Latest / New Worlder / Episode #125: Sebastian Gallucci

Transcript

Episode #125: Sebastian Gallucci · New Worlder

• 0:00
  [music]
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: This is the New Worlder podcast, and I'm your host, Nicholas Gill.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_02: Co-host, Juliana Duque, will be joining shortly.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_02: Today, we are speaking with Sebastian Gallucci,
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: who comes from an Argentine-Italian family, but grew up in Toronto, Canada.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_02: He now runs two restaurants in the somewhat isolated part
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_02: of Costa Rica's South Pacific coast, the town of Uvita.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: Those restaurants are called Cebas and Alma.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: Uvita and neighboring towns like Dominical are more remote than the beach towns
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: of Nicoya and Guanacaste, which are much further north.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: So they remain still quite pristine.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: Marino Ballena National Park,
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: which extends out into the Pacific in the shape of a whale's tail,
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: Dominates the shoreline in front of Lluvita
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: and beachfront development has generally been limited elsewhere in the region.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: So most new construction has been inland,
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: most of it up in the jungle covered hills
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: where Sebastian's restaurant Sebas moved beside a waterfall in late 2025 from
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: the town below.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: I visited the area a couple of years ago and was surprised to find a nice mix
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: of creative Costa Rican restaurants like Marlon Acuna's more modern Scala
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: and his Cevicheria Contra Marea,
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_02: living alongside regional restaurants called Sodas and some weird cowboy karaoke bar
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: that I found kind of fascinating.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, development is happening in that region.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uvita is already home to a week-long New Age festival that blends electronic music
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: and spirituality called Envision,
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: which brings in more than 5,000 attendees each year,
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: putting intense pressure on the infrastructure there.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: And glitzy homes are also being carved deeper into the forest every year.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's reason enough to have this conversation with Sebas, as he calls himself.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: He talks a lot about limiting himself to buying from local producers,
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_02: the side of things like Italian flour for his pizzas,
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: which he obviously cannot get in Costa Rica.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: In general,
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: in the country,
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: it's very easy to just give in and source the cheapest industrial ingredients
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: because the influx of foreigners has never really demanded anything otherwise.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: Sebas's story is an odd one.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: Again, he's an Argentine-Italian that was raised in Canada.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: He was working at his father's restaurant in an Argentine-Italian restaurant in Toronto.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: And as he got older,
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: he worked in a bank for a little while,
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: then grew tired of it and started a supper club and launched
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: a food truck selling choripan.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: When the pandemic hit,
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: it all collapsed and he and his wife and a newborn Set off to Costa Rica,
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: where his wife had already bought some land,
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: and they lived essentially off the grid,
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_02: slowly building a life and a farm there,
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_02: while creating a business that respects the land and the producers around them.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: His pizzas have started to get international attention,
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_02: but the full menu,
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: including the things he doesn't serve because of the seasons or sourcing issues,
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: might be even more intriguing.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_02: Please subscribe to the newsletter if you haven't already.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_02: Just go to newworlder.com or search for New Worlder on Substack.
• 3:58
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• 4:04
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• 4:09
  SPEAKER_02: And please subscribe, like us, and share us.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: It sounds redundant, but it really does make a difference.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: Enjoy the show.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: What have you been doing all morning?
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: Why has it been so crazy?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I live in the jungle, 40 acres off-grid.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm always talking how good it is until I had to upload my iOS
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: from like five years ago on my phone and my laptop.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Took me two hours and five coffees, but I made it, okay?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: How do you communicate with the world outside there, Uvita, usually?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: WhatsApp?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: I use WhatsApp, yeah.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Super popular in Costa Rica.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's using WhatsApp.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: The bank, the suppliers, the fishermen, everybody.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: What happens when you get your flour from Italy?
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: They're eight hours ahead.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I got to text them.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: I got to plan my day eight hours around like five o'clock.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: They're waking up.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: They're having their first coffee.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's the best time to order the flour.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: How did you end up in Costa Rica originally?
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_02: Because you were born in Toronto, right?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, born in Toronto with an Italian-Argentinian family.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: I loved traveling.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: I loved my whole life.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: We always tried to go somewhere, always mostly Latin America because my father is Argentinian.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: So he's super biased,
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: bringing us to Buenos Aires, eating choripan for a dollar, two dollars, right?
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Back in the day.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: My beautiful wife that we went to high school together.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then reconnected like 10, 12 years later.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, she never came to my food truck.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: Not sure why.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: She thought I was just serving sausage sandwiches.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, no, I was doing like upscale Argentinian sandwiches.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Anyways, that's another story.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: Is she Argentinian too?
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: No, she's Italian-Polish from Toronto.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so during COVID, you know, my wife, like, let's just bounce.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Let's leave Toronto.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's super complicated having a restaurant here.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: So let's go to Costa Rica.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Did you always work in food?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: Weren't you like a banker or something before?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, my father had a restaurant.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: He opened the first Argentinian restaurant in Toronto.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, what
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_02: was it called?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Tony's Restaurante.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: It was a mix of Italian-Argentinean.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: We had Diego Maradona there.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: We had all the famous soccer players.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: Sebas was a soccer promise.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: I was a soccer promise until I broke my knee.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: I grew up my whole life in the restaurant.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: My father,
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: my uncles,
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: my cousins, we all grew up watching, eating, experiencing hospitality and food.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: I loved it.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: What kind of Argentinian things did they make?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: Did a lot of people in Toronto just assume it was just an Italian restaurant?
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: It was an Italian restaurant branded in the 90s.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: But when they got there,
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: there was asado,
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: empanadas,
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: and it was a mix of Argentinian and Italian food together,
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: which they never really saw in Toronto in the 90s.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: So it was beautiful to see.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, owning restaurants in the 90s is complicated.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: There's no Instagram.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: There's no Google review.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's...
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: You're either an amazing chef and everybody loves you or good luck.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I grubbed my whole life watching my dad succeed,
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: watching my dad fail,
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: watching the restaurant go from the best restaurant in the world in Toronto
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: to closing down 10 years later.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it was brutal.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: I watched my mom and my parents struggle how hard it is to have a restaurant.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I go,
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: I still
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: like it.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: Did your parents say, like, no, you're not doing this, like, go be a banker?
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: No, my dad loves that I'm in the kitchen.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: He loves it.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: He's still coming here at, like, seven years old, like, screaming at the host at Sebas now.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, hey, you can't be, like, doing that anymore.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the 90s now, you know?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: You also don't work here.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: You're on vacation.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: So just chill and drink a glass of
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: wine and eat a plate of pasta.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I grew up and I loved cooking and I got a soccer scholarship to Texas,
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: tore my ACL, came back and I said, you know what, I want to do a change.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to work at a bank.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I started as a teller, one year, two year, three year financial advisor.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: And for me,
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: it was like,
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm giving people advice about money, but I don't have any money to pay my rent.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, what are we doing here?
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm sharing about saving money,
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: but we're getting paid minimum wage and I'm in overdraft trying to pay my rent
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: in Toronto.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I go, you know what?
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm done.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I started looking for options.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: What do I do to get back into the kitchen?
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I started selling meatball sandwiches on the street.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I was doing every weekend.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_02: What do you mean in the street?
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what does that look like?
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: Any street festival, any music festival.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: I created this little brand called Javoto's Meatballs.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I was making homemade focaccia with a nonna meatball stuffed with mozzarella.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: And people were going crazy.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it was just... And then I would go back on Monday morning to the bank.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, what did you do on the weekend?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: I just sold a thousand meatballs.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Continued on, continued on, and then we're like five years in.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, the bank was, it was miserable.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: I highly recommend people to follow your dream and not follow the corporate world.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just me sharing because I've been through it.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: But I was young, I was in the city, and I was whatever.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I said, you know what?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: I need a change.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: Let me open a restaurant.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Impossible in Toronto as a young 24-year-old to open a place without a backer,
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: an investor, because it's super expensive, right?
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: You're paying eight, nine grand a month.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: That was like 10 years ago.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: So what I did was I started researching, what do I do?
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: What do I do?
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I watched the movie Chef.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: And man, that changed my life, that movie.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: The next day, I'm like, okay, I'm done.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm buying a food truck.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: What year was this?
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: This was, so I've been here four years, maybe like 12, 13 years ago.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just like, okay.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: So every time I was in my office at the bank,
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: pretending to work, I was looking at Kijiji for food trucks.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's all I was doing for like a year.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, I found this like crappy old food truck, three hours north of Toronto.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, you know what, I'm going.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I went and man,
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: I bought the food truck,
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: drove it back to Toronto with no ever, never driving a food truck in my life.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: Never in my life.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: It was like a 40 foot food truck.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm driving.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm calling my brother.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: I go, bro, I just bought a food truck.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, good for you, man.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Go for it.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Drove it to Toronto.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: What was your brother?
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: My brother is in Toronto, too.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: I got two brothers.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: They're big supporters of me.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, they're amazing.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And they knew I wasn't happy.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: And my brother's just like, go for it.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Just do it.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I drove.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: No license plate.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, screw it.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just going to go.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope I don't get stopped by the cops.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I just drove for three hours to Toronto.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_02: Three hours without a license plate and you didn't get stopped?
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: No, because I was going in the slowest lane, like super slow, terrified.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: The grill was like flying off.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, I think I just screwed up.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what did I just do?
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: I just bought a freaking food truck.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I called my dad and my mom.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: I go, listen, I got news.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, what?
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on?
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: I go, just come to my condo.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: I got to show you.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: My dad like drove down.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, what do I do now?
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: I just bought this food truck.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Next day, I quit the bank.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: Five years,
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: five and a half years,
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: quit the bank and just started branding my food truck as
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: the first Argentinian food truck in Canada.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: And we branded it as like the best choripan in Canada.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I just, I went with all my heart, all my love.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: I asked all my community,
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: all my dad's community,
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: everybody that knew us, Kate, come support us because I am minus $40,000.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Not knowing where to park this truck.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm terrified.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: How were you reaching out to people?
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: Word of mouth?
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, word of mouth.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, those days, 15 years, 12 years ago, it was Twitter.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like, hey, I'm here.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Tomorrow I'm there.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Tomorrow I'm there.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: But the problems of food trucks, it was a disaster, man.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: But it was beautiful.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: Congratulations.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Just regulations, a generator dying, water exploding, you have no water, you got to close.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's a minus 20 degrees in Canada, you can't sell.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: A crazy food truck that said that's his block comes and threatens you.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: A hot dog guy that says, I've been here for 20 years, get off my block.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: These are real stories that happened to us where...
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's not just like fun and games, food truck.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm selling 500 sandwiches.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to my mansion.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm getting threatened by a hot dog guy for selling this choripan
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: because it's similar to a hot dog.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: So it was like battle after battle.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: But it was,
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: I built,
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: I am who I am now because of how many experiences I've been through with
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: the food truck.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: And we're about three years in.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, again,
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: in a turning point in my life where I'm like, hey, Six months, I'm making money.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: Six months, we have income coming in.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: And in Canada, six months, it's freezing.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: You can't have a food truck.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I said, you know what?
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to sell the food truck and go to Argentina.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I put the food truck super cheap, super cheap on Kijiji, hoping somebody would just buy it.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I flew to Argentina with my father and my mom.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I stayed a few months.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Got inspired, ate the best asado, experienced the best chimichurri, you know, lived again.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, you know what?
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's time for me to open my first restaurant.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Flew back.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: I called my best friend, Michael Mitzi, and I go, Mike, are you happy at your job?
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: He said, no.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, cool.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: He was a director of Microsoft, making big money.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Music producer, loved my food.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: I've known him my whole life.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: He quit Microsoft and we opened a damn badass restaurant in Toronto.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: And we opened Ama.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: It was the first Argentinian supper club in Toronto.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it just, it exploded.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_02: It was a soccer club.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_02: Where was it?
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_02: Did you have a brick and mortar?
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, brick and mortar above a sketchy convenience store.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Couldn't really tell it was a restaurant.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it was like a 50 seater, super intimate.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: The DJ boots was On top of a piano,
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: I had a small little kitchen with an asado, smoke everywhere.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it was so liberating.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: It was so beautiful to finally have my space,
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: finally have a place where, you know, I can be myself.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: I say, you know what, let's just push it.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it was, it was amazing, man.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: For three and a half years.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: He was your investor?
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: He was
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: my partner.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: He was my partner.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: I saved a little bit of money from the food truck.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: He put a little bit of money in.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: We went super cheap.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: And we kind of did all our construction ourselves,
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: bought a grill that was used and just like used the momentum of the food truck.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it was amazing.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: But everything that amazing, you know, at some point ends.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: So we started doing events and it was just lined up out the door
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: and people loved Ama and COVID happened.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Closes down for about six months and it was super devastating,
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: super heartbreaking because, you know, how can you sell an asado on Uber?
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't make sense.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: How can you sell an entraña cooked on the open fire on Uber?
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: So pretty much everything that we built, everything that I worked my ass off for, can I say ass?
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, say shit or whatever.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: Everything I worked my ass off for is like, boom, gone again.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, My, my, what do I do now?
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: So my wife,
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: which is a very smart woman,
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: actually bought 40 acres in the jungle before COVID happened.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: People are like, you're crazy.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: And she's like, I believe one day we're going to need this land either for...
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: A vacation home or for something.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: She just randomly bought 40 acres in Costa Rica.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: She loved Costa Rica.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: She was coming here year after year and she's like,
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm moving to Costa Rica at some point in my life.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: I found this 40 acre jungle untouched property with a water spring.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to buy it.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: So she asked her parents to help and she just bought the damn 40 acres.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, all right, but I can't leave Toronto.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I have an amazing brand.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: But boom, COVID, open, close, open, close.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: We had a three-month-old baby.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: That was super stressful during COVID.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember the Prime Minister saying, it's January 31st.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: There's no more flights out of Canada.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: So my wife said, either we go now.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: Or we're staying and we're going to get stuck here for the next year or two years.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't know, right?
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: So we sold...
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: Not the brand of Ama.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: We sold the chairs, equipment, and we sold it for super cheap just to get out of our lease.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: And man,
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: the moment my daughter turned three months old,
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: we came with three luggages, gave away everything.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: My parents came, my best friends came to help us pack.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: And we came with three luggages, three months old baby.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: We jumped on the last flight to Costa Rica.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: Super empty plane.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: Super stressed.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: Didn't know what the hell was going on and we just came and we landed here and
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: the house was like starting to get built.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so there wasn't even a house on the land.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: It was a half house that we were sending money to a builder like Praying to God
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: that it was actually a real builder.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: Not like driving up to the land and there's nothing there and the builder's in Bali
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: with my money.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so what was there when you arrived with a three-month-old baby?
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Half bamboo home, no windows, no roof, mud pit everywhere.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: It was a shit show.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_02: Like plumbing, electricity, anything like that?
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: Electricity, no, because we're 100% solar.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: But did you have solar panels at that point?
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: So we had nothing.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I had to rent a place.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: Rented a place for two months.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: My parents were like, you're fucking crazy.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: You're moving to the jungle with a baby.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: I go, it's going to be okay.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to be okay.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: So we started building our homes slowly, started planting fruit trees.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: We started just getting back in the groove while we had a three-month-old baby.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, we moved in.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: We put solar panels.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: We set up our water spring, took like many, many fails.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: I remember like finally the guy goes, OK, your water spring is ready.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: And my wife like turned on the shower and like exploded everywhere.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: My wife's crying.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's over.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: Calm down.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's OK.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's like the first time we're connecting from a spring to our home.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: It was.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I, that was almost four years ago.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: No more.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: That was like five years ago.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, this year will be our fifth year in his home.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: slowly but surely we started building,
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: we started planting and started getting better.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: What
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_02: was on the land?
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like, is it mountainous or is it closer to the coast?
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: We're on the, we're on the mountain.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: Mountainous.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was just jungle.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: So we have our little home and it's made out of bamboo and stucco, solar panel.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: And we just created a permaculture farm.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: My wife studied permaculture.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: So we slowly but surely just kept planting ginger, turmeric, mango, piña, maracuya, cacao.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: We just kept doing it.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: We kept doing it.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: We kept failing.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: We kept succeeding.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: And now at this moment, we have at least...
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: A hundred trees that are close to providing fruit for us.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: So if anything ever happens, Nick, Julie, come to my house.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: We have solar, we have water, we have mangoes.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's good to know.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: But now we're like a year in and we ran out of money, obviously.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: We're self-funded.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: So we started doing Airbnb.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: Experiences.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I was doing private dinners in my jungle home for eight to 10 people every night.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it just exploded, like booking, booking, booking.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I was doing five course dinners on open fire in my jungle home.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it was so freaking cool.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: But at some point, it was like, hey, I want to go back to...
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: The restaurant life, you know, I love it.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: I love hosting 80 people.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: I love feeling that energy.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: I love being in the water.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: I love, you know, hospitality.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: I grew up my whole life doing it.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I slowly started looking once again.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, what do I do?
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Not a lot of money.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: Again, the same story, but I did it again.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I found this little hotel by the beach that was looking for a tenant.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: And Nick, you went there, right?
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a super cool space.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: And we had it for about three years.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: But again, it wasn't my space.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: I was connected to a hotel.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: That wasn't my vibe.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't my energy.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I share with them, listen, I'm a passionate chef.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: I love music.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: I love bands.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: I love to, I'm not just food.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: I want music to connect with, with everything, right?
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: And the owner said, no problem, no problem.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I invested everything and we started going.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: One year, two year, around two years in, the owner goes, you know what?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: You can't have music anymore.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to close at nine o'clock.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: This is not working.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I go,
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: This is not what we talked about.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes, yeah, but you know, it's not connecting with the hotel.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, your restaurant's too busy.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's people waiting.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: I imagine you were doing better than the hotel.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: And he kept saying, you know, your restaurant's too busy.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: There's no parking.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lineup every night.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is not what we want.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I go, but you know, That's not how it works.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: I have rent, I have bills, I have staff.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm happy to have a... You should be happy I have an amazing restaurant with a lineup.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: So that was like another disaster for about a year, fighting with a landlord.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, at some point, please, universe, give me a break.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: These restaurants, right?
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like fighting the hot dog guy and then COVID closing my restaurant in Toronto and
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: then,
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: coming here and finally have a beautiful place and the landlord's like, you know...
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: Get out.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm like, oh my God, here we go again.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: So again, three years in, my lease is up and I go, okay, I got to find a place ASAP.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I found this old house on top of like across from the Yuvito waterfall,
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: super, super beautiful land.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's like an acre of land with fruit trees and the lady didn't want to rent it.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I sent my good friend, Jason, and the gardener for the last six years here.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: And he met her.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it was outside of a church or outside of a soda,
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: but he met her and he said, listen, Sebas Restaurant needs a new home.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: He's an amazing tenant, amazing restaurant, farm to table.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: Can you help him?
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: And she says, the only person I will rent my house to is Sebas.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I went to her house the next day.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: With a thousand bucks in my hand, old school, in my pocket waiting.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, you know, sharing my ideas.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: And she's like, I don't know.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I go, is this cash?
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: This is my, just like handshake to you saying, I guarantee we're going to be the best tenants.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: So man, we signed a contract that day.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: And we moved Sebas in September and we had two months to open the new Sebas.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: And we renovated the crap out of that house.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it's so freaking beautiful now.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's so, so beautiful.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: with my wife and our good friend,
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: Veronique, she helped us design this house into a badass jungle oasis world.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: We're picking mangosteens.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: We're using it for the dessert.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: We have open fire.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: I have a Oaxacan pit that I can cook half a pig in or half a lamb.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm so freaking blessed.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: And we've been here about six months.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a dream for me.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: There's parking.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: There's space for us to grow.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: We have a pasta room.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: We're doing homemade pasta every morning.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: For me as a chef, finally, I'm feeling like, okay, the universe got my back.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: But it took me years and years and years of failing.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: And do I give up?
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: Do I give up?
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: Do I just go work in a restaurant and be a chef and get a salary?
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: Or do I just keep fighting?
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: Do I keep crying?
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: Keep fighting, keep crying, keep stressing.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: My wife's amazing, man.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: She supports me from me having a dollar in my bank account to where we are now.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: And your family.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: My family, her family, these guys are amazing.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: Can I ask you something about the name?
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: Talking about your wife, did you guys, how did you decide about the name?
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: Given that she was involved too, right?
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like it was her restaurant in a way,
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: but I mean, you are the chef, but did you guys talk about it?
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: We couldn't find a name that like really connected to us, you know, like...
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it was like coming to like the opening and in Yuvita,
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you know it,
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: you have an opportunity to open the restaurant and high season starts November
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: and you have to open November or, you know, you're done.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: You need to open by November 15th or you're going to lose that six months
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: that will help you get through the rainy season, right?
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: So we're like a week away and we don't have a name and she's just, we're just like, Sebas.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone calls you Sebas.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so vamos con Seba.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: And we just pushed it.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, my brother's name is Sebastián.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: And everyone calls him Sebas.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: Connected with the name.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: There you go.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: Super easy.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: Now, like,
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: it's funny, though.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: I hear Sebas everywhere now.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: And we just hired a new kid named Sebas.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, bro, you got to change your nickname.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: You need a nickname for something.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: I can't be looking every time they call you for a mashed potato.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I need to focus on my line, right?
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, that's a story.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: It was super, super difficult to get where we are right now.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then we opened a little small tapas bar named Alma Cocina, which is super awesome.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: 20-seater, rotisserie chicken, piti-piti, organic, local, same, but for the area of Evita.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's a little bit more affordable, super fun.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: We have events there.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, that's That's our life.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: I can continue for the next five hours of how many times we have issues,
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: but I'm positive and we're fighting for what we believe in.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: So Alma is in town
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: in Uvita.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Alma is in Bahia.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_02: Where is that in relation to Uvita?
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: Bahia is like close to where the old Sebas was, like going towards the beach.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then Yuvita is just like a block over and we're close to like on the mountain.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: So we're like five minutes away.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: But both places are super cool.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: Sebas is a dream for me now.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: I have over 30 people that work there.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: We're doing homemade pasta every single day.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: Every two months, I change the pasta menu.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: We're only using open fire for the grill, which I love.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: My wife is going to kill me because I have two guys collecting wood every day.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm paying a salary just to collect madera.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_02: How are they collecting wood?
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: Is this sustainable?
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: Any tree that falls on our land or any land Organically, we use.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: In the jungle,
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: there's trees falling so much because there's so much rain that there's always wood
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: for us.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, you can't compare an asado on an open fire compared to gas or a sous vide.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: I grew up, I'm a little bit hesitant eating carne or pescado on the fire.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's the best flavor in the world for me.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's amazing, right?
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: The char, the smoke.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, related to that, like, is it sustainable and how do you collect the wood?
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: What is specific about a sustainable pizza place?
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: Because we are familiar with a sustainable restaurant, right?
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: Or kind of.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: Although there is a lot of, you know, like assumptions about that.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: What about a sustainable pizza place?
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: What does that imply?
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, for us, sustainability is super important.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we have 40 acres here.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: We're trying to grow as much as we can.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, we can't keep up with the demand of sellers.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: But for me, sustainable, you know, that word is now used in a lot of restaurants.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: But the question is, are they actually sustainable?
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, for me, it took me five years to find...
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: And organic garlic.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: It took me four years to find an amazing lamb chop from Costa Rica that is juicy and tasty.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: I have, I have like, I counted last week, I have over 40.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: Provedores, 40 suppliers of all different things.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: I buy my vanilla from one lady, my chocolate from another, my coffee from another.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: And for me,
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: sustainable is that,
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: giving back to the farmers that are actually working towards growing their farm
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: and working with Sebas and making us an amazing restaurant using their product.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: Is there any specific regulation coming from the government you have
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: to meet Certain like rules.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: No, and Yuvita is, no, it's pretty much, you know, you believe, you have to believe in it.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it's so easy for me to just call Cisco and be like, this is my order.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: Bring me cheese or shrimp from China.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: But no, it's not what we do.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm paying, for example, organic garlic is $13,000 per kilo, which is around $30 U.S.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: They don't baby garlics in Costa Rica because it's so hot here.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's so hard, right?
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: To grow the garlic.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: I can buy a Chinese garlic for a dollar a kilo.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this is why I'm still struggling to upgrade my iOS on my Mac, but I'm happy with it.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: But no, it's,
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: sustainability is in, I mean, Nick,
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: you see how many restaurants are using it now,
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: but you know, you gotta see like, Is your whole project sustainable?
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because,
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: it's easy to buy chocolate from Cisco,
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: but I'm looking for an organic chocolate from Costa Rica.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: So when you're eating my chocolate cake,
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: there's an explosion in your mouth and I'm bringing awareness to,
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: you know, we grow such incredible things in Costa Rica.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so blessed as a chef to have mangoes all year round, pineapples all year round.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it takes two years to grow a pineapple.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: Two freaking years.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: Every time you eat a pineapple, remember, it takes almost two years organic pineapple.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: Super, super crazy.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: And is this a price table or you have to adapt to whatever is available or sometimes
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: the purveyors don't have enough?
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no,
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: we have a super open menu where it'll just say filete of the day or piscata
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: the day.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: So it depends on what they catch.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: We use, you know, months on end, they banned fishing of mahi-mahi.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll never use it.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: Next few months, we can't use Pargo.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I try to use what the fisherman gives us.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: But working and living in a small town, it's super complicated sometimes.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes a fisherman party the night before and they don't go out.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: And they say, Pura Vida, you're not getting fish.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: So now I got to explain to my clients, listen, we don't have fish.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: My fisherman drank 24 beers yesterday and he doesn't want to go in the ocean.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is the only situation that's super complicated in a small town is
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: because we don't have a market to go to where I can pick tuna from Guanacaste.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: This is a little complicated for me,
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: but 90% of the time,
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: these guys are calling me, hey, I have a 30 kilo tuna, you want it?
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: And they're bringing it fresh from the boat for me and You know,
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: the cheese is handmade from a local Buffalo farm and, you know, I'm super blessed.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: But it's still complicated running a super high-end restaurant in a small town is
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: because sometimes, you know, you don't have the product.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you don't have the product and you have to explain to the clients,
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: listen, I don't have it.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: But after years of having Sebas,
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: now my clients understand that we are We are trying to use local product
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: and they have to understand,
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: they have to respect that today we don't have lamb chops because we couldn't get it.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it's beautiful to see.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: Three years ago, they would be like, why, why, why?
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: And now they're like, oh, cool.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: We'll order an ossobuco or we'll order a ravioli.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it's cool because now they're seeing it and they're teaching.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm seeing chefs now in the area talking about farm-to-table,
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: sharing about where they're getting their product.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: And five years ago, when I moved here, this was not a conversation.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: Not a conversation of where that chicken is from because it was just not a conversation.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I believe that Sebas Restaurant is a big pioneer for local farm-to-table,
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: sustainable products in Yuvita and in Costa Rica.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm proud to say that, you know, It's beautiful to see.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I love to see my staff so excited to see that fresh tuna that was caught
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: an hour ago and we're slicing it fresh for the clients.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, wow, this is the best crudo I ever had in my life.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I go, yeah, it just came off the boat like an hour ago.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: And in terms of the conversation with purveyors,
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: have you found that they inherently have this sustainable logic in their practices
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: or there is something different?
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: You have to adjust with them that you find not sustainable
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: because that's another assumption that they are being sustainable themselves.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've caught suppliers sending me calamari and I'm like, where's this from?
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, oh,
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: we didn't have a chance to get the one from the Caribbean coast so we sent you one
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: from Thailand.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, no, this is not how we do it.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'd rather you just say we don't have it than...
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: Pretend you're going to send me camarones, Costa Rica, and you're sending me from China.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: This is not what we're going to do.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: So take it back.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: And after years of like, hey, I don't want it.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: No, I don't want it.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, they're like, okay, we don't have it.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want something else?
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: I had to take the octopus off the menu because we couldn't get it from Costa Rica.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: Which, you know, it was sad because it was one of my best dishes.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: People loved it.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: We were selling out of it every night.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: But my supplier couldn't bring me octopus from Costa Rica.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: And they started bringing it from Chile and Peru.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: Which is still amazing,
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: but in the end it's like, hey,
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: why am I selling Peruvian octopus when I can find the best trout from Costa Rica or
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: the best patigo from the south of Costa Rica?
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: Let's use that product.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, what is the best in that case?
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: You're crazy.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: You're taking off the best, most popular item off the menu.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I go, but this is, you know, you have to follow...
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: You have to follow your line.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it's easy just like, hey, you know, we're super slow this week.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to buy crappy cheese from Walmart.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: Or like, I mean, we don't have a Walmart in your retail, obviously.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, it's difficult.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's complicated.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, it's beautiful to see.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_02: Have you found yourself cooking more Costa Rican?
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_02: What would you call your food?
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_02: Would you call it Italian-Argentanian?
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_02: Or would you call it...
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know what you would even call it.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_02: Like when I was there, it was like half pizza and then half very eclectic everything else.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like we're, you know, we don't have a name.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like, it's an inspiration of Costa Rican product.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that fusion word is so...
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's loaded, yeah.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's not a good term.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to use that word anymore,
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: but it's a mix of like,
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: Italian homemade pasta and fermented pizza with South American open fire cooking
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: with Costa Rican products.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: So really it's like if an Italian had a baby with an Argentinian that moved
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: to Lulita and that baby opened a restaurant in Cebas and that's the food
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: that you're going to eat.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's exactly what it is.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_02: No, but that's far more interesting than if it was just,
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_02: you know, trying to replicate Italian-Argentinian.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: No, because, yeah, it's not who we are.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: our dessert chef is born in Costa Rica and she's doing badass desserts
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: from Costa Rica.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not going to say it's an Italian dessert.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: But there's influence from, you know, their families and my families and my wife's families.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, it's a super cool mix of Costa Rican product because we have the best.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: We have such incredible product here in Uvita.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: We're super cool.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_01: give us examples of dishes or pizzas or Argentinian traditional dishes that are
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: a bit different just because it's your take on them,
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: but also because of the products.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like when we throw an entraña on the grill, we're using fresh chimichurri.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: the sides instead of papa polota,
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: we're going to roast the homemade camote from Costa Rica.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: Or we're going to make a puree of platano.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: And every day is changing.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: you're going to get a side or a veggie of palm hearts that was picked a few days ago
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: on the open fire.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, you're getting that mix of not just entraña with papa frita.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: You're going to get a mix of all different veggies from Costa Rica,
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: you know, The pizza is, you know, it's a fermentation of 72 hours.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: It took me years to, you know, to perfect that dough because we live so close to the ocean.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's always changing and it's still always changing every day.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: Depends on the humidity, depends on the weather, depends on the rain.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, like we're trying to use, you know, we have a cool pizza called Pizza Masi.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's inspired by one of my best friends in Italia and it's a roasted pumpkin
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: that we cook on the fire.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_00: Open it up.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: And we use that as a base on the pizza with pancetta and gorgonzola and local kale.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a super popular pizza.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: But we're not using tomatoes.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: We're using a pumpkin from Costa Rica, which is cool.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: Or we have another pizza called La Dota, which is inspired by an area above us.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: And we put smoked trout, fresh dill from Costa Rica, goat cheese from Dota.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a super cool pizza with spicy honey that we use the honey from a local farm.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: That pizza is 100% Costa Rican.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: So when you're coming to Sebas, you see that Pizzadota.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, wow,
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: what a cool mix of Costa Rican product with
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: the expertise of amazing pizza dough
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: from Italia.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah,
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: those are a few examples of how we're adding both the Costa Rican product with
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: the knowledge of making pasta or pizza.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm super proud of it.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_02: Since you moved to Uvita in the southern Pacific coast, has it changed much?
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_02: Big time, man.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: In a good way or a bad way?
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: For me...
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: For me, I think it's a good way.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm seeing a lot of,
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: especially in restaurants,
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: like I told you a few minutes ago,
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm seeing chefs starting to share where they're getting their product from,
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: starting to share,
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: they're making homemade breads,
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: they're not buying it from Cisco,
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: they're,
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: you know, they're making homemade burgers or fries and they're not buying it frozen.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm seeing it now a drastic,
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: a drastic shift because either you, you know, you jump on Eating is healthy.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: And people want to eat healthy now.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: They don't want to eat crappy food anymore.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I see Uvita change positively.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: I see there's a lot more products available here.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: I can buy an extra virgin olive oil from Italia here in Uvita.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: And five years ago, I couldn't.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: I can find a burrata that's handmade in Guanacaste in Yuvita now.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: Five years ago, I couldn't.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm seeing markets now that are completely full of amazing products.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm seeing chefs coming here to Yuvita to do pop-up dinners.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm seeing chefs opening up restaurants here.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: But it's still super untouched.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: There's probably like...
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's my question.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, in terms of tourism,
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: because this is in part obviously because tourism has been growing so much
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_01: in Costa Rica.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_01: People want to move there or buy a piece of land or,
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_01: there is so much interest in Costa Rica that has to affect in some way how
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_01: The whole,
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_01: given that it was mostly ecotourism and I don't know how much the government is,
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_01: I have no idea how much the government is protecting that or that's always
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: a tricky balance, right?
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_01: Between growing tourism and development and then the sustainable, you know, growth of.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think in Uvita, it's still super untouched.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: there's development everywhere in the world,
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: but I still see, you know, we have a lot of protection.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of land is protected here,
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: which is super beautiful because we're like the end of the Corcovado Park
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: and it's super protected.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: The other side of Costa Rica,
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: I can't share my thoughts because I haven't been there in years,
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_00: but I know Guanacaste and that side is getting super, super,
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: I hear they're cutting down a lot of trees and they're building big,
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: huge hotels with Hilton and, you know, it's sad to see.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: But in Yvita, I still think it's super, super cool, super intimate.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: I don't see a lot of cutting down.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: There's a super...
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: Important rule on our coast where you can't build 150 meters from the ocean.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: So that protects a lot of the ocean coasts where you can't build any big hotels.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: You can't build any restaurants.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: So that's protecting all our coasts.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_02: So in Urita, there's nothing beachside, right?
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_02: Like everything is removed, that whole area.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's just everything's, all the infrastructure's like
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: away from the beach, in the mountains.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: Anything that's beachside is like grandfathered in,
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: which they can't, you know, they can't renovate, they can't touch.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_00: Those guys have been there for 50 years, which they don't actually own the property.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a concession and the government can take it anytime and turn it into
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: an area for the lifeguards or whatever they decide.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: But Yubita here, Yubita, Ojachal, there's nothing on the beach.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's cool because you go to the ocean and there's nobody trying to sell you much
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: and it's super peaceful.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: We can drive to a beach and there's literally two people there the whole day.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's unheard of now, right?
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: You go to Buenos Aires, you go to Mar del Plata.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's thousands of people.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: You go to Italy and you go to the beach, there's thousands of people on the beach.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_02: If you just go up the coast, you know, like the central coast, it's full of people.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_02: You go to Guanacaste,
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_02: even though there are remote parts of it,
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_02: still, it's full of people and hotels and
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: all that
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_02: stuff.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_02: Don't you think it'll come eventually?
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_02: Just from my point of view, I've been traveling there for like 20 years.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_02: This Southern Pacific area and Corcovado to me is like the best.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's the most pristine,
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_02: most beautiful,
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_02: but there's definitely a lot more going on than there was 10 years ago
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_02: or even five years ago.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_02: Just post-pandemic,
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_02: the amount of just houses and restaurants and things in that area,
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_02: as you said, it's still minimal compared to everywhere else.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_02: You still have to be careful.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_02: I think everyone has to be careful because I think it can spiral out
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_02: of control very quickly because that does happen in Costa Rica quite often.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_00: Nick, what's amazing about Lluvita is we have the national park.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_00: So that's always going to be protected.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: So that whole coast, you can't fish there, can't build there.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_00: You can't bring your dog to the beach.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: You can't have a beer on the beach.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's, it's super protected national parks in Costa Rica.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_00: So we're blessed to have a big national park in front of our,
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_00: in front of our restaurant and our home is,
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: so I think, you know, I believe in, they'll protect that area for forever.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: But again, like, we don't know.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_02: No, I mean, weren't they trying to build an airport in Sierra Bay for a long time?
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_02: Like, is that happening or not?
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: I've been here five years.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_00: I've heard, I've heard them trying to build that airport for the last five years.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_02: No, because right now, it takes a long time to come from San Jose, right?
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_02: How many hours is it?
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: So there's two options.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: Drive, and hopefully you can get here between three to four or five hours.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: Or you can take Sansa Airline.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it can get you to Quibbles within 15 minutes.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: And you can take a taxi from Quibbles to Yvita within 30, 40 minutes.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's not as far as I thought.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: So you can get to Yvita with the airline and a taxi within an hour.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I do that all the time.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's so much better than driving that four or five hours.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: You mean from San Jose?
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, from San Jose.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_02: Still, it's more complicated.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that plane you've got to do.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta pray to every god you believe in and that pray.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's why it's more protected too, I mean.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's much more inconvenient to reach than Guanacaste or, you know, anywhere else.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_01: But what would you say is the most challenging thing in terms of,
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: you know, getting the restaurant where you feel it
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_00: should work?
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's far.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's far, yeah.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's,
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_00: you know how restaurants work nowadays,
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_00: 50 best in these places where you got to bring these guys in,
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_00: fly them in, pay their hotel, pay their stay.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_00: And some chefs collaborate together in cities where they split that cost.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_00: Really, anybody in San Jose,
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: it's easy for somebody to come in and fly to San Jose and eat in Barrio Escalante.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_00: But who's really going to?
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_00: Other than if you're Nick, who's going to come to you with them and drive five hours to see us?
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_00: But it's happening.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm seeing a lot more people coming to sell us.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_02: But do you need those people?
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_02: Do you need these 50 best people?
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_02: Or do you need that publicity, that dependency on these international lists?
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think you do.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_01: Personally, personally,
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in Yvita.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm happy.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm grateful of where we are right now.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: to bring Sebas where,
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_00: we're full every night and I can pay my staff the best salary and I can have
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_00: the best products.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, these things help.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_00: If it's not maybe 50 best,
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_00: you know, 50 top pizza, it brought awareness to the country, to who we are.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_00: And people are driving four hours on the weekend to come see us for pizza.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's because, you know, it helped us.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_00: Is it going to change my life?
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_00: No, but,
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_00: any exposure is good exposure for restaurants off the beaten path
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_00: because it brings more ice to us.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I believe that, you know, no, maybe we'll never be on 50 Best Latin America.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: Do we deserve to be on it?
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: Fuck yeah.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_02: Does anyone deserve to be on it, to be fair?
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_00: Do I have the PR and do I have the money to bring these people in?
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: No, I don't.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm just going to continue to put my head down and make the best pasta and pizza
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: and continue to do what we're doing.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, I believe any exposure helps any restaurant.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: And as long as you believe in your concept at some point or another,
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_00: you know, you're going to be full every night or 80% full every night.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: The problem with Yvita is, you know, we fight for our lives for five months.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's low season.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're dropping 40, 50, 60% sales.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_00: In one month,
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_00: you're going from doing 200 people a night in April to doing 70 in May,
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_00: 60 in June, and then going back up.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then in September, October, it's like you got to fight for your life to get to December.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's super stressful.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, we've done it for so many years where, you know, we know it's going to happen.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's the rhythm, yeah.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_00: But every May is like, ah, man, we're here again.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go, guys.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: Let's go through this.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: But would
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_01: you say the most motivating thing for aspiring keeps being the farm
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_01: to table
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_01: logic and what that brings
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_01: to everyone, the customers, you, the purveyors?
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, farm to table, it's hard.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_00: But if you believe in it and you try and you try to be as much as you can,
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_00: it's, you know, people know that we are farm-to-table now.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_00: Our staff knows where our product's from.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_00: Our clients know where it's from.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_00: And it's actually beautiful because it brings awareness to other restaurants,
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_00: like I said, where now they're asking me, hey, what lamb are you using?
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because it feels like you're eating an Australian lamb, but it's a Costa Rican farm.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, what?
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard, man.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to be farm-to-table.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_00: The cost, the stressfulness of coming from... Is your
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_01: staff home local?
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_00: We have 28 Costa Ricans working with me, man.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_00: Super amazing.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of them started...
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_00: Cleaning dishes,
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_00: cutting potatoes,
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_00: chopping onions, and now they're making the best pizza in the country.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_00: They're making homemade pasta every morning.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_00: They're so talented.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_00: About 80% of my staff have started with me from day one and they're still with me,
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_00: which is super cool that they've been with me through the thick and thin and the ups
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_00: and the downs and the sh.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_00: Power outages and there's no water.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_00: You have to close down and tropical storms where these storms are flying
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_00: into your open air restaurant.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_00: The clients are getting soaked.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_00: We have stories of trees falling down.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's the jungle here.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's like rainforest.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_00: We've had some storms.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_00: Last week, we didn't have power for two days during service.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_02: What did you do?
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I stole my generator from my house and my wife wants to kill me,
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: but now we have a generator.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_00: So the generator can run 80% of the restaurant.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I had the Jenny on for two services last week,
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_00: which is super stressful, but I was ready for it.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that's rainy season in Costa Rica.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_00: You got to be ready because I don't think it can happen.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_00: And we don't have windows.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have walls.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_00: So if it's a huge storm, that rain's coming in.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_00: And you got to tell your clients, be ready.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_00: How is your
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_01: kid doing?
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_01: He spends a lot of time in the restaurant?
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_00: My daughter?
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_00: She's awesome, man.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_00: She thinks she's the owner of the restaurant.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_00: She walks in.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_00: She walks in to Sebas or Alma.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_00: She says, Alma is mine and Sebas
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_01: is yours.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_00: I work at Alma a little bit.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_00: I still do all the ordering, but for me, I can't be at both places.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_00: So she thinks that she's in charge of Alma.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_00: She's five years old, but she's a boss.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_00: She's already going to the dessert room, eating gelato before her dinner.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm the boss.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_00: Give me a smoothie.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_00: Super amazing.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_01: What's her name?
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_00: Her name is Kaya.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_00: Kaya Gloria Rosa.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_00: Blonde, looks like a Polish little girl,
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_00: lived in Costa Rica her whole life, speaks Spanish, and she's tough.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_00: She's got attitude.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_00: She lived in the restaurant her whole life, right?
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_00: She knows.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, she knows.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_02: You mentioned the restaurant being open air.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_02: What about like animals and things?
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_02: Like after you close, are like monkeys climbing in and stealing things?
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_02: Or do you lock it up?
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_02: Because the other place was down by the beach.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sure there weren't many animals around.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_00: No, not many animals there.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_00: But where
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_02: you are now?
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_00: We got, man,
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_00: we got this like,
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_00: This Chiricoco is like a big bird and she's always around the restaurant trying
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_00: to jump in, trying to eat our food.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_00: We have monkeys, we have toucans, we have sloths, we have snakes.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_00: We have an amazing dog named Macho that we rescued and he lives there with us.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_00: So he's like our guard dog.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_00: We have two cats that we adopted and they live there.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then we have somebody that pretty much is our guard,
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_00: but I know they're sleeping for eight hours a night.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_00: Of course.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_00: But we have somebody there 24 hours a day, either making bread or doing prep.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_00: But man, there's...
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's monkeys there.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's super cool.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_02: Have there been any incidents of like during service, like monkeys?
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_02: During service.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_00: Monkeys, no, but spiders, yes.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_00: We haven't had a snake in because they don't really like loud noise.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_00: But there's, there's, I don't know, man.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_00: We're across from the Yuvita waterfall.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's super jungly.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_00: No, we haven't had a monkey yet.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_00: But that moment we have a monkey,
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_00: I will send you a message, Nick, and tell you, man, that monkey stole the pizza.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_00: That'd be great.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like pizza monkey.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_00: You can do t-shirts.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_02: But there's a lot in Uvita.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_02: Like I was surprised when I was there and I,
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_02: you know, I hung out with you and Marlon, Marlon Acuna.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_02: He has a bunch of restaurants.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're pushing.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_02: What does he have?
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_02: Contra Marea.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_00: Marea.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then he's running Scala, Cebu, and Potts.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_00: He's pushing it through the whole country above the south.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_00: And he's pushing super hard to bring awareness to the south coast.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because back in the day, the people from San Jose, they would go to Guanacaste.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_00: They would go to Santa Teresa.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_00: They would go to Mano Antonio.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_00: They would stop in Jaco and not go south.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: But now we're blessed to have, on the weekends, at least 60% Ticos as our clients.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_00: Coming from?
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_00: From San Jose, all over the country to eat our food.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_00: And when they come there, they think it's a pizzeria.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not a pizzeria.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's a farm-to-table, open-fire restaurant with an amazing pizza.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_00: But we're doing super cool things.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, Marlon is doing an amazing job in the South Coast.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_00: I think the South Coast needs more chefs like us to actually cook real food,
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_00: to actually believe in their product,
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_00: to actually care about where the product's coming from.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I see it happening.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I see it.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_00: There's a chef that works at Contra Morena, JP, young guy.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_00: He's actually, I invited him to do a pop-up next week at Alma.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_00: And we're going to do a fun little collab together.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I see young chefs coming here.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_00: My chefs and Sebas are badass.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_00: Man, these guys are amazing.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_00: Karina, she's been with me day one, you know.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think the best pizza chef in the whole country, Lucho, he's incredible.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_00: I got the best pasta maker.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_00: These guys are making pasta better than me, and I taught them.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_00: We're changing dessert menu every day.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_00: We're pushing the boundaries.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_00: We're pushing the boundaries of Cebas.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_02: What about sodas and things?
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_02: Is there still a vibrant assortment of sodas there, or are they getting pushed out?
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, they're still vibrant.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's a soda called Caseru,
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_00: which she's pushing similar vibe of us,
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_00: like cooking real food with real product, soda level, like soda dishes.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_00: And she's slammed.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_00: She's slammed every lunch.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it's cool to see.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_00: I love sodas.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_00: No, me too.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_02: When I travel around Costa Rica, that's usually what I'm looking for.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_00: But for me, I'm super sensitive with eating crappy oil and eating frozen french fries.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd rather go to a place serving a ceviche,
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_00: slicing for me and eating it straight out of that,
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_00: making it at the moment rather than having frozen fries with canola oil.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_00: But I see sodas are still thriving here and they're using better product
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_00: and it's important for me To share with them, you know, use that amazing pot to go.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_00: Don't sell the tilapia because, you know, the tilapia was frozen through a box.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_00: But I see it, you know, I see it changing.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_00: In that restaurant, Casa Rue, she's a great example of a soda doing amazing things.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_00: She's using open fire and,
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_00: she's trying to bring that level and awareness to, you know, cheaper food and sodas.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, that's great.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I love the sodas and the rare restaurants like yours that are scattered around.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_02: But there's so many bad restaurants in Costa Rica.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I've talked about this a lot.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_02: There's so many, like,
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_02: just gringos that move there,
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_02: no offense, that just open, like, their retirees or something.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_02: And they just have the same stupid menu of, like, a burrito and... Nachos.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_02: And chicken wings and nachos.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_02: And it's, like, this just weird assortment of shit.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_02: Using the worst ingredients,
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_02: it just displaces everything good of all the little beach towns everywhere.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_02: But I do see it changing, and I don't see those opening quite as much as they used to.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I think there's more places like yours that are trying to do things in a better way.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_02: Do you find that there?
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know what it's like in Uvita with those kinds of restaurants.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_02: I think maybe the tourism's too new there.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_00: Man, those restaurants are coming everywhere.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_00: They're opening everywhere with the same menu and the same concept.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_00: I don't go there.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_00: My family doesn't go there.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'd rather give my money to a small place or I'd rather just make my own dinner.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_00: These restaurants are starting to fade out at least here.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_02: That's what I see.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think those places are fading away.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_00: I hope they fade out completely as a chef because it's horrible.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_00: They're using...
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_00: You see,
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_00: they're getting a Cisco delivery,
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_00: and they're using the same French fries as their tilapia,
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_00: as their frozen chicken wings, as their garlic from China, and they just don't care.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_00: They're just doing it because they think opening a restaurant is fun
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_02: and easy.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_02: Which is a terrible idea.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_00: Restaurants are not easy and not fun and easy.
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, you got to be passionate.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, these restaurants are opening all over the place.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_00: In US, in Canada, in, you know, you see these chains coming here.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_00: And we're blessed because Zuvita is so small that we're not getting many chains yet.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_00: But at some point, I'm sure the Starbucks will come.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, the McDonald's might come or the A&W.
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_00: But us...
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_00: As somebody that wants to eat, your money is your voice.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're going to give your money to these crappy commercial restaurants
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_00: or Starbucks, then that's your choice to support these guys, right?
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_00: Or go to a beautiful little coffee shop serving amazing coffee from Costa Rica
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_00: that you can't find anywhere else in the world.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah,
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_00: these crappy restaurants that are serving frozen food
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_00: that you mentioned are still opening up everywhere, man.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_01: As an Argentinian,
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_01: Italian, Canadian,
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_01: building a project in Costa Rica,
• 1:03:41
  SPEAKER_01: where is your identity located?
• 1:03:43
  SPEAKER_01: How do you see yourself and how do you relate or how do you communicate all that to the world?
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's a lot within yourself too.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I...
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_00: My identity is me, is Seba Gallucci.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_00: And my identity is who I am, where I am now is how many times I've failed.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's my identity.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_00: How many times I've seen my father fail, how many times I've seen our family fail.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_00: To get food on the table, and that's my identity.
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_00: I always believe in my nonna watching her make food,
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_00: my grandmother watching them and seeing my father making an Argentinian grill.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_00: That identity for me is definitely a mix of Italian-Argentinian,
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_00: but my identity is a crazy mix of, like I said...
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_00: An Argentinian, Italian.
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_01: Fighting for it.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_00: Fighting for, you know, the dream of having a restaurant self-funded by me and my wife.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, my identity is me.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's not Italian.
• 1:04:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's not Argentinian.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's not agreeing on moving to Costa Rica, trying to make money.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's me fighting for what I believe in.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_01: Has Mike visited you, your ex-business partner?
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_00: Mike hasn't been to the new location,
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_00: but he's been and they follow me and they support me and they love me.
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_00: Our parents, they help us from sticking that in.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_00: When we renovated Sebas,
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_00: we were down to $1 in our bank and we had to call our parents and be like,
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_00: listen, we have a payroll coming up.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_00: I need you to send me money, man.
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_00: I need you to help me.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_00: And they did it without even ever paying Ever asking because they believe in us.
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_00: They see how hard we work.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not those chefs on Instagram taking a video and then going to my house.
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm working every night on the grill.
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm working every night on the pizza.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_00: My wife's working 24 hours a day to make sure my daughter is happy
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_00: and our home is beautiful and our gardens are fresh.
• 1:06:01
  SPEAKER_00: And...
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_00: The staff is happy.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's not easy to be self-funded in a country that's not yours with not much support.
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_00: We have no family here.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's just us.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_00: So the moment I shut down and I give up is the moment Selah's dream is over, really.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because we have no millionaire in a boardroom saying, hey, don't worry.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_00: We're good.
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_00: We got you.
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to be a low season, but we cover you.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's me waking up every morning and whatever's happening in my life.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_00: I got to get to Sebas with a positive energy,
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_00: positive attitude, because I got 30 people that rely on me.
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_00: I have 30 families that are relying on us every day, every payroll.
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter what happens.
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_00: These guys are relying on us.
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it's stressful, beautiful.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_00: High season is freaking amazing.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_00: And low season, it's, man, fighting every freaking day.
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_00: So when people are like, oh, it's so easy to have Sebas now.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_00: You guys are so popular.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_00: I go, man, come to see us in October when we're serving 30 people and I have 30 staff.
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_00: Think about that.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because they come in January when we're having 200 people and they think it's easy.
• 1:07:18
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, man.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's easy.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_00: You guys are always full.
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, no, not always.
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_00: We're trying.
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_00: We're blessed.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_00: We're blessed to have an amazing following from all over the country, but it's not easy.
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it's nice to share this with the world because I'm sure many other chefs feel
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_00: the same way I am when you're self-funded,
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_00: when everybody's relying on you, when you're working 70, 80 hours a week.
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_00: The moment you wake up, you're doing an order.
• 1:07:47
  SPEAKER_00: The moment you go to sleep, you're dealing with it.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_00: An HR problem or somebody's dating somebody else in the kitchen and they're upset
• 1:07:56
  SPEAKER_00: with that guy.
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's never ending, Nick.
• 1:07:59
  SPEAKER_00: But it's super beautiful.
• 1:08:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's super beautiful to have Sebas here.
• 1:08:03
  SPEAKER_00: And we're blessed to be where we are right now.
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_00: And we have an amazing home, amazing garden, super loyal team.
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the country loves us.
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_00: We had Teletika come to Sebas last week.
• 1:08:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, you know what?
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_00: I can do something funny.
• 1:08:19
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of being serious.
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I started like doing salsa live on camera and I was laughing.
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_00: They extended our live show from like three minutes to 90 minutes
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_00: because San Jose was laughing so much of our dancing.
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_00: we're just trying to have fun and we're trying to just Live a dream of
• 1:08:39
  SPEAKER_00: an amazing restaurant.
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we're going to keep pushing.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_00: And we're going to keep doing what we're doing.
• 1:08:44
  SPEAKER_00: And we're going to be in a situation where,
• 1:08:46
  SPEAKER_00: again, we're going to be failed or a tree's going to fall in my car again.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_00: But it's okay.
• 1:08:52
  SPEAKER_00: How do you wake up in the morning and how do you feel?
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_00: How are you going to overcome negativity in restaurants and the hospitality industry?
• 1:09:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's not easy, man.
• 1:09:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's not easy to have a restaurant.
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and as you say,
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_01: everything changed,
• 1:09:06
  SPEAKER_01: you know, one way or the other and you have to navigate the change.
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's life otherwise.
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and the changes here come with like a boom in, that's how I feel.
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you never know, yeah.
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like no power two, three days, like man, I never dealt with that in Toronto, right?
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_00: You deal with other things like,
• 1:09:25
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_00: like Really annoying muni coming in,
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_00: like checking the noise and like, but that we don't get much.
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_00: Just, you know, we're blessed for that.
• 1:09:35
  SPEAKER_00: But you're getting,
• 1:09:36
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:09:36
  SPEAKER_00: you're getting a snake near the wood and your staff's terrified or,
• 1:09:42
  SPEAKER_00: you know, a tree falling down and the roads closed.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_00: Or they decide to shut down the water for three days because they decided
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_00: to shut down the water with no, with no, no warning.
• 1:09:53
  SPEAKER_00: So now you're, you know, you prepped all day and you had to close and
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is living in a small little town in Costa Rica, which, you know, I love.
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it's freaking amazing.
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_00: But there are struggles that a lot of cities don't struggle with, right?
• 1:10:11
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, everyone, for listening.
• 1:10:13
  SPEAKER_02: That was Sebastian Gallucci from Cebas in Alma,
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_02: restaurants in Uvita, Costa Rica on the South Pacific Coast.
• 1:10:24
  SPEAKER_02: If you haven't subscribed to the newsletter, please do.
• 1:10:27
  SPEAKER_02: And a big thank you to my friend Pat Buzzard, who provided the music for the show.
• 1:10:32
  SPEAKER_02: Killer rock musician based out of Columbus, Ohio, my hometown.
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_02: He plays gigs around there.
• 1:10:39
  SPEAKER_02: I haven't seen him in a while, but they're great if you have time.
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_02: So look him up, Pat Buzzard.
• 1:10:46
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah,
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_02: go to newworlder.com or search for New Worlder on Substack to find us more.
• 1:10:51
  SPEAKER_02: And please share us, like us.
• 1:10:53
  SPEAKER_02: That shit really helps.
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 1:10:55
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.