like you know allows things to happen.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks so much for joining us Jeremy thanks for having me