New Worlder

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.

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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 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.

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Selected Highlight

On creating a bubble in a polluted city

Nick: “So, you're doing all of these very green things in this very kind of chaotic and would you say polluted city? Is Bangkok polluted?”

DK: “I would. It is very polluted and at the same time, it's very populated and at the same time it has the highest consumption per capita of plastic anywhere in Asia. That was a driving force. Where we are located is 750 meters from where the trains intersect. It's the busiest transit in all the city where we are located. If you pin the center of Bangkok city, it's around 700, 800 meters away from where we are. And we decided to do it here because you and me, Nicholas, we are not leaving the city, we are all coming into the city. The sustainability needs to come into the city. It doesn't have to be four hours away from the city in a valley.”

Nick: “In the middle of all this kind of chaos, concrete and steel, is the idea to change minds and hearts when they enter the restaurant? What happens when someone enters the door?”

DK: “Honestly Nicholas, nobody, nobody, nobody in this part of the world gives a f**k about what we're doing.”

Nick: “You don't think?”

DK: “We are not doing it for people. We are not. As I said, I'm not a vigilante. I'm doing this for myself. Because it feels right. I'm selfish. I want to save the planet for myself. Not for anybody else. I want to create a better tomorrow for myself. I want to live in a bubble. And I'm creating this bubble for me and my people who work for me and my family. While the city has a PM, which is particles and molecules in the air, of pollution 127, 128, when we check in on our area, it's at 96, 97. So, we are already making a difference where we are. We are breathing better because we planted around 11,000 trees in the area where we are. We are breathing better. And I think that's already an accomplishment for what we're trying to do.”

Nick: “But don't you want it to rub off? Don't you want to have like a little bit of impact for everyone that comes in the restaurant to say, Holy s**t I am in this restaurant and I came here to eat and I am breathing better?”

DK: “When you come to Haōma we take you through the entire process. We open every card we have up our sleeves. We make you see the entire system. Our hostess runs you through every single thing that we do at the restaurant and at the farm before you sit down for dinner. The first thing that you eat when you come to the restaurant is whatever has not made it to your plate. From the 10 courses you will eat tonight, whatever did not make it to the plate made it to a single fermented bite that you eat before you come to sit. The second bite when you come to the restaurant and you eat in the garden is the fish that we are growing on premise in a city like Bangkok, 750 meters away from the center. That's chaos. If it doesn't, ring a bell, then God f*****g knows what rings a bell, my friend.”

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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. Hopefully soon.

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Episode Highlight

On sourcing and serving cuy:

Juan: “So why don’t people want to eat cuy, guinea pig? So, the first five years of this process in Ecuador, has been about taking away caviar, foie gras, turkey…”

Nick: “Imported things.”

Juan: “Freaking farm, mis-raised turkey. Or chicken with Coca Cola sauce.”

Nick: “Really? Chicken with Coca Cola?”

Juan: “Yeah. It sounds crazy. The first part of the job was building this mindset. And the second part of the job is convincing people that indigenous customs, our ancestral customs, or traditions, are not for lack of glamour. Glanour from restaurants is the second part of the job. And there is where we just need to put together the traditions. And cuy is considered like mice, like rats. Many people say ‘I don’t eat rat.’”

Nick: “You mean outside of the Andes, or middle classes and things like that? In the Andes people still eat cuy.”

Juan: “Yeah. It’s ignorance. We had this American influence in schools. In our youth, when we were teenagers, we were wearing Old Navy, GAP and all that stuff. Looking to be Americans. It was more important to learn English instead of just feeling love for what we do, for who we are. Those are the type of people that are also able to have a tasting menu with a wine pairing in a restaurant, and then struggle when the guinea pig course gets into the table. The reason they don’t eat cuy is that they consider it a rat. But when I tell them, look, it’s not a rat. In English, you say it's guinea pig. In French, you call it Cochon d'Inde, and that means like the pork of the Andes.

I always ask this question: Have you been in Segovia [Spain] eating cochinillo? And they are like, yeah, of course. I've been in Segovia many times. Okay, so this is the same thing. Try it thinking about that cochinillo in Segovia, and you will feel the texture, you will feel the tenderness, you will feel the flavor, just like that cochinillo. So then, if you give it a chance, you will notice that cuy is not a mouse. Guinea pig is a pig from the Andes, that eats only herbs. So, when you talk about it, people they try it. And 99% of the diners like it. The other thing is just the mindset of people they just want to eat or drink whatever looks expensive. But all the time this is less.

One other important matter about cuy is that here in the northern part of South America, we have the small ones, which are richer in fat, collagen and flavor. In the southern part of the Andean Cordillera, like Peru, Bolivia, small towns in Paraguay, you have the big ones, like rabbit size guinea pigs. They have a different taste. The meat is a little dry. And it's used in another preparation, especially when people in the fields, they just cook it underground. We are not able to raise that type of breed here. Guinea pigs in Ecuador are still these animals that are used to warm up the house of the people in the mountains. So, they have they have hundreds of cuys inside the house.”

Nick: “Just running around like, kind of pets, but also not. You mentioned that you feed them herbs. When you request cuy for your restaurant, can you specify certain types of herbs and does that affect the flavor?”

Juan: “What are we talking about sourcing as the core of the restaurant, I am not just talking about somebody that I found and then I buy from. I'm talking about this network that we have built with a few friends, colleagues and allies in the sustainability chain of sourcing. So, there's this tea company called Tippytea, here in Ecuador, and the founder and the owner of these companies, our friend, started to have these journeys with me, where we were going to certain places in the Andean region. We figured out that it would be better for everybody, if he buys just the flowers, or 25% of the plants, to make the tea. Then the women could invest the other 75% of the plants, the stems, to feed the animals. And then we buy the animals, including that small cost of the of the feeding and raising.

Then a veterinarian came into the project, and we made like this 360 cycle, where he owns the company of the cuy and owns the supply chain source of the cuy, but he monitors the health of the animals during their life and he has scheduled all the ages of the moments where he delivers the babies and when he takes the big and old, fatty, meaty, delicious animals to process them. But in a super professional way because they used to have the animals by the neck and [cracking sound]. It’s too much adrenaline. A lot of the things that could be under control nowadays, this veterinarian is doing that.

Among the plants that we use, basically are 12 types of aromatics that are typical from the Andean region. We have kaniwa which is an Andean mint. And we have lavender, and chamomile. We have one beautiful, beautiful herb that I never found in Peru, though I found it in the herb market in Bogota. It's called typo. It's between thyme, mint and lemongrass. It's super nice and aromatic. Of course, lemongrass, and another native herb called sumfo. Have you tried sweet thyme like tomillo dulce, like the sweet thyme. You make a tea out of it. And it's super nice. It's delicious. And the basic herbs where the tea company needs to plant and empower the ladies to keep in the harvest process. Roses, for example, and regular mint, tarragon, rosemary.”

Nick: “So all these flavors come out in the meat. It’s a more fragrant meat. It's different than just feeding them vegetable scraps or whatever.”

Juan: “You can feel the care of the people. Let's just say that this community, they work for the tea company, and they raise cuy, they raise the animals. If you buy the milk of the cow of the communities, you can make wonderful cheese and you can have these cheese plates in the restaurant for a week because you bought the meat. So, everything around these people is about heritage, about how they preserve identity, but also the care for where their work is going. They know that we depend on their talent.

It's loaded of love, of flavor. It’s not like going and buying chicken wings in a supermarket. The difference when you get good soup or broth of a good hen, a specific hen, is a huge difference. And Quitu is using around 30 to 35 Ingredients per season that are raised and sourced around this conception of going back to the basics. Basically, eating as our great grandparents did.”Nick: “The same products but not necessarily the same preparations, obviously. I want to ask how you've been cooking it. What are you doing with it at the restaurant? I do like cuy, I don't love it when it's just like roasted or fried, like how it is in Peru most of the time. That's how I see it. It's okay like that. I mean, it just kind of tastes like chicken, basically. But I know there are far more interesting preparations. I've had it a lot of different ways and I just want to hear all the things you've been doing with it.”

Juan: “There's where all the information, especially from Modernist Cuisine, or the el Bulli Encyclopedias, come together. It's not about twisting the nature of the ingredients, but it's about having fun. So, we brine the guinea pigs with tea, seven percent salt and 4 percent raw sugar or honey, it depends on what we have available. Strong tea, normally chamomile and eucalyptus. We brighten them so we can get rid of the excess toxins and all the insides. Then we hang them for 48 hours, so we can have dried the whole thing, like looking at it like a rabbit. If you look at it as a suckling pig it is too much. So, we put it at 64 degrees Celsius for 18 to 20 hours, then we let the guinea pig rest. We take the bones out of the whole thing. Have you seen, for example, when you cook a whole fish, and you take the head and the spine out all together? The same thing happens with a guinea pig. We take the bones out, and with the bones, we make a demi-glace, the traditional way of roasting, with vegetables, water and cooking gently. And with the meat, which is super thin, you have a kind of a sheet, and we make a guinea pig sandwich. We put together two guinea pigs, with the skin outside and the meat inside, and then we vacuum seal that so we can press it. Then we have like a guinea pig pastry, let's say it that way, because you have layers of collagen and meat and skin. The moment of service we just cut it in the size that we need. It could be half. It could be a whole guinea pig, or you can have two guinea pigs altogether. That's the mode in the restaurant nowadays. We put it right into the wood fire oven, like a Neapolitan oven temperature at 400 Celsius for 30 or 45 seconds until the skin pops up.”

Nick: “Yeah, it bubbles, like little chicharrón.”

Juan: “Yeah, it's like a cuy chicharron and the meat is still tender. We serve it with its own demi-glace made out of the reduction of the head and the bone, and the meat is super tender because of all the process and the skin is popped up because of the wood oven. In the plate, basically you have a triangle of this under flavors of herbs, like soil, and the meat, which is between suckling pig and chicken, kind of, but this cuy has no aftertaste. Like this really strong aftertaste when you eat old lamb, for example. Guinea pig is super tender. For me it’s a delicacy.”

Nick: “I love it too when someone takes the time that it deserves to put it into that very special creature. I think there's so much that can be done with it. And it's just it's a lost opportunity for those that aren't working with it.”

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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. I have been following her work for many years and it was really great to finally get to hear from her face to face. 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. It’s a beautiful book that covers both large, better-known islands and small off beat ones. They are very regional recipes and even if you have traveled a lot in Italy and she doesn’t shy away from things that traditional books on Italian food stay away from, like spleen sandwiches and horse meat. What is especially cool is that she started her own publishing company to put this out in the world. She didn’t have to rely on a literary agent or traditional publishers. She still had much of the team in place from her last book. So, the same editors, designers and photographer were all there, but she did it all herself and it looks beautiful. She’s even publishing a book with her imprint with the Los Angeles restaurant Angelini Osteria. As publishers lean more and more on the platforms of writers, self-publishing in this way is starting to make a lot more sense.

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Episode Highlight

On Self Publishing

Nick: “Food of the Italian islands, that's your new book. “

Katie: “Dropped in March 2023.

Nick: “Did you self publish it?”

Katie: “I did. Parla publishing, established in New Jersey in 2022.”

Nick: “That's awesome. And this was your first time self publishing?”

Katie: “Yeah, my first title. I thought it was going to be super hard. I was mistaken. And I'm helping a restaurant in Los Angeles independently published their cookbook.”

Nick: “I saw that. Which restaurant is that?”

Katie: “It's Angelina in Los Angeles.”

Nick: “It’s classic?”

Katie: “Yeah, it's very classic. The owner Gino went to culinary school at age 13 in Rimini at the peak of the dolce era period, like served Fellini and then settled in Los Angeles 25 years ago. It does Italian regional cuisine, a lot of classics, but then also things that just kind of like rift on family traditions, but adapted to a California setting. And so, it's a cookbook that recounts the history of the restaurant. After doing Food of the Italian Islands, I was like, this is something that I can help other people do.”

Nick: “Is self publishing was that easy? I know lots of people have self published in the past, but your book looks as good as one from a major publisher. I think the quality of the design, the cover and everything, it looks beautiful. How much more did that process take out of you? I’m sure you've had lots of established relationships with publishers and agents.”

Katie: “I'm almost 10 years into cookbook writing. And Food of the Italian Islands was my seventh. So I had six very different experiences with three or four different publishers. I knew that I wanted to reassemble the team that had done Food of the Italian South. So, I simply hired Ed Andersen to shoot the book and Ian Dingman to design the book. I hired Emily Timberlake, who was at Ten Speed, I always wanted to work with her, she was the development editor. And then I hired the rest of the team, the copy editor, proofreader and index from my previous titles, and found a printer, how to print it. And the like most stressful thing was the logistics of moving a container of books from a printer in Italy, to a warehouse in New York.”

Aside from that, and now that I know how to do that, it's simple. It's literally just like a checklist of steps. I did go through all of the steps that you would in a traditional publishing setting that is, you submit your manuscript, it goes through development, edit, you update it, you send it to the copy editor, you update it based on their feedback, and so on. But I could tell my designer, he could do whatever he wanted, no marketing team would say, you know, blue isn't gonna fly on the cover. We don't do blue covers or whatever, or the fonts are too bold. We didn't, except for a couple of photos, which the ingredients were out of season, everything was shot in situ. That never has flown in another setting. It's always there's always some studio element to it.”Nick: “I agree, I so want to do the books with documentary style photos and things. And it's never allowed. It drives me crazy. It's so much better.”

Katie: “I think that the look of the visual impact of the book is so superior to anything else that I've done, because I was free to let Anderson go wild. But yeah, I took a stack of books that I've written to the printer, and I go, ‘Can you do something of this quality?’ Like, no, that's actually s**t. We're going to do a really good printing and a really cool binding. I got to see each stage of the process, you have to press like, go on the big printer, and that initiated a full month of printing. And then I saw them fold and cut and bind the books at the binder, the coolest ever. For the opaque foil that forms the black shadows on the letters, I saw that imprinted onto the book by a guy called Luigi who had to come out of retirement to work the machine. So, there were just so many cool, like artisanal aspects to it. You know this well. You send off a manuscript, and like it's all digital until you get the pages laid out. And then once you get your second pass, you are not involved in the process. I really wanted to see how hands on I could be at every step of the way. And it turns out, I could be 100% hands on, they probably wouldn't have let me ride in the container. But, I was there every step of the way. And it was amazing.”

Nick: “So what's the risk? I guess is you just had to upfront a lot of the costs.”

Katie: “Yeah, so that's a great question. I have access to analytics based on sales. And when you work for a corporate publisher, you have access to the back end, and you get your royalty statements. I knew what I could sell. For example, for Food of the Italian South, I sold a little over 30,000 copies in three years. So when I was looking at those numbers, I was like, Okay, well, I can sell 10,000 through unconventional methods, by my website, and just indie bookstores in three years. I did all the production costs, logistics costs, storage of the book, at the warehouse, boxes for sending it out all that stuff. If I sold 5500 books of direct sales through a website and then wholesale distribution I would break even. I also had negotiated with my printer to pay in installments. I actually just paid down my last installment for books. So, the upfront costs, were not the full production costs, and I covered almost all of them through just presales.”

Nick: “That's amazing.”

Katie: “I'm stoked. I'm very happy about this. I like to make money from writing books. And that's never happened to me.”

Nick: “I feel like the publishers now depends so much on your own platform that it's like, do we even need you anymore?”

Katie: “The number of times I asked for just very basic support during self funded book tours. And I heard, we're with Chrissy right now. And I'm like, first of all, jelly. Second of all, I just need a little tiny bit of help. And I get that you're with a celebrity author, ut I'm not one and I'm doing so much work, and I'm selling the s**t out of this book. Like, please just send me one thing, that I one graphic that I need, like, please. So, they're depending on you, and then actually withholding basic support, which is fucked, honestly.”

Nick: “It's like, what do they even do anymore? They're doing less and less for you. And it's so much on yourself to do everything now that cutting some of the people out makes a lot of sense.”

Katie: “It's so devastating on your free time, mental health, bathing schedule, just to make the book. And then to have the responsibility of marketing and promoting it without just really basic support is very, very upsetting. It’s another one of the reasons that Parla Publishing was born is because I have made every mistake. I've learned every lesson, at least hopefully. I have developed over the time insight and skills into how to how to promote a book and make it profitable. I'm doing a 4 city book tour in August. So a very conservative number of cities. And I will make real money, taking my book on tour. I can cover my travel expenses. I can make it worth my while not doing tours for the week in Rome. I can stay in a hotel and maybe get like a massage, like things that things that you really need when you're on that tour grind. I want other people to be able to do that for themselves as well.”

Nick: “That sounds lovely.”

Katie: “Massages for all.”

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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.

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Partial Episode Transcript

On Travel

Nick: “Traveling is a big part of your life. Whenever you have like a seasonal break, or a few days off, you go somewhere.”

Atsushi: “Usually we close the restaurant at Christmas. This is for our staff, because for French people it's very important to spend Christmas with family. So that's why we close every year on Christmas season. And then in the summer also, in August. In past the restaurant would close for two or three weeks, so I travel in in August, but I don’t go to Japan because it’s too hot. It's very similar to New York. It's very hot and very humid. Thirty-five or 36 humidity. I don't I don't like it, so that's why I always go to Mexico, Peru or Latin America.”

Nick: “You love Latin America. You have been going there a lot in the last few years.”

Atsushi: “The first time I visited Latin America was in 2016, but before I didn't know anything about it. I went for the first time because Eduardo from Maximo Bistro invited me to cook for Javier’s anniversary. That was the first time I went to Mexico and honestly, I didn’t have a good image of Mexico before. I thought it was like Narcos or drugs or something then I went to Mexico first time and I changed my mind 180 degrees. Totally different. It was very modern. The food was very tasty and there was so much technology. It was so unique and not super hot in Mexico City, for example. Not like Japan in the summer. And then so much goodness. I like the street food. It has a very good street food culture.”

Nick: “It's amazing how good it is. And like the quality of things you get.”

Atsushi: “Also, it's super cheap. One of my favorite restaurants is Los Cocuyos, in the center.”

Nick: “Los Cocuyos. I love it. It's my favorite taqueria.”

Atsushi: “For me, this type of food is better than anything fine dining in Mexico City.”

Nick: “I agree. I think with street food there's a level you can get from just doing the same thing over and over, the same recipe, kind of just perfecting it. But it's not to say every street food vendor gets to that level. For some of them it's an art that's as good as whatever fine dining chef you could ever imagine.”

Atsushi: “I went maybe 10 to 15 times to Mexico was my favorite. It’s my favorite city and I have so many friends there. Then maybe every other year I go to Mexico for vacation. I went many times to cook or to work some event, but now I just go for vacation.”

Nick: “Is it mostly Mexico City? I know we met in Oaxaca though.”

Atsushi: “We met in Oaxaca but I only stayed a few days. The majority of the time I go to Mexico City, but next time I will go to Baja California.”

Nick: “There is a lot in Baja. It's amazing. Everywhere in Mexico is. It's so great.”

Atsushi: “I went to one time to Playa del Carmen.”

Nick: “What did you think about it?”

Atsushi: “Honestly, not my favorite because it's very touristic. It’s not like Oaxaca”

Nick: “But at the same time, even as touristic as a place like that is, there is still like good food around. There's still street food that's really amazing. There are a lot of overpriced touristy restaurants too.” Atsushi: “I went there for the 10-year anniversary of Le Chique. Jonathan invited me to cook there. So that's why I went, and then also went one time to Guadalajara.”

Nick: “I've never been. How was it?”

Atsushi: “It's very nice. They have had so much European immigration…Italian, French, Spanish. And it’s different than Mexico City, but they have so many good restaurants also. And then I went to Oaxaca, but that's it. But whenever I go to Mexico City, I’ll go to Xochimilco. Four or five times. It's very, very interesting.”

Nick: “That's it's a fascinating place. I've only been once. But I love it. I just never have enough time.”

Atsushi: “We went at 5 in the morning at sunrise with Lucho, the chef of Emelia. And one time with Eduardo Garcia, the chef of Maximo Bistro. The next time we are going to cook there. There is a big garden where they grow vegetables for restaurants and sometimes they do pop-ups with different chefs.”

Nick: “You have been to Peru a lot of times too.”

Atsushi: “I went four times. The first time I went to the jungle because I because I wanted to cook a crocodile.”

Nick: “Why a crocodile?”

Atsushi: “Because it’s very interesting. This doesn’t exist in Europe. I never cooked one. And then I made a joke or something and a chef sent me a message. If you want to cook crocodile cxome to Peru and we’ll go to the jungle.”

Nick: “Which chef?”

Atsushi: “Andre Patsias, he was the sous chef of Central.”

Nick: “And you guys went and you actually cooked a caiman, a crocodile?”

Atsushi: “Yes. He invited me to go to the jungle. It was very far away from Lima.

We took a two hour flight and then four hours by car. It was a very dangerous area near the border with Brazil and Peru. I forget the name, but one city was 95 percent gangs. It was where they picked up gold.”

Nick: “The gold miners are quite scary.”

Atsushi: “From this village, we took another car maybe two hours away and then we went to one community with no gas, no electricity, no internet. There were maybe 100 people living there. They eat crocodile one time a week. So, they showed me how to pick up a crocodile and how to cook everything.”Nick: “How did you cook it?”

Atsushi: “They made crocodile soup with some vegetables, but not any seasoning. No salt. We ate together for one night and we stayed there, and then next day we had a lesson in cooking crocodile. We made pil pil of crocodile. Crocodile has so much collagen. It's like fish. It was very nice. It's a little like fish or like chicken. It’s not like a gamey meat.”

Nick: “It's pretty plain. Like in the US, in like the southern US, there are tons of alligators and stuff and they’re farm raised, but no one ever does anything with it. They just fry it like chicken, like nuggets. I don't know.”

Atsushi: “We ate it raw, like tartar.”

Nick: “In Bolivia, at Gustu they've done that.”

Atsushi: “It’s like chicken. Not a lot of flavor.”

Nick: “It's quite bland.”

Atsushi: “Also, we had a baby crocodile. The meat was very soft and not so complicated to cook, but it's very hard skin. Between the meat and the skin there was so much collagen.”

Nick: “So, when you travel, food is the main thing you're after, but also fashion, music, wine, art.”

Atsushi: “Of course, I travel a lot for learning, that's my passion and I’m always looking for good restaurants. Even super far away. Places like Mil for example. I’m always looking for destination restaurants. That's my objective and my passion. I’ve almost been to all of the destination restaurants in the world, without to Australia and Asia. I always go to Latin America. Peru. Chile. Argentina. Colombia. Brazil. Panama. Mexico.”

Nick: “What about destination restaurants do you like? A restaurant in the middle of nowhere is not what your restaurant is. Your restaurant is in Paris. It's in a very cosmopolitan city.”

Atsushi: “I can’t be a destination restaurant. I’ve always lived in a big city. I’ve never lived in the countryside. Maybe for a few months. In Paris we can get such good products from everywhere. It's not complicated. You know Koks in the Faroe Islands? It's super far away and then it's very cold and cannot grow vegetables. They only use local products. That's why they use so much seafood and very few vegetables. Just parsnips, beetroots, carrots.”

Nick: “It’s like Iceland. Only root vegetables grow.”

Atsushi: “We can't make this type of cooking because it's not same situation. This for me is very interesting.”

Nick: “It’s limitations. You're limited by what you have around you in a place like Faroe Islands or the Amazon or something. That changes the results. It's like if you got to New York, you could get things from everywhere and things start seeming the same I think, sometimes.”

Atsushi: “Maybe we have never had this experience because it is always easy to get good product. And then if we live in the Faroe Islands, of course, we must use only local product. And it's very difficult to change the menu and you have to be very creative. Even if you don't have good product. That's very difficult to do in Paris I think. For me, I enjoy this type of restaurant because we can't have the same experience like in a big city, like New York or Tokyo or Paris or Singapore. So that's why I am always looking for the destination in the world.”

Nick: “They're always different. They're always different from each other as well. Not just different from the city, but it's just because the products are so specialized and localized. It's interesting.”

Atsushi: “Five years ago, I went to Faviken in the middle of nowhere. It was far away from Stockholm. We took a two-hour train and two hours car in February, minus 20. It was very cold.”

Nick: “I only went there once, and it was December I think. And there was just snow everywhere and freezing.”

Atsushi: “But it is already very exciting before you go to the restaurant. Even before you taste something, you know what I mean? So, already we are very happy to be in this situation. And then we are excited because of the concept and the situation.”

Nick: “It does change your mindset when you're traveling to get somewhere to eat.”

Atsushi: “For example, at my restaurant this type of situation and experience is totally different. We can't create this type of experience. Only taste and techniques that you can see, but we can’t create a destination restaurant. It’s opposite from what we are.”

Nick: “But at the at the same time, your food is still a reflection of you, this traveling. I think it's very artistic, there are not a ton of ingredients, but very good ones that are very beautifully prepared and delicious. But it's not like Central or Noma where there's this like grand statement. Or this experience that you're aiming for. And you can't say it's French, Japanese, Nordic, Mexican or whatever. But it's a lot of different ideas that come together.”

Atsushi: “I get many ideas from traveling. For example, I went to Mexico and then back to Paris, but I didn’t make tacos, for example. Then when I went to Peru or when I go to Mexico, when I cook there, I never use products from France. I use always local products in Mexico and Peru. For me that’s very interesting, because when I’m back to Paris I can't make the same things.”

Nick: “You don’t make a ceviche. You could make a ceviche, but you don’t, right?”

Atsushi: “I mean, kind of similar, but not the same, of course.”

Nick: “So it's like the resulting dishes are more a reflection of your life and experience rather than directly doing what you saw somewhere else. It's quieter and I think more elegant. To me, my thoughts after eating at your restaurant last year, it was like you're searching for something. And I say that not like you were searching for something you will never find or anything like that. But it's just the realization that the search is what is important. Does that make sense?”

Atsushi: “Everybody always ask me what type of cuisine do you make?”

Nick: “That’s what I'm saying. It's like there's not a type. You can't define it.”

Atsushi: “I can't say just one. Not French, not Japanese, not Nordic, not Scandinavian. I’m not Spanish. I'm Japanese, but I live in France. For a long time, I used to live in Spain, in Nordic countries, Belgium and I travel a lot everywhere. So honestly, I don't know how to explain it. It's very difficult to explain.”

Nick: “It's just a reflection of you. And I think that's the best thing it could be. I think it works for that reason. And it's like, everyone wants to define things in this little box. But what you do is really undefinable, you know? It's just, it's just you.”

Atsushi: “Maybe I’m unique. People have to come to my restaurant to understand maybe.”

Nick: “I think they do. Lots of people travel and have influences, but what comes out on the plate is not always what you do.”

Atsushi: “For example, I'm Japanese, but I don’t use soy sauce. It’s these types of things. Everything is homemade in my restaurant, so it's very natural also, it's very respectful of the season. In France, it's very easy to get good product all season, all the time. And that's why, I don't know, it’s not complicated to get things compared to Nordic countries. So, we don’t ferment so many things. We do sometimes, but not everything is our intention. And then we always use good products, simply improved or cooked.”

Nick: “Is there a limit how many ingredients you'll put on a plate?”

Atsushi: “Lots of elements. But I mean in one dish, maybe three [ingredients] is the max.”

On his dream to open a restaurant in New York

Atsushi: “I went to maybe thirty times. I went to New York for the first time in 1999, 24 years ago. I went to New York not because of food, but because I love music. So, 90s house and 90s hip-hop is my favorite thing. So that's why I went to New York because I had I was a dancer. That's why I went to New York for dance lessons. And when I went to New York, there was so much energy and so much good vibes.”

Nick: “Would you ever think about like opening a restaurant here?”

Atsushi: “That’s my second dream to open a restaurant in New York. Since a few years ago, I have been looking for a place. We found a place before pandemic on the Lower East Side. But everything was canceled. Then this year, I went a few times. We found a good place in Nolita.”

Nick: “Do you think there's a possibility there?”

Atsushi: “Not 100 percent, but 95 percent. We’re talking architecture, construction, everything. If everything is good maybe we can open next year.”

Nick: “Okay, that's cool. That's exciting.”

Atsushi: “We don't know yet 100 percent, but almost 100 percent. 200 Plus, but almost 1%. But yeah, looking for it.”

Nick: “How will you balance the restaurant in Paris and the cats when you open New York?”

Atsushi: “Of course, I have to go to New York. And then majority of the time I am going to stay in New York. Sometimes I will go back to Paris, but for me, it's very, very big and important to open in New York. So, we're going to make a fine dining counter style restaurant. We're going to make a lounge upstairs and then downstairs a 14-seat counter and four tables. I can’t tell you more information, that’s it.”

Nick: “That is more than I expected to hear to be honest. If you do move to New York and you need a cat sitter, I can watch Hinoki and Tonka.”

Quotes from this interview have been gently edited for context and clarity.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit newworlder.substack.com/subscribe

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.

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Partial Episode Transcript

Chileans and their connection to the sea

Meyling: I'm from the south of Chile and I started a career in journalism 20, 25 years ago. When I finished studying, my options were too few. I think in Chile, we have a lot of universities, but little possibilities for work. I was living in Puerto Montt, one of the biggest areas of the salmon farming industry. So, my first job was working as a journalist in a specialized aquaculture magazine. I think for the first three months, I didn't understand what it was that I was writing. I learned a lot about the importance of the sea, the importance of gastronomy to connect to people.

When I was in my 30s, I decided to move to Galicia [Spain], to Santiago Compostela. I was lucky enough to do that. In Galicia, I really connect with what I'm doing right now. In Galicia, in Santiago Compostela, in the northern part of Spain, they really love seafood. They are so proud about the products and about their seafood. If you invite someone to your home, they will offer the best of what they have. Of course, there are mussels, crabs, the best fresh fish…when I returned to Chile, that was 10 years ago, I moved to Valparaiso, which is really close to Santiago and I realized that we didn’t have that connection. Chileans didn't connect with the sea, or the amount of seafood that was available from our ocean. That's why I started to work on fish consumption, to promote fish consumption and to connect fishermen with gastronomic sector.”

Nick:  Why do you think that is? Why do you think Chile doesn't have that connection to the sea? I mean, the whole country is coastline. It's 4000 kilometers of coast and you're never far from the ocean. The seas are amazingly rich and diverse. Why don't Chileans have that connection?”

Meyling: “I think there are a lot of reasons, but one is that we are focused on exportation. We have a lot of sea, we have a lot of seafood. We have more than 200 different species that we can capture. And we can farm from the sea. But everything is for export. So, we're not focused on the domestic market. If you think about our government, or the institutions that need to be focused on seafood consumption, no one is focused on food for the domestic market. We are focused on what you can capture from the sea if it's legal or not. The season that you can capture. These are all technical issues, more than the importance of these fish that can come to your home. So for many years, the fisherman in Chile – more than 90,000 people and more than 500 fishing villages in this long coast – didn't have the skills to sell the fish directly, because we didn't care about domestic market.”

Nick: “The fish just stays in the port areas basically, unless it's being exported.”

Meyling: “Yeah. So, you are on the boat. You have the fish at the beach and a truck comes and then the truck goes to another area where the fish can go abroad by airplane or boat. But fisherman haven’t have been involved in this business at all. I think this changed 10 years ago, five years ago, when they started to learn some of these skills and to have different projects. I think one of the biggest tools is Instagram, all this social media, so they can show what they're doing on the boat.”

Nick: “It gives them that direct connection to the consumer. So, I was I was working on a cruise ship recently that was that went along the entire coast, from Arica to Punta Arenas, and we stopped, everywhere along the coast. I've been to all of Chile's coastal cities before, at least most of them, but this was the first time it was all at once. For the first time I could really get a sense of just how rich and how vast Chile's seas are. In every port, there was a lively fishing community, and I could walk into the local market, and there was always something different than that the last port. For me, I always think of when I'm traveling and Chile to eat seafood. That's what I want because I know how rich it is. I know how amazing the products are. But to Chileans, the consumption of seafood it's weirdly low, right?”

Meyling: “It's between 10 kilos per capita, and 18 kilos per capita. Of course, it's different if you're living in a village that is next to the coast. Or if you have some friends that are fishermen, then you will have amazing food as you just said. But still, there's not a political program to increase the local consumption of seafood, and to understand how important it is for health.”

Nick: “I'm trying to think of a seafood market away from the coast, like in Santiago…”

Meyling: “There's only one, the Terminal Pesquero. Of course, they concentrate like 50% of the fish consumption in the area, of course, but we don't have the same thing in the regions, and, as just said, we are 4000 kilometers long. So, we need to connect between the cities, not only centrally. We create a foundation that is called CocinaMar eight years ago. We are four friends that were involved in the fishery sector and we understood that we need to have some channel to show the work that fishermen have been doing for many years, and also to teach the cooks in the restaurants and the community what is available from the sea.

If you visit Chile, you will find no more than 10 options of our seafood in most restaurants. There might be conger, hake, loco, Chilean abalone, machas…that is not all the richness that we have. We have a lot of seaweed, crustaceans, sea urchins. We are the most important sea urchin exporter in the world, but you don't find easily at restaurants so that's something that we need to change. And of course, it depends on the logistic. It depends on many middlemen between the boats and the supermarket and businesses like restaurants.

So, when we started Tres Peces, that is the restaurant we own in Valparaiso, we decided that we will buy directly from artisanal fishermen. This is something that everyone can do. We decided that we will pay at the same day that the fish arrive, and this is not something that is easy for our business. And we decided that the menu should be flexible to change, depending on what is on the boat.”

Nick: “I'm thinking of my travels in Chile and most of the menus are the same 10 fish, as you said. It's definitely not a reflection of how many species are there and being caught. I think people prefer artisanally caught seafood, but I think just prices tend to be high because of all the intermediaries.”

Meyling: “That's right. There are more or less five or six people, middlemen, between the boat and the supermarket. So that's why in Chile seafood is so expensive. But if we try to reduce that, and we have only one, a good one, that can sell you, fresh fish, frozen fish, smoked fish, it changes everything. So that is the thing that we have been doing for the last five years in Tres Peces. Everything that we buy is from artisanal fishermen, everything is a small-scale aquaculture, and the price that we pay is decided by the fishermen. For us, this is Fair Trade. For us, is something that is needed not only in one small restaurant, but it is also needed for Chile. It is also needed for the people that visit us, but also for Chileans to try and learn more about what we have available from the sea.

I said that there are 200 different species that are legal to capture by Sernapesca, our fisheries authority, but we have more than 1000 different species at the sea that we haven't even started to research. You can imagine what is the value of all of these resources for gastronomic issues or medical issues to be more connected to the sea. If you think about our story in Chile, maybe we're more connected with the farm, with the country. All of the sanctuary areas in Chile, where the politicians make the decisions, is not connected to the ocean. That's one thing that we need to change. In our work it is possible to visit our fishing villages, to make contact with many people, amazing people, and we know what is possible. We have a restaurant that, for the last five years, has been buying fresh fish, frozen fish and smoked fish directly from fishermen. There is not one day that we haven't had anything interesting on the menu. When we started many people, many close friends, said to us, this will not work, not at all. You need to have some meat. You need to have some Italian pasta. You need to have some food for people that don't want fish or seafood or for the children. We don't have a children’s menu and we don't need French fries.”

Nick: “I think people get too comfortable in how they set up their menu sometimes and they don't want to take any risk. It's really hard to make a restaurant work without taking any risk with your menus. I mean, you can make it easy and just get by but then something happens and the price goes up and a supply chain breaks and then you're out of luck.”

Meyling: “Or you have a pandemic.”

Nick: “That's what I was going to say but I didn't want to say it.”

Meyling: “For example, for us, for Paula and me, the owners of Tres Peces, we know that this relationship that we have with the fisherman, this connection that we have between us the restaurant possible that the restaurant is still alive. We decided five years ago that we need to connect to these people to make a business. In Chile, especially in Valparaiso, we had a lock down that was terrible. More than 200 days, I think I don't remember exactly, but many months that we couldn't move from our homes. We decided to start a delivery system for our seafood, our dishes, our menu and the fishermen wanted to give us the fish for free. They wanted for this model of business to still be working and that was amazing. Of course, we paid for the fish, but at the beginning the banks didn't give us any options for our business. The government didn't make any solutions because it was something that was a problem for all the sectors, not only for the gastronomic sector. We started to sell different not only prepared foods, also fillets and smoked fish. We started to develop different formats that we can get to homes because people couldn't move, they couldn't go to the supermarket. That connection for us is one of the keys that this is still alive and working and people are still enjoying the fresh fish that we have.”

On the sustainable seafood model of Tres Peces

Nick: “You really created a model where you depend on the fisherman and the fishermen depend on you. And it's a very reciprocal relationship in a very sustainable way.”

Meyling: “It's really fascinating because we have the restaurant. That's a thing that maybe someone from outside can understand. We have a seafood restaurant in Valparaiso, that is called Tres Peces. We work from Wednesday to Sunday and when we close the door, maybe people can think, okay, they stopped working because we aren’t receiving more clients. But the thing, for me at least, Tres Peces is a pilot. It is something that you can….”

Nick: “It's a model that that could be replicated.”

Meyling: “It's also a window for many fishermen. They can show what is happening in their fishing village or on the boat. The first question we ask our fishermen is, what do you have that is not selling? What fish do you catch or is in the water but there is no commercial interest. Then they sell us amazing fish that they bring us because there wasn’t a market for them.”

Nick: “What types of fish?”

Meyling: “For example, we work with Robinson Crusoe Island. Juan Fernández Island. Over there, 85% of the fish are endemic. They don't even have a code from our fishing authorities to sell it because they don't exist in the paperwork.”

Nick: “What is exported from there, just lobster?”

Meyling: “Yeah. And they also have a huge crab that is really well known. They have caught. They have a fish that they call it salmonete. This is a rock fish. They have a mackerel, but it's from Juan Fernándezso it’s different from the mackerel from Chile. They have Morena, chancharro…they have amazing endemic fish that they use for the soup with pasta, when there is no lobster.”

Nick: “Whatever they can use it with, because there's no point of sale for it.”

Meyling: “Yeah. And if you think they're like 600 Meridian miles away from Chile, so they're connected with the continent only by one boat that brings food and things. And with that big boat, they sell us the fish. They have a processing plant or Robinson Crusoe Island, and we work with Daniel Gonzalez, who is the president of the organization of fishermen. But also, they have a company that is called Mar de Juan Fernández, and they capture fresh fish and they process it and make fillets, then they freeze it and they sell it to us in Valparaiso. So, when the boat came, I didn't know what I just bought, I only know when my invoice and I said OK. I had 50 kilos of that. 25 kilos of that. Okay, Paola. We have that. Think about the menu. So that's amazing. So, everything that they had on the boat. They have an endemic octopus. This octopus eats the lobster and is a headache for the fishermen because it goes in the traps. But the flavor, the taste is amazing.”

Nick: “I saw you were making octopus and cheese empanadas. That sounds amazing.”

Meyling: “I think it is so interesting, so magical, what we can do now because at the beginning, we would start a business and this takes you 100% of the energy you need to pay the bills. You need to hire people. But now that we are on our fifth year, I know now we can create other things and we can connect other people. We have a foundation; we have the restaurant and we have a cooperative also where we organized with women in the south. We have a model of business that is called Aqui Pescado, that sells a package of seafood to your home.”

Nick: “So a subscription, like a seafood CSA, and that's available all over Chile.”

Meyling: “It started only in one region in the south, and in Valdivia, Region de los Rios. Also, we have been doing this in Valparaiso at the restaurant, because it's simple, we have the clients. But it's a model that we wanted to export to other areas, Coquimbo, but all other areas in Chile. When we started the business in Tres Peces, as I told you, many people said to us, this will not work at all. Fishermen will not sell you the fish. People will want meats and children will want other things.

Now we know that there are more fans of seafood than we can imagine. We have people waiting at the door when we open the restaurant and people say goodbye with a kiss. These are not friends, they are people that just came early, for 30 minutes to eat something, but then they leave so happy because they had this experience. Maybe they remember some fried fish or some soup that they used to eat when will they were a child and for us it is so important that people reconnect to this world of seafood and to learn more about the stories that are related. With Daniel Gonzales, with Juan Garcia, with all the people that are involved in the process of catching and finding these products that arrive to Tres Peces. So, for me, the restaurant is like an open window with how we can show this. Then of course you can have the experience of it. Amazing food is something that gives me the opportunity as a businesswoman to sell and to buy fish and pay the same day. For us it is amazing.”

Nick: “The foundation, CocinaMar started in 2016, right? It's a private nonprofit organization and it promotes the well being of Chilean fisheries and the people that work in it. How many fishermen do you work with?”

Meyling: “We have a network of more than 40 different organizations, all around Chile. We have developed more than 20 different projects. This week, we are traveling to the south of Chile, Puerto Montt, to organize a seafood consumption weekend with some restaurants. All things that we have been doing for this all these years has been connecting people. Connecting fisherman with chefs, with the community, with the government and to show that there are some people that want to eat fish.”

Nick: “The restaurant opened in 2020, so it's newer. Is there something the restaurant can do in telling stories in a way that the foundation couldn't?”

Meyling: “Definitely, as a journalist, I attend many Congress events, telling people that they need to buy fish from this fisherman, that their telephone numbers are on the website. For the last I don't know, eight years, they're over there. We Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, telling all the people that if they want the option of the business it is over there. But it wasn’t at the moment that we open Tres Peces, where we really cooked the fish. We really started making some noise in the media and at gastronomic events, where other restaurants started to look that this could be an option.

So for me, at least, I think that with Tres Peces, we can show that the model of business is working. I can hire 10 people at the restaurant, I can pay all my bills, we can cook something that is really delicious, and at a fair price for the people. One of the reasons of course, is because we don't have anyone between the fishermen and ourselves that are buying the fish. If we reduce the amount of the other payments for the fish and seafood, we can have a business that is in good health.

So now, we go to a Congress or events or gastronomic festival to tell what we are doing. It's not something that we’re telling you from the outside. I'm in the business. And we passed through all the prices from the pandemic and we're still alive as I told you, and we still have the energy to make more things. For us, Tres Peces is a sign that it works. If you can connect with fishermen, not from Arica or Punta Arenas, please go to the closer fishermen to ask for someone that can bring you fresh fish. Maybe it will not be on 100% of the menu, maybe not 80% of the menu, but maybe it can be a special of the day. Maybe you can have a dinner special or something that there's a special fee with. But I think for us, it's really important that we can tell the story about the products that are behind the other recipes, all the food that we offer at Tres Peces. With CocinaMar we have some projects that are bringing the skills for the fishermen to sell. But I think the trust and all the magical issues behind cooking something I can tell it throughout Tres Peces.”

Nick: “I think that's kind of what can be amazing about restaurants. My writing is similar to what you're doing with CocinaMar in the sense that it can be sometimes about technical things, about sustainable development and different species, but it only reaches a certain type of person. It only reaches the people that are really interested in it. That are really looking for it. But with a restaurant, you open up these stories to a whole different group of people. You can communicate this information in a way that words on a page cannot. They taste it, they see it, they smell it.

If they are really interested in it, they will read it and absorb that information, but the average person, they don't take that time, and they don't have that time. But when they go to a restaurant, they taste it. And I think that's restaurants can be extremely powerful in that way, especially if we use them like this more often. And I think a lot of the restaurants that talk about sustainability and helping farmers and fishermen, they can replicate models like yours. I think that's far more effective than just putting a garnish on a dish and saying it was from wherever.”

On seaweed and giant squid

Nick: “You sell a lot of seaweed at the store in Tres Peces and a ceviche de cochayuyo sometimes on the menu there. Are Chileans eating seaweed?”

Meyling: “They used to.”

Nick: “I think that's everywhere, like we all used to. We stopped. How do we get people to eat it again?”

Meyling: “I tell people to erase all the bad memories they had with some products. For example, the cochayuyo. Some people will remember a pot that is boiling, but with a bad smell and they think that is the cochayuyo. Not at all. If you try the cochayuyo as a ceviche or with sesame oil or Asian style it is a completely different thing. I'm really happy that I think there are more people in Chile that are thinking the same. We have Navidad, a small fishing village, and Cecilia Masferrer, a woman that understood many years ago that we need to increase seafood consumption. She's one of the leaders of a fishing  organization and she attended Expo Milan few years ago with a cochayuyo product. And in Italy, these small bags were made with a lot of effort from a small-town fire five hours from Santiago, with branding in Italy, and they sold it in three weeks. The entire amount of products that they wanted to sell in five months at Expo Milan they sold it in three weeks. And Cecilia also is an algera, she had the opportunity to attend to Asian countries visiting so he she has learned a lot of what should happen here in Chile. There are lot of people that are trying to make efforts to make more seafood available on our tables and on our menus. There's a woman, Paz Escandón, that wrote a recipe book that is called Algas Pacíficas. Her child had a problem with food, and she understood that seaweed could be an option, but when she tried to cook for her children she didn't find any recipes and she created the book. So, we're not alone.

Nick: “I know you're not alone. I think it's all over the world. Where I am in the northeastern United States, there is lots of seaweed growing and there are people starting to farm seaweed now, but I don't know anyone that their families have cooked seaweed historically. It's like reintroducing a new product, even though it's something abundant and something around. I think you have to be creative and try new ways. And we have to look for new recipes and share recipes and that will change. It’s such a healthy thing and it makes no reason why we're not eating it.

What about like the health of Chilean seas? How healthy are they in terms of overfishing, pollution and the damage from aquaculture, industries and things like that?”

Meyling: “We have a lot of problems, but still we have seafood available.”

Nick: “It's still quite okay, despite issues.”

Meyling: “I always think that this is not copper mining. When you're focused on copper, you extract and then you will not have anything. In fisheries, if you make decisions, fishery management decisions, you can have fish forever. For example, Daniel Gonzales from Robinson Crusoe island, he told me once that he captures only 1% of the fisheries available in Robinson Crusoe Island. If we have another crisis, he told me that he can feed all Chileans, only with fish. Can you imagine the amount that we have?

Again, the problem is that we are focused only on five species. We are focused on common hake and Chilean abalone, and all the efforts go over there. We export because they have the market, but then we get overexploitation of our fisheries. It is true that if we can keep, we can maintain and we can have seasons of extraction from catching, the fisheries can recover. And that's why it's so important to understand that we have 200 different species. So, when common hake is growing, and reproducing, we can go and make the effort to other species. Of course, it's not easy to open new markets, but again, we have Chile, the domestic market, that wants it. They want to learn more about us and the support of chefs and cooks has been amazing, especially for Fundacion CocinaMar.

At the beginning we didn't have any money. We had ideas and we asked many people to join us and to teach and commit to with cooking classes and some degustations to try giant squid or species that are in the sea but not with good awareness about them. That's when I met Paola, my partner at Tres Peces, it was like that. I met her at a congress and I told her I wanted to do something in Valparaiso with some neighbors, and she came with a table and we cooked some giant squid. I think there's the interest for people to learn more and of course the restaurant to cook different things.”

Nick: “I think the giant squid is a good example. It's something that's really abundant. There's lots of it, but no one really knows how to cook it. You see it in the market and it's like these thick white chunks. And you're like, what is this? What do I do with it? And if you cook it wrong, it kind of has a strange texture, I think. But it can be really delicious. It's something that can be really amazing and it’s not that difficult to cook. It's just you have to know what you're doing.”

Meyling: “On the other side, everyone loves fried calamari, but they don’t trust giant squid, which is the same. At least in Chile, I think there's a huge change that is happening with fishermen. Now they have processing plants. Now they have trucks. They can sell directly to your or at the door of your restaurant. Sometimes we put pictures in our Instagram at Tres Peces. The machas or the oysters or the scallops just arrived at the door of our restaurant.

Also, another thing is that restaurants think that they need to sell only fresh fish. And that's not true. You can buy frozen fish. Frozen fish prepared in a small processing plant is different than in an industrial plant. It is just like fresh fish. It's really a good quality of products, because fishermen are catching it, making the fillet and freezing it in the same day.”

Quotes from this interview have been gently edited for context and clarity.

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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.

--
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.

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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit newworlder.substack.com/subscribe