Andrew Wong is the chef of the two Michelin star restaurant A.Wong in London, England. Andrew grew up working in his parents’ restaurant, a straightforward Cantonese restaurant called Kym’s, and had no desire to go into the restaurant business. He went to Oxford to study chemistry, then switched to social anthropology, and then his father passed, so he jumped back into to the restaurant business to help his mother. He started to think about the relationship between food and culture and started visiting China and exploring its regional cuisines. Eventually, he re-imagined the restaurant around these cuisines. In our conversation, we discuss how this all came to be, and what his mindset was going into it. He continues researching regional Chinese recipes, texts and artwork through SOAS University, much of which he talks about alongside food anthropologist Dr Mukta Das on his podcastXO Soused.

Read more and find a full transcript at New Worlder on Substack.


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Host: Nicholas Gill
Co-host: Juliana Duque
Produced by Nicholas Gill & Juliana Duque
Recording & Editing by New Worlder 
Email: [email protected]
Read more at New Worlder: https://www.newworlder.com

Robert Bradley is a professor at University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and is the author of the book Eating Peru: A Gastronomic Journey. Robert, or Bob as I have come to know him, was born in New Jersey, and after working in the wine world, started studying art history and archaeology and he followed his curiosities to Peru. There, he started to become interested in Peruvian food and why certain aspects of it was the way it was. He wrote papers for academic journals on things like the ingesting of alkaloids in coca chewing and on the northern Peruvian dish sudado de raya.

His book, Eating Peru, provides a good understanding about the history of Peruvian food and how certain recipes have evolved over centuries. It’s definitely not a restaurant cookbook, though there are some recipes in it. It goes into a lot of depth about coca, a lot about the food of the north coast, a lot about chicha and just the general study of Peruvian food. I don’t agree with every point being made, but as far as academic books about Peruvian cuisine go, it’s very fair and nuanced. We talk about this a little bit early in the interview and he writes about it in the book. In terms of academia, there seem to be two schools of thought when it comes to Peruvian food. One side is within Peru, where it is primarily driven by preserving culture and the books can be a touch nationalistic, which is expected. Then there is the side published by universities outside of Peru, where it is much more critical of the way Peruvian food has been developing and who benefits from it, especially in the last couple of decades. Both sides make some good points, but there lacks a middle ground sometimes. It feels like you’re either with us or against us. It can be very polarizing.

From my experience with Peruvian food, I think there is plenty to criticize, but there is far more to celebrate. The good far outweighs the bad, especially from within the culinary community. The future of Peruvian food, the future of any type of cuisine really, is going to be messy. We’re trying to feed the planet in a healthy way without destroying it, amidst conditions that are rapidly changing. There are difficult decisions to make so we can all move forward. And for that to happen, we have to share our thoughts with love and kindness. And we have to listen to each other. We don’t have to agree all the time, but we can try to understand where someone else is coming from and why they feel the way they do.

Read more at www.newworlder.com.

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Host: Nicholas Gill
Co-host: Juliana Duque
Produced by Nicholas Gill & Juliana Duque
Recording & Editing by New Worlder 
Email: [email protected]
Read more at New Worlder: https://www.newworlder.com

Deepanker Khosla, or DK as he is often called, is the chef of the Michelin starred restaurant Haōma in Bangkok, Thailand. He was born in Allahabad, India and breaks a lot of misconceptions of who an Indian chef is supposed to be and what Indian food is supposed to look like.

Khosla has managed to make the sustainability of his restaurant something more than just a marketing ploy. Right in the middle of chaotic, polluted Bangkok, surrounded by glass and steel, he’s created an oasis on less than an acre with an aquaculture system that supplies all of his freshwater fish based off a YouTube class he took part in. He also harvests rainwater that he purifies and serves to guests as still or sparkling. He grows all of his garnishes, he houses honeybees and has planted all kinds of different trees. He has actually been able to improve the air quality of the restaurant and, importantly, he has been effective in lowering his overall costs in running the restaurant, which allows him to pay his employees better and make them happier.

We discuss how he lived in his food truck prior to opening the restaurant and how he drove it all over southeast Asia, from beer garden to beer garden, as well as where his ideas come from and how he defines what Neo-Indian food is. We also talk about how limited the idea of Indian cuisine has been around the world and how people like himself and Unapologetic Foods in New York are changing that. There is so much going on we didn’t even have time to talk about how he turned his restaurant into a soup kitchen during the pandemic, feeding more than a hundred thousand people.

Subscribe to New Worlder on Substack and support this podcast here.

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Host: Nicholas Gill
Co-host: Juliana Duque
Produced by Nicholas Gill & Juliana Duque
Recording & Editing by New Worlder 
Email: [email protected]
Read more at New Worlder: https://www.newworlder.com

Juan Sebastián Pérez is the owner of the restaurant Quitu in Quito, Ecuador. I was there for the first time earlier in the year and what I liked the most about it was that it felt like Quito, at least to me. There are a lot of ambitious restaurants in Latin America, that feel like they could be anywhere. Like they equate quality by looking international. At Quitu – the wood tables, the walls, the woven light fixtures, the kind of rooms of various shapes and sizes – it feels like Ecuador, and it made for a far more interesting experience. To me, at least.The restaurant is now in its fourth incarnation over a ten-year period and Juan has learned a lot about life and the restaurant business along the way. We have a very honest discussion about running restaurants, hospitality and sourcing, which has become one of the central components of how his menu is built and what he is trying to achieve in the long term. He’s reached a place where he is a bit wiser and happier working in a restaurant and has really tried to understand the full breadth what that means.This is my first interview from Ecuador on this podcast. I’m not even sure how that happened. I used to go there all of the time and I know lots of people there. I love the country and vastness of its biodiversity within the smallness of its borders, but until this year it had been a while since I was there. The pandemic is mostly to blame. In terms of gastronomy, there is a lot happening there right now on a lot of different levels, so I’m eager to go back with a bit more time. See more at New Worlder.

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Host: Nicholas Gill
Co-host: Juliana Duque
Produced by Nicholas Gill & Juliana Duque
Recording & Editing by New Worlder 
Email: [email protected]
Read more at New Worlder: https://www.newworlder.com

Katie Parla is the New Jersey born, Rome based food writer, cookbook author, tour guide, podcast host and frequent television show guest for anything that happens to include Italy. She has a new book out called Food of the Italian Islands: Recipes From the Sunbaked Beaches, Coastal Villages and Rolling Hillsides of Sicily, Sardinia and Beyond. Read more about her at New Worlder on Substack.

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Host: Nicholas Gill
Co-host: Juliana Duque
Produced by Nicholas Gill & Juliana Duque
Recording & Editing by New Worlder 
Email: [email protected]
Read more at New Worlder: https://www.newworlder.com

Atsushi Tanaka is the Japanese born chef of the restaurant A.T. in Paris, France. Despite being one of the most talented people I know, he has somehow managed to stay off the radar. His restaurant has a Michelin star and he often will go and cook at restaurants around the world, though he doesn’t give a lot of interviews. He’s quiet and elegant rather than in your face and loud, which is refreshing to see, and his food is a reflection of his personality. I was there in Paris last summer and finally had his food after meeting him a couple of years before. It’s a small, minimalist space in the Latin Quarter, a block from Pont de la Tournelle. It’s one of those places I could go again and again. There’s good music playing. The wines, always natural, are beautiful. The food is very ingredient driven, though there aren’t long drawn out stories about anything. It’s not French. It’s not Japanese. It’s not Nordic. It’s not Latin American. It’s just him and he’s a lovely person. It’s my favorite restaurant in Paris. Also, he breaks the news that he’s probably going to open in New York in the not too distant future. It’s something he has been wanting to do for years and it looks like it will finally happen.Disclaimer: We talk about cats a lot. We are both cat people. Check out the Instagram of his cats. I think the first 10 minutes of this episode is just two grown men talking about their cats. Don’t judge.

Find a transcript of the episode at New Worlder.

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Host: Nicholas Gill
Co-host: Juliana Duque
Produced by Nicholas Gill & Juliana Duque
Recording & Editing by New Worlder 
Email: [email protected]
Read more at New Worlder: https://www.newworlder.com

Vaughan Mabee is the chef of Amisfield in Queenstown on the South Island of New Zealand. It’s an out of the way restaurant in an already out of the way country. Yet, it seems like he is on to something. Everyone is always looking for the next big thing in fine dining. That restaurant that can bring an element of surprise. An extraordinary experience in an extraordinary place. And New Zealand has all of that and then some. It has pristine oceans, forests, mountains, and plenty of endemic flora and fauna. Vaughan is a hunter and forager and uses a lot of wild foods, so we end up talking a lot about strange ingredients he encounters, like the Pūkeko, this wild pheasant with frightening claws and tahrs, a sort of wild goat from the Himalayas that has populated the area. The presentations of his dishes evoke the original animal, and he occasionally gets shit for allegedly glorifying hunting on social media. So, we talk about that and his idea of honoring the animal in this way rather than buying from factory farms. This is a guy that you are probably going to hear a lot about in the coming years. See a full transcript and subscribe to the newsletter at New Worlder.

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Host: Nicholas Gill
Co-host: Juliana Duque
Produced by Nicholas Gill & Juliana Duque
Recording & Editing by New Worlder 
Email: [email protected]
Read more at New Worlder: https://www.newworlder.com

Meyling Tang is one of the founders of Fundación CocinaMar, a non-profit organization based in Chile that promotes the well-being of the country’s fisheries and the people that work within it, as well as the seafood restaurant Tres Peces in the port city of Valparaíso. She is also a journalist, specializing in the research into global fisheries. She is perhaps the best person to speak with regarding seafood in Chile and I have been following her work for probably a decade. She has a lot going on with all of her projects and I’ve had the chance to see many of them up close while traveling in Chile. We speak a lot about her restaurant and how she really is breaking with tradition in terms of sourcing and logistics, opting to work directly with fishermen in a way that is mutually beneficial. We also touch upon this idea of the restaurant as a hub of storytelling, something I think can be incredibly powerful.

For a transcript and additional details, subscribe at New Worlder.

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Host: Nicholas Gill
Co-host: Juliana Duque
Produced by Nicholas Gill & Juliana Duque
Recording & Editing by New Worlder 
Email: [email protected]
Read more at New Worlder: https://www.newworlder.com

Natalia Burakowska is the founder of Terratela, which uses food loss and waste to create a line of sustainable clothing. She is using things like seaweed, corn husks, banana fibers and spoiled milk to create fibers that get transformed into clothing. She is trying to start a conversation within the fashion industry about transparency, in the entire line of production from product to packaging, about where the clothes you wear comes from. It’s funny, many of us that think about sustainability in food, completely ignore it in other aspects of our lives. I think I do that. Do you ever question where the materials you put on your body everyday come from? Honestly, before this interview I hadn’t given it much thought. Why does that industry get a pass? Why do we give ourselves a pass for the clothes we wear? This is a conversation that we should have been having for a long time. Natalia isn’t the only one thinking about clothing in this way, though she just so happens to have a food connection that make Terratela especially relevant for my listeners. See a tranwcript and subscribe to our Substack newsletter at Newworlder.com.

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Host: Nicholas Gill
Co-host: Juliana Duque
Produced by Nicholas Gill & Juliana Duque
Recording & Editing by New Worlder 
Email: [email protected]
Read more at New Worlder: https://www.newworlder.com

Joris Bijdendijk is the chef and owner of the restaurants Rijks, inside of the Rijksmuseum, and Wils, which has an open fire restaurant and a café and bakery. A few years ago he started a foundation called Low Food in 2018 with a group of people that work in the culinary industry. Their aim is to change Dutch cuisine. I know there are a lot of other organizations doing something like this around the world, though often times its just some weird ploy for 50 Best votes. This isn’t that. They are really trying to use actual data and open lines of communication between different groups within the Netherlands. They are trying to lay the groundwork to create a more sustainable and healthier food system. See more at www.newworlder.com.

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Host: Nicholas Gill
Co-host: Juliana Duque
Produced by Nicholas Gill & Juliana Duque
Recording & Editing by New Worlder 
Email: [email protected]
Read more at New Worlder: https://www.newworlder.com