Latest / New Worlder / Episode #96: Gilberto Briceño

Transcript

Episode #96: Gilberto Briceño · New Worlder

0:00
SPEAKER_02: This is the New Worlder Podcast, and I am one of your hosts, Nicholas Gill.
0:05
SPEAKER_02: Co-host Juliana Duque will be joining shortly.
0:08
SPEAKER_02: Today, we are speaking with Gilberto Briseño.
0:13
SPEAKER_02: He is the owner of RLT Cuisine,
0:16
SPEAKER_02: or Road Less Traveled Cuisine,
0:19
SPEAKER_02: in Playa Potrero,
0:21
SPEAKER_02: a small beach town in Guanacaste,
0:23
SPEAKER_02: Costa Rica.
0:25
SPEAKER_02: RLT Cuisine is not a restaurant.
0:28
SPEAKER_02: But it's also not a restaurant.
0:30
SPEAKER_02: There is a restaurant element to it.
0:33
SPEAKER_02: Inside his food lab in a commercial building,
0:36
SPEAKER_02: nowhere near the beach,
0:37
SPEAKER_02: he has four seats inside of the main kitchen.
0:40
SPEAKER_02: Whenever someone wants to come in, he creates a nine-course menu for them out of local ingredients.
0:48
SPEAKER_02: But that is just a small fraction of what RLT Cuisine is.
0:52
SPEAKER_02: It's outdoor pop-up dinners in wild settings, a private chef service,
0:57
SPEAKER_02: product development, and storytelling.
1:00
SPEAKER_02: Gilberto spent years staging at some of the best restaurants in the world,
1:06
SPEAKER_02: learning both the wrong way and the right ways to run a kitchen.
1:10
SPEAKER_02: He saw the toll that high-level kitchens could take on a cook, but that it didn't have to be that way.
1:16
SPEAKER_02: Not only is his concept for RLT cuisine adaptable,
1:21
SPEAKER_02: going with the flow and making whatever idea work within its boundaries and the
1:26
SPEAKER_02: limits of the business,
1:27
SPEAKER_02: but it is kind.
1:30
SPEAKER_02: He treats his staff well.
1:31
SPEAKER_02: There are staff meals provided by a local cook,
1:34
SPEAKER_02: who is now part of the staff,
1:36
SPEAKER_02: and the idea that everyone working there has equal value.
1:40
SPEAKER_02: Social media is also an important part of what Gilberto does.
1:45
SPEAKER_02: His TikTok videos are great and should be a reference for any small culinary business.
1:50
SPEAKER_02: They are less of an advertisement about the business and more of just a way for
1:54
SPEAKER_02: people to stumble onto the way he thinks,
1:57
SPEAKER_02: which in turn helps his business.
2:00
SPEAKER_02: It's also a way to deepen knowledge of cuisine in the area.
2:04
SPEAKER_02: This is a part of Costa Rica that's near a blue zone,
2:08
SPEAKER_02: one of just a handful of places on earth where people live the longest because of
2:11
SPEAKER_02: the local diet.
2:12
SPEAKER_02: but the widespread development along the coast over the last 10 years is wiping it
2:17
SPEAKER_02: away even as they market that very concept of blue zones.
2:22
SPEAKER_02: I have been spending a lot of time in Costa Rica over the past decade,
2:26
SPEAKER_02: and it's a really special place with a complicated history that I can't really
2:30
SPEAKER_02: equate to anywhere else.
2:33
SPEAKER_02: It has the greatest network of accessible small farms in the entire region.
2:38
SPEAKER_02: while also having industrial farms that have some of the world's highest rates of pesticide use.
2:44
SPEAKER_02: There are these incredible local restaurants called sodas.
2:47
SPEAKER_02: They're all over the place.
2:49
SPEAKER_02: But there are also more terrible,
2:51
SPEAKER_02: overpriced,
2:52
SPEAKER_02: ill-conceived tourist restaurants that don't use local ingredients than anywhere I
2:57
SPEAKER_02: can think of.
2:59
SPEAKER_02: Anyway, Gilberto and his Pura Vida vibes is someone that can help shift that momentum.
3:05
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3:07
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3:12
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3:18
SPEAKER_02: Again, that's newworlder.com.
3:21
SPEAKER_02: Also, look for my books, such as the Latin American Cookbook, at bookstores or online.
3:27
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3:31
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3:34
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3:37
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3:42
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3:46
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3:48
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3:52
SPEAKER_02: Enjoy the show.
4:37
SPEAKER_02: Hey Gilberto, how's it going?
4:39
SPEAKER_03: Hey man, long time no see you.
4:42
SPEAKER_03: How's everything going?
4:43
SPEAKER_03: Good.
4:44
SPEAKER_00: Hi, how are you?
4:46
SPEAKER_03: Hi Julie, nice to meet you.
4:48
SPEAKER_03: How are you?
4:49
SPEAKER_00: Nice to meet you too.
4:50
SPEAKER_02: So I feel like I was just there with you in Costa Rica, but it's been a few months, right?
4:56
SPEAKER_02: Like I feel like it was a week ago, but it's been like three months or something.
5:03
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, man, it's been like a while.
5:05
SPEAKER_03: And also, if we think about it, since the first time that you came here, that was like five years ago.
5:11
SPEAKER_03: Well,
5:12
SPEAKER_03: at least the first time we met like five years ago till now,
5:16
SPEAKER_03: it felt like it was yesterday,
5:18
SPEAKER_03: you know,
5:19
SPEAKER_03: life goes so fast.
5:21
SPEAKER_02: Do you remember that the first time I met you?
5:24
SPEAKER_02: It was it was a very funny experience.
5:27
SPEAKER_02: I was
5:28
SPEAKER_02: We were trying to talk about it and understand what exactly happened a few months
5:35
SPEAKER_02: ago when I saw you again.
5:38
SPEAKER_02: But the first time I met you,
5:39
SPEAKER_02: I was in Costa Rica on an assignment and I was just driving around the country
5:44
SPEAKER_02: basically as I seem to do every few years now.
5:49
SPEAKER_02: And I want to say we connected on social media or somebody introduced us and
5:57
SPEAKER_02: And I was kind of coming in your direction and you're like, yeah, just stop by.
6:02
SPEAKER_02: And like, I didn't know what that meant other than like, yeah, I'll stop by.
6:06
SPEAKER_02: And so I drove like in between, I was like coming from the North on my way to San Jose.
6:14
SPEAKER_02: And at the time you were in, where was it?
6:19
SPEAKER_02: Where were you living at again?
6:20
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
6:22
SPEAKER_03: So I was living in my parents' house in Desamparado de Alajuela.
6:26
SPEAKER_03: That's a tiny town, 15 minutes away from the airport.
6:31
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
6:32
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
6:32
SPEAKER_02: You're in Alajuela.
6:33
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, kind of outside of San Jose, central Costa Rica.
6:39
SPEAKER_02: And I get there and then we just like go up to a volcano and
6:46
SPEAKER_02: and make carnitas and eat tacos and you know like had some beers and with like this
6:52
SPEAKER_02: whole crew of people you had with you and and you like got out your guitar and
6:58
SPEAKER_02: start singing and it was just it was funny because i had no idea what to expect and
7:02
SPEAKER_02: like within for like an hour i just had this weird experience with all these people
7:07
SPEAKER_02: i didn't know and uh you know
7:11
SPEAKER_02: No, no, no.
7:12
SPEAKER_02: It was fine.
7:12
SPEAKER_02: I just had this very nice, positive idea of you from that moment.
7:20
SPEAKER_02: And that stayed with me.
7:23
SPEAKER_02: So I've been glad to see you again and again over the years since that and see what you've been doing.
7:30
SPEAKER_02: So let's talk about what you've been doing.
7:32
SPEAKER_02: So right now you're in Guanacaste, the kind of beach area of Costa Rica.
7:38
SPEAKER_02: It's where all the kind of major...
7:41
SPEAKER_02: Tourism developments have been over the last 10 years,
7:44
SPEAKER_02: I guess,
7:44
SPEAKER_02: and a lot of kind of motivation of things happening there is kind of ongoing.
7:53
SPEAKER_02: And you moved there, what, like three years ago, something like that?
8:00
SPEAKER_03: I literally moved here six years ago.
8:02
SPEAKER_03: Six years ago?
8:02
SPEAKER_03: Shit, okay.
8:04
SPEAKER_03: Five, six years ago.
8:05
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's been a while since then.
8:08
SPEAKER_03: Actually,
8:10
SPEAKER_03: after we met in San Jose,
8:11
SPEAKER_03: after we went to the volcano and we do this kind of picnic,
8:16
SPEAKER_03: like six months later,
8:18
SPEAKER_03: I moved to Guanacaste.
8:20
SPEAKER_02: And you have a project, it's called Road Less Traveled, RLT Cuisine.
8:27
SPEAKER_02: Can you explain what that is?
8:30
SPEAKER_03: Well, it is a business model that for me is a bit difficult to explain.
8:37
SPEAKER_03: But I always say to everybody that we are in the experienced business.
8:44
SPEAKER_03: So that means that we mostly cook outdoors for a group of people,
8:50
SPEAKER_03: but we also do private events in people's houses.
8:54
SPEAKER_03: We have a kitchen where we turn into a four-seated restaurant every night.
8:59
SPEAKER_03: So we do a little bit of everything, culinary-wise.
9:05
SPEAKER_03: However,
9:07
SPEAKER_03: since the very beginning of the project,
9:09
SPEAKER_03: we always wanted to support a local community by just doing local food.
9:15
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
9:16
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
9:16
SPEAKER_02: You explained that well.
9:19
SPEAKER_02: But yeah,
9:20
SPEAKER_02: the thing it's,
9:20
SPEAKER_02: it's hard to define exactly it is what you're doing,
9:23
SPEAKER_02: which I think makes it the most interesting.
9:26
SPEAKER_02: First of all, road less traveled is a reference to the Robert Frost poem.
9:31
SPEAKER_02: You know,
9:32
SPEAKER_02: I took the road less traveled and this is definitely not like a typical restaurant
9:41
SPEAKER_02: concept in any form.
9:43
SPEAKER_02: Although I,
9:44
SPEAKER_02: You do have a four-seat restaurant, sort of.
9:47
SPEAKER_02: I mean, not sort of.
9:49
SPEAKER_02: I mean, technically you do.
9:51
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
9:52
SPEAKER_02: you have a four-seat restaurant inside of your kind of food lab,
9:58
SPEAKER_02: the hub of your business,
10:01
SPEAKER_02: I guess.
10:02
SPEAKER_02: Like that's kind of where all the prep is done.
10:04
SPEAKER_02: And it's just a small kitchen with four counter seats inside.
10:11
SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
10:12
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
10:12
SPEAKER_02: And I mean, that's the technically that's the restaurant part of it.
10:17
SPEAKER_02: That's kind of the most normal functioning aspect of it.
10:23
SPEAKER_02: But it's definitely that part of it is what fraction of your business?
10:30
SPEAKER_03: I have to say it's mostly like 35% of it.
10:35
SPEAKER_03: And I think the reason why is because we don't promote it at all.
10:39
SPEAKER_03: So people just,
10:44
SPEAKER_03: I think they find us either on Reddit or word of mouth and they kind of make a
10:51
SPEAKER_03: reservation and they book a place where they don't even know what they're going to
10:55
SPEAKER_03: have for dinner.
10:57
SPEAKER_03: Or as you were mentioned before,
11:00
SPEAKER_03: like they came here and they don't have any expectations or they just take the road
11:05
SPEAKER_03: less travel and they come and find these small,
11:10
SPEAKER_03: tiny little kitchen that is run by local chefs.
11:13
SPEAKER_03: And at the end of the day,
11:15
SPEAKER_03: they kind of receive a surprise,
11:18
SPEAKER_03: you know,
11:19
SPEAKER_03: and that's pretty much the whole concept of it.
11:24
SPEAKER_03: Most of our,
11:25
SPEAKER_03: or the core business model of our company,
11:29
SPEAKER_03: of my startup,
11:31
SPEAKER_03: is basically private events,
11:32
SPEAKER_03: private catering services,
11:36
SPEAKER_03: and outdoor cooking.
11:39
SPEAKER_03: But however,
11:41
SPEAKER_03: the place where I feel more like comfortable doing is cooking whatever I feel that
11:49
SPEAKER_03: moment in my kitchen.
11:51
SPEAKER_03: And it makes...
11:53
SPEAKER_03: no sense sometimes, but for me, it makes like, it makes me feel like a life, you know?
11:59
SPEAKER_02: No.
12:00
SPEAKER_02: So,
12:00
SPEAKER_02: so when I,
12:01
SPEAKER_02: I came the last time I sat down at the restaurant,
12:06
SPEAKER_02: you know,
12:07
SPEAKER_02: and there were three other people there who I didn't know,
12:11
SPEAKER_02: which was fine,
12:12
SPEAKER_02: you know,
12:13
SPEAKER_02: but,
12:13
SPEAKER_02: uh,
12:15
SPEAKER_02: and it was what,
12:17
SPEAKER_02: nine courses.
12:19
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we usually serve nine courses in the food lab, yeah.
12:24
SPEAKER_03: And that's also the beautiful part of it is that sometimes with
12:29
SPEAKER_03: couples come here or solo travelers find us and they decide to make a reservation
12:34
SPEAKER_03: with us,
12:35
SPEAKER_03: they ended up meeting different people in the kitchen.
12:38
SPEAKER_03: Because if you think about it,
12:40
SPEAKER_03: as we don't have any marketing strategy to bring people in,
12:44
SPEAKER_03: every single one of the customers that we have,
12:46
SPEAKER_03: somehow they share something in common,
12:49
SPEAKER_03: even though they don't know.
12:51
SPEAKER_03: And it's the fact that they are looking for hidden gems
12:55
SPEAKER_03: where to eat and where to experience something different than just a regular restaurant.
13:00
SPEAKER_03: The other day,
13:00
SPEAKER_03: for example,
13:01
SPEAKER_03: we received an email from an old client that told us,
13:06
SPEAKER_03: thanks to your experience at the food lab,
13:10
SPEAKER_03: I had the chance to meet this other lady who became my lawyer.
13:16
SPEAKER_03: And you have no idea how helpful she is right now with me and my businesses.
13:21
SPEAKER_03: I was like, wow, we actually created an impact in somebody's heart.
13:27
SPEAKER_03: So that's very meaningful for us as well.
13:30
SPEAKER_02: So Guanacaste, let's just pull back a little.
13:36
SPEAKER_02: The food there, at least along the beach, has been pretty shitty for years.
13:41
SPEAKER_02: I've written about this a few times, but
13:44
SPEAKER_02: Some of the worst meals I've ever had have been at beach restaurants in Costa Rica.
13:50
SPEAKER_02: Just because they're just people that don't know what they're doing.
13:53
SPEAKER_02: They really have no inspiration to run a restaurant or cook.
13:57
SPEAKER_02: But they end up just buying an old restaurant and they want to retire or something.
14:03
SPEAKER_02: And they just throw this weird menu together that has salmon on it and burritos and...
14:11
SPEAKER_02: It's just a bunch of things that don't make a lot of sense for being in,
14:15
SPEAKER_02: you know,
14:16
SPEAKER_02: this country where there's amazingly fresh food and farmers markets all around you.
14:21
SPEAKER_02: And,
14:21
SPEAKER_02: you know,
14:22
SPEAKER_02: artists and fishermen right there,
14:24
SPEAKER_02: you know,
14:25
SPEAKER_02: on the other side of Guanacaste and,
14:28
SPEAKER_02: you know,
14:28
SPEAKER_02: in the Nicoya and everywhere else.
14:31
SPEAKER_02: And it's just weird.
14:33
SPEAKER_02: No one's ever used that.
14:35
SPEAKER_02: But now it's like things are starting to change and there's a lot of other people
14:40
SPEAKER_02: starting to take Costa Rican food,
14:43
SPEAKER_02: look at it with more depth.
14:46
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, even in Guanacaste, your friend, what's his name?
14:50
SPEAKER_02: Valario at Huacas.
14:52
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
14:53
SPEAKER_02: It's like, yeah, I had an amazing meal there at Huacas in Huacas.
14:58
SPEAKER_02: In Nosara, right?
14:59
SPEAKER_02: It's in Nosara.
15:00
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, in Nosara.
15:01
SPEAKER_02: This is like an amazingly rich country in terms of its cuisine.
15:05
SPEAKER_02: And,
15:06
SPEAKER_02: you know,
15:06
SPEAKER_02: the amount of biodiversity and the freshness of the product and the accessibility
15:12
SPEAKER_02: of some amazing ingredients is just really abundant.
15:17
SPEAKER_02: And nobody's done shit with it.
15:19
SPEAKER_02: So it's like you can't just come in there and build a...
15:25
SPEAKER_02: 12-seat Michelin-level counter-style restaurant and expect people to get it.
15:33
SPEAKER_02: I think you have to do something that's a little more adaptable and a little more
15:38
SPEAKER_02: creative to kind of make it work.
15:41
SPEAKER_03: Definitely.
15:41
SPEAKER_03: You know, the interesting thing for me is that if we have more local chefs that have your mindset,
15:53
SPEAKER_03: I think the whole province would be different and would actually create a better
15:58
SPEAKER_03: and a bigger impact to the local economy.
16:02
SPEAKER_03: However,
16:02
SPEAKER_03: I do consider that at least in the coastline of the country,
16:07
SPEAKER_03: a big percentage of the restaurants or business are 100% commercial or they are
16:15
SPEAKER_03: developed with a commercial purpose and they have no value more than feeding
16:22
SPEAKER_03: potatoes and burgers to tourists.
16:26
SPEAKER_03: One of my favorite videos from old times is Ferran Adrián talking about
16:33
SPEAKER_03: uh he's making a comparison between the culinary world and and a bunch of grapes so
16:42
SPEAKER_03: while he's talking he's removing grapes from the whole vine and he's telling to his
16:49
SPEAKER_03: crowd like well let's imagine that these amount of restaurants that symbolize this
16:54
SPEAKER_03: amount of grapes are actually commercial commercials and those are the shitty ones
16:59
SPEAKER_03: and those are
17:00
SPEAKER_03: You know, the institutions and schools.
17:03
SPEAKER_03: And at the end of the talk, he ended up with just one little seed from a whole vine of grapes.
17:10
SPEAKER_03: And then he ended up saying, like, this is the kind of restaurants that are trying to generate an impact.
17:18
SPEAKER_03: But if you compare the seed with the whole vine, it's probably nothing, right?
17:25
SPEAKER_03: But the beautiful thing is that what happened with that seed is that if you throw
17:29
SPEAKER_03: it away,
17:30
SPEAKER_03: you can grow multiple vines.
17:33
SPEAKER_03: And that you see from very back in the day with the relationship of chefs and apprentices,
17:40
SPEAKER_03: of course,
17:43
SPEAKER_03: not everybody had the chance to,
17:46
SPEAKER_03: create a more meaningful approach to food or nobody,
17:52
SPEAKER_03: or unfortunately not everybody is using food as a tool to actually generate an impact.
18:00
SPEAKER_03: But yeah, we can see that in the whole province.
18:03
SPEAKER_03: Most of the restaurants here, they don't care about quality.
18:06
SPEAKER_03: Most of the restaurants here are basically a copy of the
18:13
SPEAKER_03: doing easy stuff from the major suppliers around here.
18:17
SPEAKER_03: And chefs are used to just raise their phones and make some phone calls to get
18:23
SPEAKER_03: whatever they want just to assemble it in their kitchens.
18:27
SPEAKER_03: And I also think that the amount of businesses that are owned by Costa Ricans in
18:34
SPEAKER_03: the coastline of Guanacaste,
18:37
SPEAKER_03: at least in this area,
18:38
SPEAKER_03: are just a minority.
18:40
SPEAKER_03: We're pretty sure that we are
18:42
SPEAKER_03: a minority in the area.
18:45
SPEAKER_03: Most of the restaurants here are owned by people from other countries that they
18:49
SPEAKER_03: don't have the values that we have or they don't have the vision.
18:54
SPEAKER_03: It's quite different.
18:54
SPEAKER_03: It's quite interesting when we think about it.
18:58
SPEAKER_03: The local restaurants that you can find here in the area are the local sodas.
19:03
SPEAKER_03: Usually
19:06
SPEAKER_03: the backyard of someone who has been living in the area for ages and with limited resources,
19:13
SPEAKER_03: they open a kitchen that serves breakfast and lunch.
19:18
SPEAKER_03: However,
19:18
SPEAKER_03: the infrastructure that you can find in sodas and the investment that people do in
19:25
SPEAKER_03: sodas is way lower than an investment that someone do
19:33
SPEAKER_03: to building a fancy restaurant in a fancy place and to just deliver burgers and fries.
19:40
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and it's crazy.
19:41
SPEAKER_02: And the sodas are amazing.
19:44
SPEAKER_02: We've talked about this a lot,
19:45
SPEAKER_02: but the sodas are so good and they're such a reflection of regional food in Costa Rica.
19:51
SPEAKER_02: But then, as you said, along the beachfront, along all these places where everybody's going,
19:58
SPEAKER_02: in places like Nicoya,
19:59
SPEAKER_02: which is a blue zone,
20:01
SPEAKER_02: a blue zone,
20:02
SPEAKER_02: one of the healthiest places on earth to eat,
20:05
SPEAKER_02: people aren't eating the products from the zone.
20:10
SPEAKER_02: That's mind blowing to me in places like Santa Teresa,
20:13
SPEAKER_02: where this like model of healthy lifestyle,
20:20
SPEAKER_02: like you don't see anyone eating corn squash and beans.
20:24
SPEAKER_02: You know,
20:25
SPEAKER_02: it's like,
20:25
SPEAKER_02: it's insane to me that they're there in this place,
20:30
SPEAKER_02: in the most beautiful rainforest imaginable,
20:33
SPEAKER_02: and they're eating,
20:36
SPEAKER_02: you know,
20:36
SPEAKER_02: acai bowls and shit like that.
20:40
SPEAKER_02: You know, not to knock acai, but I mean, it has a place, but just probably not so much in Costa Rica.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I had a question about that too.
20:51
SPEAKER_00: It's...
20:53
SPEAKER_00: It's always puzzling why to try to understand why in places that are so biodiverse,
21:01
SPEAKER_00: especially a place like Costa Rica,
21:04
SPEAKER_00: so close to the beach and the rainforest with all these offer of fruits and vegetables.
21:14
SPEAKER_00: For what you remember, why local people were not eating naturally all these or they were because
21:23
SPEAKER_00: You know, tourism, it's a different phenomenon and maybe you can explain that in a different way.
21:29
SPEAKER_00: But I was curious too about locals.
21:32
SPEAKER_00: Were they eating these things before?
21:34
SPEAKER_00: But we don't know.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: Or are they, so these fruits are something that it doesn't have a status.
21:43
SPEAKER_00: So,
21:43
SPEAKER_00: you know,
21:44
SPEAKER_00: this denial about what it's in the place,
21:46
SPEAKER_00: wanting what it's coming from outside that we know it's part of it.
21:49
SPEAKER_00: But I don't know.
21:51
SPEAKER_00: I'm just curious if,
21:53
SPEAKER_00: It is true that locals were not actually eating these things because,
21:59
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
22:00
SPEAKER_00: generalizations about these are dangerous too,
22:04
SPEAKER_00: right?
22:04
SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, no one was eating this before and these fruits were not known.
22:09
SPEAKER_00: It's not true.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: You know,
22:11
SPEAKER_00: maybe it's something in between for what you remember and what you have studied
22:17
SPEAKER_00: apart from people coming to these hotels,
22:21
SPEAKER_00: right?
22:22
SPEAKER_00: I'm curious about locals.
22:24
SPEAKER_00: Before, at least.
22:25
SPEAKER_00: And now?
22:26
SPEAKER_03: Well, I've been in the area since six years ago.
22:31
SPEAKER_03: And all the information that I can collect by talking with local people is that,
22:37
SPEAKER_03: indeed,
22:38
SPEAKER_03: back in the day,
22:39
SPEAKER_03: life used to be more simple.
22:41
SPEAKER_03: And they used to have more land to grow their own things.
22:45
SPEAKER_03: However...
22:48
SPEAKER_03: Well, people started selling land, big hotels started creating massive projects.
22:57
SPEAKER_03: Eventually,
22:58
SPEAKER_03: when Acaste became a touristic center,
23:02
SPEAKER_03: and it doesn't matter if you had horses or you were a bilingual teacher,
23:12
SPEAKER_03: you ended up working for tourism.
23:15
SPEAKER_03: And the massive growth that Guanacaste had and the land,
23:21
SPEAKER_03: the locals lost by selling to others actually affected the way they feed themselves.
23:29
SPEAKER_03: The first time I came to Guanacaste, I was like four years old.
23:32
SPEAKER_03: My uncles, they used to own a property by Liberia.
23:36
SPEAKER_03: I remember that that farm didn't have electricity.
23:39
SPEAKER_03: That farm didn't have any drinkable water.
23:41
SPEAKER_03: We used to go there.
23:43
SPEAKER_03: to camp as a family,
23:47
SPEAKER_03: not even like for a social media break,
23:49
SPEAKER_03: because social media was not even a thing,
23:51
SPEAKER_03: but just like to get away far from the city.
23:54
SPEAKER_03: And it was a beautiful journey.
23:57
SPEAKER_03: I remember that we used to cook in the open fire in that farm.
24:00
SPEAKER_03: They used to grow corn and beans, and they even used to hunt some stuff that I cannot mention in public.
24:09
SPEAKER_03: But it was quite fun, you know?
24:14
SPEAKER_03: But after my early ages,
24:19
SPEAKER_03: when I cast the trips or the trips that I used to do when I was a kid,
24:23
SPEAKER_03: like a five year old kid,
24:25
SPEAKER_03: And that was like the memories that I have, you know, more like into the wild kind of thing.
24:31
SPEAKER_03: But now when you come here or since the early 2000s,
24:38
SPEAKER_03: when you come here,
24:39
SPEAKER_03: you could see McDonald's and Burger King's and Papa John's and whatever,
24:45
SPEAKER_03: all those big chains.
24:46
SPEAKER_03: And eventually you find
24:51
SPEAKER_03: I personally think that this Blue Zone idea of Guanacaste is not real.
24:58
SPEAKER_03: It's more like a marketing strategy to make people buy land here.
25:03
SPEAKER_03: It sounds sad,
25:05
SPEAKER_03: but that's personally what I think about it because how come you call a Blue Zone a
25:12
SPEAKER_03: place where there's a Subway,
25:14
SPEAKER_03: a Domino's Pizza,
25:16
SPEAKER_03: a KFC,
25:17
SPEAKER_03: a Burger King,
25:18
SPEAKER_03: a McDonald's in the same block?
25:22
SPEAKER_03: And it's all concrete.
25:25
SPEAKER_03: So it doesn't make any sense, at least for me.
25:28
SPEAKER_03: And you have to go very deep to find real food.
25:34
SPEAKER_03: It's very sad.
25:35
SPEAKER_03: The fact that only the old ladies who has this wisdom and knowledge is probably the
25:42
SPEAKER_03: last generation of people that we will have with that knowledge.
25:45
SPEAKER_03: Back in the day, we used to heal people.
25:48
SPEAKER_03: our bodies with plants, with herbs, with local herbalism medicine.
25:53
SPEAKER_03: But now you see drugstores and pharmacies everywhere.
25:58
SPEAKER_03: So that approach to nature and food and the concept that food can actually heal you
26:05
SPEAKER_03: is kind of getting lost.
26:07
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's sad, but it is also nice to see different
26:15
SPEAKER_03: cooks doing their things from their kitchens to try to doesn't let that tradition
26:23
SPEAKER_02: pass away as sad as it is I think it just means there's there are big opportunities
26:31
SPEAKER_02: you know to do something with that thing there are still these old women like the
26:37
SPEAKER_02: woman in Guatillo who Maria Elena who makes the arroz de maiz that will you know
26:45
SPEAKER_02: hear anything, I'm sure.
26:46
SPEAKER_02: And,
26:48
SPEAKER_02: you know,
26:48
SPEAKER_02: and these people that still kind of hold onto these traditions and are still there
26:54
SPEAKER_02: and they can still have a voice and,
26:56
SPEAKER_02: you know,
26:56
SPEAKER_02: and help,
26:57
SPEAKER_02: help guide what comes next instead of,
26:59
SPEAKER_02: you know,
27:00
SPEAKER_02: these,
27:01
SPEAKER_02: the people in Barcello or whatever,
27:04
SPEAKER_02: I don't know,
27:05
SPEAKER_02: whatever big chain hotel that is dictating land use.
27:09
SPEAKER_02: It's, it's opportunity.
27:11
SPEAKER_02: And I think the,
27:13
SPEAKER_02: you can't just come in as a fine dining chef and change things with 10 people at night,
27:19
SPEAKER_02: but you can,
27:20
SPEAKER_02: I think what you're doing is spreading a lot of different ideas in a lot of
27:24
SPEAKER_02: different ways,
27:26
SPEAKER_02: which makes it super interesting to me because I don't think a lot of people have
27:30
SPEAKER_02: kind of tried what you're doing.
27:33
SPEAKER_02: Taking a step back, like what's,
27:36
SPEAKER_02: day-to-day going on at like peak season in your operation?
27:40
SPEAKER_02: Like aside of people coming in,
27:43
SPEAKER_02: four people a night to dinner inside the food lab,
27:47
SPEAKER_02: what's kind of the operation look like?
27:50
SPEAKER_03: Well,
27:50
SPEAKER_03: man,
27:51
SPEAKER_03: the beautiful thing is that from,
27:54
SPEAKER_03: this is not Gilberto as a chef talking,
27:56
SPEAKER_03: it's Gilberto as an entrepreneur talking.
27:59
SPEAKER_03: The beautiful thing about this project is that I didn't make a business plan.
28:06
SPEAKER_03: to make it happen.
28:08
SPEAKER_03: At the very, very beginning, it was just me cooking for different clients.
28:15
SPEAKER_03: I didn't have the money.
28:17
SPEAKER_03: I didn't have the knowledge to ask for money.
28:19
SPEAKER_03: I come from a very humble family, so my parents, they couldn't support me financially.
28:26
SPEAKER_03: They supported me with good vibes and good energy like nobody else.
28:28
SPEAKER_03: But that's the reason why when I came to Costa Rica after almost five years
28:33
SPEAKER_03: traveling around the world and doing internships,
28:35
SPEAKER_03: I wanted to have a restaurant.
28:37
SPEAKER_03: But I didn't know how to get the money to open a restaurant.
28:40
SPEAKER_03: So I started working.
28:42
SPEAKER_03: Actually, I started doing pop-ups in my parents' house in Desamparado de la Juela.
28:47
SPEAKER_03: And that's how we met.
28:47
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
28:48
SPEAKER_02: What was that called?
28:50
SPEAKER_03: It was called Vestigio.
28:51
SPEAKER_02: Vestigio.
28:52
SPEAKER_02: It was just like you and your friends doing pop-ups at your parents' house.
28:55
SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
28:56
SPEAKER_03: And the reason why I did those pop ups is it was because it was very difficult for
29:02
SPEAKER_03: me to to get a job because nobody put attention to my resume.
29:11
SPEAKER_03: You know, my resume was basically this
29:16
SPEAKER_03: 19-year-old guy that work in Sweden,
29:20
SPEAKER_03: Norway,
29:20
SPEAKER_03: Denmark,
29:21
SPEAKER_03: Spain,
29:22
SPEAKER_03: France,
29:22
SPEAKER_03: Chile,
29:23
SPEAKER_03: Bolivia,
29:23
SPEAKER_03: Argentina,
29:24
SPEAKER_03: Peru and Brazil in four years.
29:25
SPEAKER_03: Like I was jumping from one place to another one every four months for visa purposes.
29:30
SPEAKER_03: So nobody pay attention to my curriculum.
29:34
SPEAKER_03: And I started doing pop-ups and recorded them and uploading my videos to LinkedIn
29:40
SPEAKER_03: because I wanted someone to see what I was capable of doing.
29:44
SPEAKER_03: That's how I ended up in Guanacaste because the CEO of a major project here saw the
29:50
SPEAKER_03: videos and they actually hired me as a creative chef for the company.
29:56
SPEAKER_03: And it was the first time in my life
29:59
SPEAKER_03: working in corporate and also making money.
30:04
SPEAKER_03: Because all the internships that I had, I was basically working for fun.
30:10
SPEAKER_03: So the reason why I started this project is because I started cooking private for my clients.
30:17
SPEAKER_03: And eventually, my agenda became saturated.
30:22
SPEAKER_03: So I hired someone to help me with the cleaning.
30:25
SPEAKER_03: Then I hired someone to help me with the cutting and dicing.
30:29
SPEAKER_03: Then I hired someone to help me with the cooking.
30:32
SPEAKER_03: Out of nowhere,
30:33
SPEAKER_03: I had to hire someone to help me with the bookings and the managing of the business
30:38
SPEAKER_03: because I was getting crazy managing my emails and stuff.
30:42
SPEAKER_03: I hated that.
30:44
SPEAKER_03: And then...
30:46
SPEAKER_03: We were making a decent amount of money working every single day.
30:53
SPEAKER_03: And I was burned out with payrolls and paying people.
31:02
SPEAKER_03: So I had a conversation with my mom.
31:05
SPEAKER_03: My mom is an accountant.
31:08
SPEAKER_03: And she decided to enroll my company.
31:11
SPEAKER_03: Before my company was a thing, you know, it was just Gilberto cooking.
31:15
SPEAKER_03: And she became my CFO.
31:17
SPEAKER_03: And since she came to my business,
31:21
SPEAKER_03: I had the feeling that before my mom came and after my mom came,
31:26
SPEAKER_03: we made this jump from being a small business to an actual company.
31:31
SPEAKER_03: Right now, we are 12 people working here in the roadless travel business, which is a lot.
31:36
SPEAKER_03: And we started two years ago.
31:39
SPEAKER_03: The beautiful thing is that during the high season,
31:42
SPEAKER_03: a regular day is we have four different parties outside where all of the groups
31:50
SPEAKER_03: that hire our services,
31:53
SPEAKER_03: they choose one of our menus.
31:56
SPEAKER_03: We don't have a lot of menus, but we do love to tell stories and we do love to make tasty menus.
32:03
SPEAKER_03: And we also think that that's the best way you can do to actually brag about the food that you have here.
32:09
SPEAKER_03: And it kind of makes sense because it's fun to do it.
32:13
SPEAKER_03: We don't do fine dining with, you know, these fancy techniques.
32:17
SPEAKER_03: No, we just put the right amount of food in the right presentation in the table.
32:24
SPEAKER_03: We don't complicate that much.
32:25
SPEAKER_03: We just try to make things as tasty as possible.
32:29
SPEAKER_02: But I mean, it's not like there's no caviar luxury ingredients anywhere.
32:33
SPEAKER_02: It's just local products, right?
32:35
SPEAKER_02: Like, I mean, some of them, just things from local farms, some things you forage.
32:41
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
32:41
SPEAKER_02: You just create menus out of them.
32:43
SPEAKER_03: The seafood changes every single day.
32:46
SPEAKER_03: And we have, I always say it in Espanol, that we have a columna vertebral.
32:53
SPEAKER_03: We have a spine.
32:55
SPEAKER_03: We have a... An axis.
32:57
SPEAKER_03: A spine.
32:58
SPEAKER_03: A spine.
33:00
SPEAKER_03: And then we change things.
33:02
SPEAKER_03: Every day.
33:02
SPEAKER_00: But how would you describe the way you were cooking when you started with Gilberto
33:08
SPEAKER_00: cooking and,
33:08
SPEAKER_00: you know,
33:09
SPEAKER_00: the seed of this?
33:11
SPEAKER_00: And in contrast with now, or it's pretty much the same.
33:16
SPEAKER_00: What do you think about that?
33:18
SPEAKER_03: Well...
33:19
SPEAKER_03: I empower my staff and I try to, I try to work on them as a leader, not as a chef.
33:32
SPEAKER_03: I doesn't propose things in my kitchen, like from the ego point of view of a chef.
33:37
SPEAKER_03: I don't want them to emulate my recipes.
33:39
SPEAKER_03: I also want them to feel creative and do
33:43
SPEAKER_03: whatever they consider is the best for each product that we have.
33:48
SPEAKER_03: So,
33:50
SPEAKER_03: of course,
33:51
SPEAKER_03: from a business point of view,
33:53
SPEAKER_03: there are some dishes that we can play around and do different things every single day.
33:59
SPEAKER_03: There are some others that are like our classics that people are expecting,
34:02
SPEAKER_03: so we keep them the way they are.
34:04
SPEAKER_03: But we understand that
34:08
SPEAKER_03: by living in this tiny beach town of Guanacaste,
34:12
SPEAKER_03: where we don't have the infrastructure of delivery that well organized,
34:21
SPEAKER_03: it obligates,
34:23
SPEAKER_03: it forces us to be creative and change and adapt to whatever nature provide us.
34:31
SPEAKER_03: For example, we never, ever, ever
34:35
SPEAKER_03: decorate or garnish dishes with microgreens but we go to the beach and we collect
34:40
SPEAKER_03: purslane and we put you know like tiny little purslane on top of things and
34:46
SPEAKER_03: It actually makes a lot of sense,
34:48
SPEAKER_03: more than just buying a tray of plastic and microgreens to make a dish look pretty.
34:54
SPEAKER_03: But that's like in the high season, we cook outside in nature.
35:01
SPEAKER_03: We cook at people's houses.
35:03
SPEAKER_03: We have double seating at our food lab.
35:07
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes we even do cooking classes that allowed us to communicate directly with people about the
35:13
SPEAKER_03: exuberant abundance of products that Guanacaste has.
35:16
SPEAKER_03: And it's a very flexible business model.
35:21
SPEAKER_03: The interesting thing is that I've realized that it's sort of a new business model
35:27
SPEAKER_03: for the chefs that are working for me because the first day they come to work,
35:33
SPEAKER_03: they are expecting a rush of service.
35:37
SPEAKER_03: And we don't have a rush of service.
35:38
SPEAKER_03: We don't have lunchtime.
35:39
SPEAKER_03: We don't have, you know, like we're not expecting X amount of people for dinner all at once.
35:46
SPEAKER_03: We don't have, it's not a restaurant vibe.
35:50
SPEAKER_03: It's more, we have all day to prepare mise en place, to organize ourselves, to do a lot of meetings.
35:57
SPEAKER_03: And it allowed us to cook something personal with an intention for the group of
36:04
SPEAKER_03: people that we're cooking.
36:06
SPEAKER_03: And also the beautiful thing about that is that by cooking with an intention,
36:12
SPEAKER_03: you can put so much love and passion to everything you do because you can organize
36:16
SPEAKER_03: yourself in an incredible way.
36:20
SPEAKER_03: And also we adapt every single one of our recipes if someone is vegan or
36:24
SPEAKER_03: gluten-free or has any dietary restrictions.
36:27
SPEAKER_03: And it makes the experience more intimate and personalized.
36:30
SPEAKER_03: And that's kind of fun.
36:33
SPEAKER_00: Kind of.
36:35
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes it's not that fun, but it is fun.
36:38
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
36:38
SPEAKER_02: So I was going to ask,
36:39
SPEAKER_02: was your experience,
36:42
SPEAKER_02: you spent like four years at all these top restaurants around the world,
36:47
SPEAKER_02: amazing ones like Favikin,
36:49
SPEAKER_02: right?
36:49
SPEAKER_02: Or Favikin, Dom, all these places in France and things.
36:54
SPEAKER_02: And I mean, you learned to cook at a very high level.
36:57
SPEAKER_02: Was that experience, did it turn you off from cooking?
37:01
SPEAKER_02: at that way?
37:02
SPEAKER_02: Did you realize when you were at all these places that, no, I don't want a restaurant like that?
37:10
SPEAKER_03: Man, it is very interesting.
37:13
SPEAKER_03: Yesterday I was talking to some of my friends and I was telling them that traveling
37:22
SPEAKER_03: is such an important thing for me.
37:24
SPEAKER_03: Cooking and traveling,
37:26
SPEAKER_03: they both are my biggest passions because the beautiful thing about traveling is
37:30
SPEAKER_03: that
37:31
SPEAKER_03: When you return home,
37:33
SPEAKER_03: you feel that everybody is like the same,
37:34
SPEAKER_03: but your mindset changes a lot and you have a better understanding of life,
37:40
SPEAKER_03: you know.
37:42
SPEAKER_03: Faviken, for example, was a place that changed my mind.
37:47
SPEAKER_03: And if you think about it,
37:48
SPEAKER_03: I had to go to the very,
37:50
SPEAKER_03: very end of the world to understand the value of local cuisine.
37:56
SPEAKER_03: When I was in fabric and foraging for mushrooms,
37:59
SPEAKER_03: for herbs,
38:00
SPEAKER_03: for berries in the middle of the woods,
38:04
SPEAKER_03: I was thinking about the time when I was younger and I used to arrive to my
38:11
SPEAKER_03: parents' house,
38:13
SPEAKER_03: opening the fridge and telling my dad,
38:15
SPEAKER_03: dad,
38:15
SPEAKER_03: come on,
38:15
SPEAKER_03: there's nothing to eat here.
38:18
SPEAKER_03: And I remember that my dad, he used to grab a machete.
38:20
SPEAKER_03: Oh, we used to live in the city, near to the airport.
38:24
SPEAKER_03: It's not the rural community, you know, in the city.
38:28
SPEAKER_03: And he used to grab his machete,
38:30
SPEAKER_03: cut a guanabana,
38:31
SPEAKER_03: which is a sour soup,
38:33
SPEAKER_03: some yucca,
38:34
SPEAKER_03: some sugar cane,
38:35
SPEAKER_03: some limes from the garden,
38:37
SPEAKER_03: some green mangoes.
38:38
SPEAKER_03: And he used to make me like a mango ceviche, a guanabana smoothie, a fried cassava.
38:44
SPEAKER_03: And he was telling me like, my, there is food outside.
38:46
SPEAKER_03: You just need to go and grab it.
38:49
SPEAKER_03: At that time, I felt that I was insulted by my dad.
38:55
SPEAKER_03: But he was giving me a life lesson.
38:57
SPEAKER_03: He told me about farm-to-table before farm-to-table was actually a thing.
39:02
SPEAKER_03: and i have to go all the way to sweden to freezing my ass off to realize how
39:07
SPEAKER_03: valuable was what my dad was doing back in the day you know so of course i i came
39:14
SPEAKER_03: to the to i came to a state of mind where i have the feeling in my in my heart that
39:19
SPEAKER_03: i needed to return to costa rica it was not easy to start cooking in costa rica
39:25
SPEAKER_03: because
39:27
SPEAKER_03: I came from, you know, the Disneyland of restaurants to my parents' backyard, man.
39:34
SPEAKER_03: And so,
39:36
SPEAKER_03: of course,
39:37
SPEAKER_03: those,
39:37
SPEAKER_03: I mean,
39:40
SPEAKER_03: I also realize how important it is to be a good leader because in those restaurants
39:48
SPEAKER_03: where I used to work,
39:49
SPEAKER_03: every single chef that used to work with me at that time,
39:53
SPEAKER_03: when I was an intern,
39:54
SPEAKER_03: right?
39:55
SPEAKER_03: every single one of them, they were like a million times better than me.
40:00
SPEAKER_03: So there was a beautiful competition inside those restaurants that push you to
40:06
SPEAKER_03: become the better version of yourself.
40:09
SPEAKER_03: Right now, these days, some of those chefs that I used to work with, they now have a Michelin star.
40:14
SPEAKER_03: They are now in top rankings of restaurants.
40:18
SPEAKER_03: They continue with their projects.
40:20
SPEAKER_03: They don't work for chefs anymore.
40:22
SPEAKER_03: Now they are the chefs.
40:23
SPEAKER_03: Now they have their own proposals from their kitchen.
40:26
SPEAKER_03: And that's very inspiring.
40:29
SPEAKER_03: But here in Costa Rica, yeah, I had this kind of...
40:34
SPEAKER_03: reality shock when I first came to Guanacaste and I started working with a group of
40:39
SPEAKER_03: people inside an old,
40:41
SPEAKER_03: dirty,
40:42
SPEAKER_03: disgusting kitchen.
40:44
SPEAKER_03: And nobody even said oído or, you know, there was no just chef culture.
40:50
SPEAKER_03: And I was like, oh, my God, man.
40:53
SPEAKER_03: I came from the champions, you know, like the Champions League of football to third division team-wise.
41:04
SPEAKER_03: It was for sure.
41:06
SPEAKER_02: You told me also like a lot of shitty experiences you had cooking in these kitchens too,
41:12
SPEAKER_02: like especially as a stagiaire.
41:14
SPEAKER_02: Like when the whole stagiaire situation was going down like a few years ago,
41:19
SPEAKER_02: I thought of you immediately because some of the experiences you had were like horrendous.
41:26
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you want to get into it or not.
41:29
SPEAKER_02: So you weren't a rich kid traveling the world, working in all these restaurants.
41:35
SPEAKER_02: Your parents essentially,
41:37
SPEAKER_02: they rented out a room in their house and with that money they gave you and they
41:45
SPEAKER_02: rented it out like an Airbnb.
41:46
SPEAKER_02: So like that income from this went to you for your culinary education as you see fit,
41:53
SPEAKER_02: which I think is like a beautiful,
41:57
SPEAKER_02: lovely gesture.
41:59
SPEAKER_02: But, and then you go, you know, you work in all these fancy restaurants and
42:04
SPEAKER_02: but some of them, they were like complete dicks.
42:07
SPEAKER_02: They were like,
42:08
SPEAKER_02: you told me one experience you had where you went to like,
42:13
SPEAKER_02: I think a three Michelin star restaurants and we don't have to say what it is that
42:20
SPEAKER_02: they basically saw you and they were just like,
42:23
SPEAKER_02: you know,
42:23
SPEAKER_02: just clean the trash can with this toothbrush or something like that.
42:27
SPEAKER_02: But at the same time, you,
42:29
SPEAKER_02: you just kind of shrugged it off and you still got a lot out of that experience.
42:34
SPEAKER_02: Could you explain what you were thinking when you meet these people like this and
42:41
SPEAKER_02: what did you do to kind of get something out of it?
42:46
SPEAKER_03: Well, basically, when I immersed myself into this kind of environment, my daily motivation was
42:59
SPEAKER_03: Well, I'm the person who... I'm the one making the decision to be here.
43:05
SPEAKER_03: And there's two ways of seeing the situation.
43:09
SPEAKER_03: I can either be mad and upset because I'm cleaning a garbage room with a toothbrush
43:15
SPEAKER_03: on my knees for 18 hours a day.
43:18
SPEAKER_03: Or I can use this time to...
43:22
SPEAKER_03: understand what's going on in the restaurant.
43:24
SPEAKER_03: So I just started a mental game while cleaning the garbage room and I was trying to
43:30
SPEAKER_03: memorize how many freezers they had in the restaurant,
43:34
SPEAKER_03: which brands those freezers were,
43:38
SPEAKER_03: what time does the macro truck,
43:41
SPEAKER_03: the suppliers arrive.
43:43
SPEAKER_03: who was the chef, the party, what he was doing.
43:46
SPEAKER_03: And I also like from the very bottom of the garbage trunk,
43:51
SPEAKER_03: I was like just trying to understand every single detail of their business model.
43:56
SPEAKER_03: And that mindset let me survive in that environment for a long time.
44:01
SPEAKER_03: At the end of the day,
44:02
SPEAKER_03: the beautiful thing about doing internships in these worldwide known restaurants is
44:09
SPEAKER_03: is that you can work anywhere in the world if after working there it is crazy how
44:16
SPEAKER_03: many doors can be open in front of your eyes if you just push yourself to the limit
44:23
SPEAKER_03: and and you do your best in this kind of environment so at the end of the day of
44:31
SPEAKER_03: course it was and i've learned so many things and i also learned
44:39
SPEAKER_03: I also remember these days how I was feeling back in the day,
44:43
SPEAKER_03: and that also helped me as a motivation to how not to treat my staff.
44:48
SPEAKER_03: For example, one of those restaurants, a staff meal was
44:53
SPEAKER_03: bones with water bones with water and you know like pasta in a big pot and it was
45:02
SPEAKER_03: like a prison you know like i remember one of the sous chefs telling me like do you
45:07
SPEAKER_03: know how how much money does the government spend
45:11
SPEAKER_03: per prisoner per day in a prison.
45:14
SPEAKER_03: Well, us here in the restaurant, we spend way less than that.
45:18
SPEAKER_03: And I was like, wow.
45:20
SPEAKER_03: But then I came to Faviken and it was a whole different thing.
45:24
SPEAKER_03: Staff meal in Faviken, man, it was the best meals I ever had in my life.
45:32
SPEAKER_03: And that also, talking about
45:34
SPEAKER_03: the relationship that a chef and mentors have.
45:39
SPEAKER_03: Well,
45:39
SPEAKER_03: these days in my business model here in Guanacaste,
45:42
SPEAKER_03: we hire a local lady to become our staff meal chef.
45:46
SPEAKER_03: So she's daily making us beautiful home cooking meals for the whole staff.
45:53
SPEAKER_03: A lot of my clients are business people, so they don't get about emotions.
45:58
SPEAKER_03: They just understand money really well.
46:01
SPEAKER_03: Some of them criticize the fact that I spend payroll and resources to feed my staff.
46:10
SPEAKER_03: But I always tell them that there's a lot of things that you can't measure and it's just like...
46:17
SPEAKER_03: seeing how motivated and happy everybody is with just a home cooking meal a day.
46:25
SPEAKER_03: So it's all about the mindset that you use to see the opportunities where everything is dark and shitty.
46:34
SPEAKER_02: Like I was wondering, because you have such like a positive outlook and you treat everyone so well.
46:41
SPEAKER_02: And I was going to mention you specifically hired the local woman to cook staff meal.
46:48
SPEAKER_02: that you must have found or thought about a better way of doing things.
46:57
SPEAKER_02: Because not everyone is able to brush off the people telling them to clean the trash can.
47:11
SPEAKER_02: What is going on?
47:12
SPEAKER_00: Is that a thunderstorm?
47:12
SPEAKER_00: For people to know that's the rain, right?
47:14
SPEAKER_00: See, it's...
47:19
SPEAKER_03: Can you hear the storm from here?
47:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
47:24
SPEAKER_00: That's why I mentioned it.
47:27
SPEAKER_00: The rain is affecting your connection.
47:30
SPEAKER_02: Oh, my God.
47:30
SPEAKER_02: So I don't know what's going on.
47:32
SPEAKER_02: Costa Rica.
47:33
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I know.
47:34
SPEAKER_02: But where's the storm?
47:35
SPEAKER_02: Who's in Costa Rica?
47:37
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
47:38
SPEAKER_02: It's that hard.
47:39
SPEAKER_02: It's ruining my internet connection.
47:44
SPEAKER_02: No, but as I was saying, it's just...
47:47
SPEAKER_02: I was just saying that a lot of people get turned off of cooking when they
47:51
SPEAKER_02: experience that kind of environment.
47:54
SPEAKER_02: So I think you were very fortunate that you went into it with the right mindset of
48:00
SPEAKER_02: you know, these, these motherfuckers are never going to bring me down.
48:03
SPEAKER_01: See,
48:04
SPEAKER_02: imagine,
48:04
SPEAKER_03: imagine that when I was,
48:07
SPEAKER_03: you know,
48:09
SPEAKER_03: back in the day when I was intern in these kind of restaurants,
48:14
SPEAKER_03: I get to the point that I was physically unable to do things.
48:18
SPEAKER_03: I was feeling extremely tired.
48:21
SPEAKER_03: Um,
48:23
SPEAKER_03: I was not physically prepared or mentally prepared for that.
48:28
SPEAKER_03: So it was challenging for me,
48:30
SPEAKER_03: but also my motivation was that I was thinking maybe one day I will be able to have
48:38
SPEAKER_03: my own little restaurant by the beach in Costa Rica and I will definitely have fun.
48:45
SPEAKER_03: So also by being in the shit, I manifest
48:52
SPEAKER_03: what i'm having right now um and i'm enjoying every second of it and it's thanks of
48:58
SPEAKER_03: the deal of of the situations or the the reality that i live back in the day and
49:08
SPEAKER_03: i've been listening to a lot of podcasts about leadership and mentoring because now
49:12
SPEAKER_03: i have to improve my my my leadership skills to run
49:17
SPEAKER_03: and to delegate more to my team and to become a better leader.
49:21
SPEAKER_03: And I remember listening to a podcast about this guy who was talking about happiness.
49:26
SPEAKER_03: The only reason why we can define happiness is because life goes ups and downs.
49:37
SPEAKER_03: if fullfiness was like a thing,
49:41
SPEAKER_03: like our daily basics,
49:43
SPEAKER_03: we would have,
49:44
SPEAKER_03: we probably don't,
49:46
SPEAKER_03: would have known that is another state of mind before,
49:50
SPEAKER_03: after,
49:51
SPEAKER_03: sorry,
49:51
SPEAKER_03: after fullfiness.
49:53
SPEAKER_03: So the only reason why we can perceive happiness and fullfiness is because life goes ups and downs.
49:57
SPEAKER_03: And when you're in the bottom, you actually desire to be happy again.
50:02
SPEAKER_03: And when you're happy, you don't want to go down, but if life goes down,
50:06
SPEAKER_03: You can just learn how to surf that wave and go with the flow.
50:11
SPEAKER_03: That's kind of the mind.
50:16
SPEAKER_02: That's a very Costa Rican way of explaining things.
50:21
SPEAKER_02: Pulling surfing into it.
50:23
SPEAKER_02: Where do you see yourself in like 10 years?
50:27
SPEAKER_03: I do imagine that our next step is going to be a farm.
50:36
SPEAKER_03: And I think that our mission as a business is definitely incentivize the culinary
50:48
SPEAKER_03: tourism in this area of the country,
50:51
SPEAKER_03: as many other chefs are trying from their kitchens in different places.
50:58
SPEAKER_03: And I think,
51:01
SPEAKER_03: we are manifesting a farm right now so hard because we want to grow vegetables and
51:07
SPEAKER_03: we want to hire local ladies and we we want to have the possibility of running a
51:15
SPEAKER_03: farm and running a bigger version of the food lab but also with the goals
51:22
SPEAKER_03: objectives and
51:25
SPEAKER_03: and mindset that we have right now.
51:27
SPEAKER_03: So we can impact more people and we can create a better impact to the local community.
51:35
SPEAKER_03: Running a farm or growing vegetables is something that is far of my understanding,
51:41
SPEAKER_03: but I do believe that it's gonna be a beautiful challenge for the rest couple of years.
51:46
SPEAKER_03: And that's how we imagine the future here in Guanacaste.
51:49
SPEAKER_00: I have a question,
51:50
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
51:50
SPEAKER_00: which is,
51:52
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
51:52
SPEAKER_00: as we have discussed in other conversations,
51:55
SPEAKER_00: a way of understanding that the restaurant is just part of a whole ecosystem that
52:03
SPEAKER_00: chefs are,
52:04
SPEAKER_00: you know,
52:04
SPEAKER_00: helping to create,
52:05
SPEAKER_00: develop,
52:06
SPEAKER_00: evolve.
52:08
SPEAKER_00: And it's just more evident every day that it's a door to a whole ecosystem and that,
52:16
SPEAKER_00: you know,
52:17
SPEAKER_00: a channel too.
52:18
SPEAKER_00: in this case, apartment and a whole bed for more sustainable spaces, right?
52:27
SPEAKER_00: But I had a question about Costa Rican food and,
52:33
SPEAKER_00: you know,
52:33
SPEAKER_00: we,
52:34
SPEAKER_00: I think we,
52:35
SPEAKER_00: by now we are used to hear that Latin American food is all connected and we Latin
52:43
SPEAKER_00: Americans
52:44
SPEAKER_00: feel at home in other countries because yes,
52:47
SPEAKER_00: we have some different accents,
52:50
SPEAKER_00: but we are connected and we are the same and we all feel pretty comfortable in
52:55
SPEAKER_00: other countries of Latin America.
53:00
SPEAKER_00: But I was wondering, how would you describe Costa Rican food?
53:06
SPEAKER_00: Because as much as we share ingredients across the region,
53:13
SPEAKER_00: And as hard as it is to describe Peruvian food between the top 10 known dishes and
53:20
SPEAKER_00: Colombian food and all these ones,
53:23
SPEAKER_00: I want to ask you about that.
53:24
SPEAKER_00: I know it's not an easy question, but I was wondering.
53:29
SPEAKER_03: Costa Rican food for me is friendly, spontaneous, and healthy.
53:34
SPEAKER_03: Everybody has its own version of it.
53:38
SPEAKER_03: I do have the belief that for the mainstream,
53:43
SPEAKER_03: for most of us,
53:45
SPEAKER_03: Costa Rican food is difficult to explain because we all have this misconception
53:52
SPEAKER_03: that Costa Rican food is rice and beans plated in different presentations.
53:56
SPEAKER_03: Mix it together or with coconut or, you know.
54:00
SPEAKER_03: But for me, like healthy,
54:04
SPEAKER_03: Spontaneous and friendly are like the objectives that can describe more the way of eating here.
54:13
SPEAKER_03: Hospitality, for example, is something that makes Costa Rican food beautiful.
54:21
SPEAKER_03: And you can see that when you travel to a countryside house or when you go to...
54:26
SPEAKER_03: grandma's house and you see that even though whatever they have in the fridge is
54:32
SPEAKER_03: humble they will treat you as a king or a princess because they want to make you
54:38
SPEAKER_00: feel special yeah and if anything is there something you in these trips and
54:48
SPEAKER_00: invitations to other chefs latin american chefs to cook with you in their own
54:52
SPEAKER_00: restaurants if anything
54:55
SPEAKER_00: There's something you would say, this is only Costa Rican.
54:59
SPEAKER_00: This is a way we do things that I haven't seen,
55:02
SPEAKER_00: you know,
55:04
SPEAKER_00: in South America or other countries in Central America or the islands.
55:10
SPEAKER_00: Something.
55:12
SPEAKER_03: That's a really good question.
55:13
SPEAKER_03: Every time that I travel, I always...
55:16
SPEAKER_00: Cook for the similarities.
55:18
SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
55:18
SPEAKER_00: I always,
55:20
SPEAKER_03: every time that I travel to cook somewhere,
55:22
SPEAKER_03: I always try to cook something that represents my country,
55:27
SPEAKER_03: right?
55:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
55:30
SPEAKER_03: For example, when I was in Colombia a couple of months ago, I made pastelitos.
55:36
SPEAKER_03: And those pastelitos, basically I used to eat pastelitos when I used to live in Alajuela.
55:42
SPEAKER_03: You can go to a local window, you can buy pastelitos for a thousand colones, which is like $2.
55:47
SPEAKER_03: And they give you a fresco de calzín in a bag of plastic with a straw.
55:52
SPEAKER_03: And you're eating in the streets a fried...
55:56
SPEAKER_03: Pastel stuffed with potatoes and a fresco.
55:59
SPEAKER_03: And that's the most delightful lunch that you can have under $3, by the way.
56:04
SPEAKER_03: And I feel that they are sponsoring me by saying that, but it's actually really good.
56:09
SPEAKER_03: However,
56:10
SPEAKER_03: I can say that Pastelitos belong to Costa Rica because I've seen different versions
56:16
SPEAKER_03: of Pastelitos in Guatemala,
56:18
SPEAKER_03: in Nicaragua,
56:19
SPEAKER_03: in Colombia.
56:22
SPEAKER_03: They seem to be everywhere as well.
56:25
SPEAKER_03: Same with picadillos.
56:27
SPEAKER_03: Picadillos basically is this old-fashioned grandma recipe where they get onions and
56:34
SPEAKER_03: peppers and garlic and tomatoes and they dice everything within green bananas or
56:38
SPEAKER_03: harvester palm or cassava or papa or whatever root vegetable that they have in
56:45
SPEAKER_03: their bagyards.
56:46
SPEAKER_03: And they do some sort of a stew-ish kind of thing with local vegetables.
56:53
SPEAKER_00: But the magical thing is, like, they taste different.
56:56
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
56:56
SPEAKER_00: when you describe that,
56:58
SPEAKER_00: or a pastelito,
57:00
SPEAKER_00: that's pretty much an empanada in Bogota or,
57:02
SPEAKER_00: you know,
57:02
SPEAKER_00: but it tastes different.
57:05
SPEAKER_00: It's not the same flavor.
57:06
SPEAKER_00: It is not.
57:07
SPEAKER_00: It's, you know, you can describe it and it sounds the same.
57:13
SPEAKER_00: But I don't know.
57:13
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
57:14
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it's the raw,
57:15
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it's the proportion of ingredients or just a change on the flour.
57:23
SPEAKER_00: I don't know, it's just fascinating that it's the same, but it is not.
57:27
SPEAKER_03: At the end of the day, food is a representation of people's flow, you know.
57:33
SPEAKER_03: They cook with energy and it's like music, you know.
57:37
SPEAKER_03: You can read a partitura and you can play just by reading something or you can cook
57:43
SPEAKER_03: just by following a recipe.
57:45
SPEAKER_03: But everybody has its own soul and flow to add to a recipe to make it taste better
57:51
SPEAKER_03: or different at some point.
57:56
SPEAKER_03: And that's also what I think it makes Costa Rican food beautiful, delightful.
58:05
SPEAKER_03: The other day I went to Rincon de la Vieja.
58:08
SPEAKER_03: That's a volcano outside of Liberia.
58:13
SPEAKER_03: And I met this local lady who was making a marmalade with tomate de palo.
58:20
SPEAKER_03: Tomate de palo, tomate de arbol.
58:23
SPEAKER_03: And she was cooking the tomate de arbol with cinnamon, with cloves, with nutmeg.
58:31
SPEAKER_03: And she was waiting for the right consistent to stop stirring that pan.
58:36
SPEAKER_03: And in the meanwhile, in another pot, she has some chicharrones.
58:40
SPEAKER_03: I ended up in that house because I was going to buy dragon fruits.
58:48
SPEAKER_03: So imagine,
58:49
SPEAKER_03: I went to a dragon fruit farm,
58:51
SPEAKER_03: and then the lady told me,
58:52
SPEAKER_03: or she realized that I was a cook,
58:55
SPEAKER_03: so she invited me to her house,
58:57
SPEAKER_03: and then she told me,
58:58
SPEAKER_03: like,
58:58
SPEAKER_03: oh,
58:58
SPEAKER_03: I'm preparing this.
58:59
SPEAKER_03: Can you guess what it is?
59:02
SPEAKER_03: And I was like, wow, it's the first time I ever see somebody making a tomate de arbol marmalade.
59:08
SPEAKER_03: Oh, you have to taste my chicharrones.
59:09
SPEAKER_03: They were really tasty.
59:11
SPEAKER_03: And I ended up having lunch in a completely stranger house,
59:17
SPEAKER_03: having chicharrones,
59:18
SPEAKER_03: yuca,
59:18
SPEAKER_03: and marmalade,
59:20
SPEAKER_03: tomate de arbol,
59:21
SPEAKER_03: para postre.
59:23
SPEAKER_03: And at the end of the day,
59:24
SPEAKER_03: it's kind of like the fun part of being here,
59:26
SPEAKER_03: that everybody's super friendly,
59:28
SPEAKER_03: everybody's super welcoming.
59:31
SPEAKER_03: And it's not only about the food, it's about the hospitality and how they make you feel.
59:37
SPEAKER_03: Or how they treat you.
59:40
SPEAKER_03: And... Yeah, it's fun.
59:43
SPEAKER_03: It's beautiful.
59:45
SPEAKER_03: And that only happened, like, in Latin American countries, I guess.
59:50
SPEAKER_02: No, that's not true.
59:52
SPEAKER_02: Come on.
59:53
SPEAKER_02: You just went to West Virginia.
59:55
SPEAKER_02: Weren't those just, like, the nicest people we've ever met, I'm sure, everywhere you went?
1:00:00
SPEAKER_03: Man, West Virginia was...
1:00:03
SPEAKER_03: What a beautiful place, for God's sake.
1:00:05
SPEAKER_03: I felt, I seriously, I felt that I was in Costa Rica.
1:00:10
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I've never been there during the winter.
1:00:11
SPEAKER_03: That will be another story.
1:00:13
SPEAKER_03: But at least during summertime, I felt like at home.
1:00:16
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:00:17
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:00:17
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's also, you were on a farm.
1:00:20
SPEAKER_02: You were on Mike's farm.
1:00:22
SPEAKER_02: Do you want to talk about like what you guys did, what you cooked?
1:00:27
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, sure.
1:00:28
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:00:29
SPEAKER_03: The reason why I ended up in West Virginia is because two years ago,
1:00:35
SPEAKER_03: we had this beautiful couple that hired our services here in Costa Rica to cook for them.
1:00:43
SPEAKER_03: And they realized that I have a Anthony Bourdain picture in my kitchen.
1:00:49
SPEAKER_03: It's like a black and white frame.
1:00:51
SPEAKER_03: It's kind of like an altar for Anthony Bourdain.
1:00:54
SPEAKER_03: And when they came here, they immediately changed their faces.
1:01:01
SPEAKER_03: And they told me about what they do for a living.
1:01:03
SPEAKER_03: They have a farm in West Virginia that became trendy because Anthony Bourdain
1:01:08
SPEAKER_03: recorded an episode of Parents Unknown back in the day.
1:01:14
SPEAKER_03: So we immediately became connected and we talked for hours and hours and hours and hours.
1:01:20
SPEAKER_03: And two years later, they invited me to West Virginia to cook for them.
1:01:25
SPEAKER_03: Well, to cook with them.
1:01:26
SPEAKER_02: Just to be clear, this is Lost Creek Farm, right?
1:01:31
SPEAKER_02: in West Virginia.
1:01:32
SPEAKER_03: Beautiful, beautiful project.
1:01:35
SPEAKER_03: And well, Mike, the chef, and I, we planned this whole menu for three months.
1:01:44
SPEAKER_03: He was making, he wanted to make things that reminds him about Costa Rica.
1:01:51
SPEAKER_03: But with West Virginia products, we ended up making a version of salchipapas, which is
1:01:59
SPEAKER_03: A street food recipe is just like a bunch of fries and a bunch of sausages all
1:02:06
SPEAKER_03: together with a lot of sauces.
1:02:08
SPEAKER_03: It's so unhealthy.
1:02:10
SPEAKER_03: But some restaurants that are open after hours,
1:02:14
SPEAKER_03: 12 to 3 o'clock in the morning,
1:02:16
SPEAKER_03: is the only thing they sell.
1:02:19
SPEAKER_03: So we did a version of a local bologna that we made with...
1:02:26
SPEAKER_03: rabbit things and these local potatoes that we peel and grate and cook like for 24
1:02:34
SPEAKER_03: hours and then we made like this twist of the salchipapa version and it was so
1:02:40
SPEAKER_03: funny then the pastelitos that i love because it reminds me my hometown we made
1:02:46
SPEAKER_03: them in west virginia but we stopped them with with rabbit that they hound
1:02:52
SPEAKER_03: from their farm.
1:02:54
SPEAKER_03: We ended up making a recipe of arroz de maiz with their corn,
1:03:00
SPEAKER_03: more like a pozole kind of thing,
1:03:02
SPEAKER_03: but with their corn.
1:03:03
SPEAKER_03: So it was the corn from the farm, but the guanacaste flavor of the stew.
1:03:10
SPEAKER_03: It was so fun.
1:03:14
SPEAKER_03: I've realized that food, it is probably the only thing that make me feel in the present.
1:03:23
SPEAKER_03: Because when I was cooking in West Virginia,
1:03:25
SPEAKER_03: for example,
1:03:26
SPEAKER_03: I used to wake up at 7 o'clock in the morning and cooking straight till 11 o'clock p.m.,
1:03:32
SPEAKER_03: sometimes even 2 o'clock in the morning.
1:03:35
SPEAKER_03: And I remembered that my friend who was reporting the whole process,
1:03:40
SPEAKER_03: he told me like,
1:03:41
SPEAKER_03: bro,
1:03:41
SPEAKER_03: you've been here cooking like for 15 hours and you are not even drinking water.
1:03:47
SPEAKER_03: Are you thirsty?
1:03:48
SPEAKER_03: And I was like, man, sorry, forget about that.
1:03:50
SPEAKER_03: I'm just too focused to be true.
1:03:54
SPEAKER_03: And it's like the only thing ever that makes me feel like in the present, in the moment.
1:04:00
SPEAKER_03: It's like yoga for me.
1:04:01
SPEAKER_03: So it's quite fun.
1:04:05
SPEAKER_02: So you mentioned somebody there recording you.
1:04:07
SPEAKER_02: Like social media has been a big part of your cooking forever.
1:04:15
SPEAKER_02: Like since I've known you,
1:04:16
SPEAKER_02: since that day on the mountain,
1:04:17
SPEAKER_02: there was somebody there like,
1:04:20
SPEAKER_02: you know,
1:04:20
SPEAKER_02: with a camera.
1:04:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:04:27
SPEAKER_02: What are your thoughts about it?
1:04:29
SPEAKER_02: Why is that so important to always have someone there?
1:04:33
SPEAKER_02: Don't you have a full time person on staff at RLT helping with TikTok videos and things like that?
1:04:41
SPEAKER_03: See, now we hire someone full time for our TikToks and videos.
1:04:48
SPEAKER_03: I think it's inevitable.
1:04:49
SPEAKER_03: It's something that you have to do if you want to spread the word.
1:04:56
SPEAKER_03: At the end of the day, we don't have money to promote ourselves in billboards.
1:05:03
SPEAKER_03: We don't have the money to hire magazines to talk about what we do.
1:05:10
SPEAKER_03: We don't have the impact to be on television.
1:05:14
SPEAKER_03: Television is another thing I don't personally like.
1:05:19
SPEAKER_03: We found on social media a way to communicate.
1:05:22
SPEAKER_03: And the beautiful thing is that we actually don't use social media to sell anything.
1:05:25
SPEAKER_03: We just tell stories.
1:05:27
SPEAKER_03: We just tell people what we do from a very humble point of view, you know?
1:05:32
SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
1:05:33
SPEAKER_02: There's nothing about your services, anything like that.
1:05:36
SPEAKER_02: It's just stories about what you're doing in Costa Rica.
1:05:40
SPEAKER_03: And some stories are fun.
1:05:41
SPEAKER_03: Some stories are just point of views of...
1:05:48
SPEAKER_03: But it's basically everything we're doing every day.
1:05:51
SPEAKER_03: We don't fake anything.
1:05:52
SPEAKER_03: We just record.
1:05:54
SPEAKER_03: We are there with our phones and we make spontaneous clips about the day-to-day
1:05:59
SPEAKER_03: life in our kitchen,
1:06:01
SPEAKER_03: day-to-day life in this startup,
1:06:04
SPEAKER_03: all the beauty and the dark side of having a startup.
1:06:09
SPEAKER_03: And we have fun by documenting that.
1:06:14
SPEAKER_03: And it's very funny that you tell...
1:06:16
SPEAKER_03: about the time that we were in the hills that there was a guy recording with a camera and taking photos.
1:06:22
SPEAKER_03: Well, that guy is one of my best friends.
1:06:27
SPEAKER_03: The same way I decided to became an entrepreneur, he was also starting recording at that time.
1:06:37
SPEAKER_03: So he needed
1:06:39
SPEAKER_03: First of all,
1:06:40
SPEAKER_03: he wanted to help me recording the events that I was doing,
1:06:44
SPEAKER_03: but he also needed content to start his own project.
1:06:49
SPEAKER_03: A few years later,
1:06:50
SPEAKER_03: he became really good at it,
1:06:53
SPEAKER_03: and he opened his own business,
1:06:55
SPEAKER_03: and he is now one of the best video producers in the country,
1:07:00
SPEAKER_03: and he's making ads for big companies,
1:07:03
SPEAKER_03: and
1:07:04
SPEAKER_03: He's having a great, great impact by creating videos.
1:07:10
SPEAKER_03: One of my personal goals and victories is that back in the day,
1:07:16
SPEAKER_03: he was recording myself,
1:07:17
SPEAKER_03: he was recording me like for free,
1:07:20
SPEAKER_03: but I promised him like seven years ago,
1:07:23
SPEAKER_03: one day I will make money and I will hire you officially.
1:07:30
SPEAKER_03: And this trip to West Virginia was the first time that I could actually hire him as a client.
1:07:36
SPEAKER_03: And I told him like,
1:07:37
SPEAKER_03: bro,
1:07:37
SPEAKER_03: remember that seven years ago I told you that I wanted to hire you to record an event?
1:07:43
SPEAKER_03: Well, now I have the chance to hire you.
1:07:48
SPEAKER_03: Charge me if I was a client.
1:07:50
SPEAKER_03: And I'm going to fly you to West Virginia.
1:07:52
SPEAKER_03: I want you to cover this thing that I don't even know what we're going to do, but it's going to be fun.
1:07:59
SPEAKER_03: So also, that's a beautiful victory that I had.
1:08:03
SPEAKER_03: He believed in me since the very,
1:08:04
SPEAKER_03: very early stages of my project,
1:08:07
SPEAKER_03: and we are now supporting each other doing beautiful stuff.
1:08:13
SPEAKER_02: All right, man.
1:08:14
SPEAKER_02: That's great.
1:08:14
SPEAKER_02: I'm glad to hear all your success and how everything keeps going in a positive
1:08:22
SPEAKER_02: direction since I've met you.
1:08:24
SPEAKER_02: It's always...
1:08:25
SPEAKER_02: it's good to talk with you because I know it's always going to be positive and
1:08:29
SPEAKER_02: you're going to be like smiling and happy and like,
1:08:32
SPEAKER_02: and very Costa Rican in like the best way.
1:08:35
SPEAKER_02: Julie, do you have any other questions?
1:08:39
SPEAKER_00: No, no, that's exactly my sense too.
1:08:42
SPEAKER_00: And that's great.
1:08:44
SPEAKER_00: That's yeah.
1:08:45
SPEAKER_00: It's just, we need more of that everywhere.
1:08:50
SPEAKER_03: Like,
1:08:51
SPEAKER_03: All right.
1:08:52
SPEAKER_03: Thanks, Gilberto.
1:08:53
SPEAKER_03: Talk to you soon.
1:08:54
SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Maes.
1:08:55
SPEAKER_03: Have a good one.
1:08:55
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
1:08:56
SPEAKER_03: Pura vida.
1:08:57
SPEAKER_03: Nice to meet you, Julie.
1:09:00
SPEAKER_02: Thank you, everyone, for listening.
1:09:02
SPEAKER_02: So if anything you get from that interview is if you're in anywhere in Guanacaste,
1:09:07
SPEAKER_02: look up RLT Cuisine and check out what Gilberto Priseño is doing there from Playa
1:09:14
SPEAKER_02: Potrero and other points online.
1:09:19
SPEAKER_02: in that area.
1:09:21
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1:09:25
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1:09:30
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1:09:34
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1:09:35
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1:09:37
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1:09:44
SPEAKER_02: It's all appreciated.
1:09:45
SPEAKER_02: A big thank you to my friend Pat Buzzer for providing the music for the show.
1:09:51
SPEAKER_02: Thanks again, everyone.
1:09:52
SPEAKER_02: Bye.