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Interview with Mauro Colagreco (Mirazur): Finding good produce will become a luxury

November 7, 2014 by Ivan Brincat Leave a Comment

Try as I might, it is difficult to remember the last person I had interviewed before Mauro Colagreco, the Argentinian two Michelin starred chef of Mirazur ranked 11th in the World's 50 Best restaurants and the first restaurant in France. It could easily have been a Prime Minister some 13 years ago on my last assignment as a journalist. It was a completely different world without social media, without blogs or smartphones, Twitter or Facebook, though already back then, my passion for food and wine was already becoming visible. It was therefore with a sense of trepidation that I asked Mauro to be interviewed. After all, who was I to ask one of the World's best chefs to sit down and be interviewed for www.foodandwinegazette.com. He gladly accepted without much fanfare. "Let's do it now," he said without giving me any time to prepare myself. True, I  had done my homework earlier with the intention of interviewing him, but still, I was offering to carry out the interview in French … [Read more...]

Chef Sache – a great first day

October 26, 2014 by Ivan Brincat Leave a Comment

The first day of Chef Sache 2014 in Cologne, Germany, was a huge success with some great live cooking presentations by some of the world's best chefs including Kobe Desramaults, Christian Humbs, Tim Raue, Mauro Colagreco among others, as well as a very interesting discussion about what is networking. Desramaults, the Belgian chef behind the In de Wulf restaurant is considered to be today's Marco Pierre White with his inventive cuisine and respect for ingredients. Focusing on the most humble ingredients such as a potato and celeriac, he does his best to bring out the best in even the most humble of ingredients. Questioned about where he finds inspiration he says that he does not find inspiration in books though these are important because they inform him. "To be inspired you need to think and cook like a child, you need to play around with food," he said. He also spoke about the fact that people are waking up to food scandals in supermarkets. "This is a really important issue. We need … [Read more...]

Jamie Oliver says its time to ambush fast food

October 24, 2014 by Ivan Brincat Leave a Comment

As we prepare to drive to Cologne for Chef Sache (more tomorrow on this event with some of the greatest chefs in the world), we have been following the discussion taking place at the Salone del Gusto and Terra Madre in Torino Italy about fast food and cooking for children and we tend to agree with pretty much all that has been said. A panel discussion was held together with Carlo Petrini, founder of the Slow Food Movement, Alice Waters and Jamie Oliver. These three personalities are campaigning on a daily basis so that everyone can have access to healthy and nutritious food cooked in an eco-sustainable way. We have a moral obligation to feed children food that is good for them Alice Waters said at the panel discussion that "We have a moral obligation to feed children food that is good for them." Apart from being a chef of the world-renowned Chez Panisse, Waters is an activist that created the Edible Schoolyard Network. Founded in 1994, Waters built a garden in an unused plot of … [Read more...]

Jonnie Boer: An obsession for the finest local ingredients creates the ‘De Librije spirit’

October 5, 2014 by Ivan Brincat Leave a Comment

To say Jonnie Boer, chef of De Librije, the three Michelin star restaurant in Zwolle takes his produce seriously would be an understatement. When he took the stage at Chef's Revolution in Zwolle he wanted to place the limelight on his suppliers. "It is always the chefs that are in the limelight but in reality what the dish is about are the producers and their products. "So I want to pay tribute to the men and women who have been supplying our restaurant with quality ingredients over the past years." Jonnie knows his produce incredibly well and also knows how to showcase it to reach its best potential. He was championing local seasonal ingredients 20 years ago before it became fashionable to do so to the extent that he recalls how he was ridiculed for trying to serve Dutch lamb as if there was something wrong with it. His wife, Therese heads up front of house and is a trained viticulturist and wine specialist. They have been open since 1992 He presented the first dish on stage … [Read more...]

Fulvio Pierangelini – an Italian chef in exile

September 29, 2014 by Ivan Brincat Leave a Comment

Few restaurant experiences have left a profound influence on my way of thinking about gastronomy as Fulvio Pierangelini's Gambero Rosso. This Italian chef who was riding the crest of the wave in terms of fame and success decided to close his restaurant in 2008 and since then has never returned back. Pierangelini, who had never taken a plane in the previous 30 years, as he himself says, has been away on a pilgrimage for the past six years. Pierangelini, an Italian, is probably one of the most enigmatic, underrated and captivating chefs of our time. He is maybe enigmatic because he hates the limelight, hates the internet with a passion and didn't even know that restaurant guides existed when he opened his restaurant in 1980 in a small fishing village in Tuscany which as he himselfs says was in the middle of nowhere. You will wonder why an evening at Gambero Rosso had such a deep meaning for me. First, when we visited in 2006, this was the first 2 Michelin star experience for my … [Read more...]

Weekly roundup of great reads on food and wine #3

September 27, 2014 by Ivan Brincat Leave a Comment

Creativity was the theme of our post yesterday and if you have missed it, we recommend that you read it. For this week's round-up we would like to start with another chef that epitomises the word creativity. No one has had an impact on today's cuisine as much as el Bulli, the iconic Spanish restaurant which closed its doors a few years ago. His brother Albert Adria, who was also heavily involved in el Bulli is interviewed here about creativity. This is a really interesting interview. He says what really motivates people is fear. And he has a very interesting perspective about meetings, which seem to be the greatest problem of the corporate world today. "At el Bulli we only had the winter to create the menu for next season. That’s why we were very pragmatic and efficient when it came to deciding on new crockery, products… We never had long meetings. Whatever you say after half an hour or 40 minutes is unnecessary." Bruges is one of the most picturesque Belgian cities and sometimes … [Read more...]

Richard Ekkebus (Amber, Hong Kong): Obsessed with quality ingredients

September 25, 2014 by Ivan Brincat Leave a Comment

Anyone who has been to Hong Kong knows that this is a city that never sleeps. At a crossroads between East and West, its food markets can be breathtaking for visitors who are normally surprised by the quality of the produce that one can find. What I recall and which might seem odd for Europeans is that when you go to markets there, you can actually buy live fish to take home to cook alive. It is therefore no surprise that Richard Ekkebus, award-winning chef of Amber, the 24th best restaurant in the world in the S. Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants, fourth restaurant in Asia, best restaurant in China with two Michelin stars has stayed in the Chinese city since his arrival there in 2005. And he says he has no intention of leaving the city. "I have found my niche there and I am very happy." Ekkebus is a chef that takes the quality of produce extremely seriously. You could actually feel the passion with which he spoke about the quality of ingredients he finds in Hong Kong … [Read more...]

Next: When does a restaurant become like theatre?

September 24, 2014 by Ivan Brincat Leave a Comment

Could such a concept work in Europe? When does a restaurant stop being a restaurant and become like theatre? Are customers ready to pay in advance for their meal just like they do when they go to a theatre performance, music concert or a sports event? Can such a concept work? Next Restaurant in Chicago is not your typical restaurant. The brain-child of the people behind Alinea and run by award winning chef Dave Beran, they have been experimenting with selling tickets instead of serving people 'a la carte' since 2011. They can probably do that given that they change the menu and restaurant concept every three months. While the concept is now 3 years old, the restaurant has an incredible business model which celebrates creativity not only in its payment model but also by completely changing the whole concept and theme of the restaurant every three months. Dave Beran, who presented the concept at Chefs Revolution in the Netherlands recently said "the restaurant is not just a … [Read more...]

Massimo Bottura: a humble genius, philosopher, artist and chef

September 22, 2014 by Ivan Brincat Leave a Comment

Massimo Bottura, chef patron of Osteria Francescana can be described in many ways. Firstly a chef and owner of the most talked about restaurant in Italy, Bottura is more a philosopher, creative artist and genius than a cook. But. when he gets down to cooking, his creative genius takes over and that is why he is so talked about. Like many geniuses, he can often be misunderstood. Nowhere more than Italy is it so easy to be misunderstood. When he took the stage at Chefs Revolution in Zwolle, on 14 September 2014, many were expecting him to demonstrate his creativity by cooking some of the dishes that have made him world famous. Instead, he gave a 45 minute presentation which left those present spellbound and applauding many times as he spoke about his philosophy and passion. What no one knew, and he only recounted this to a few people who went to speak to him after his inspirational speech, was that his box in which he was transporting the ingredients and food preparations from … [Read more...]

Weekly roundup of great reads on food and wine

September 21, 2014 by Ivan Brincat Leave a Comment

You will have seen if you followed this website earlier this week that food waste was one of the major themes at Chefs Revolution in Zwolle with two of the world's best chefs Rene Redzepi and Massimo Bottura making it a point to highlight the problem in their separate presentations. Now, we are not great fans of the very large supermarkets which have over the years made us forget about crooked carrots or not perfectly shaped apples. But at the same time, this initiative to turn fruit and vegetables that is too ugly to sell into something edible should be lauded. A new concept in retailing is being tested in Germany. In this article in the Guardian we find a Berlin duo that has launched a supermarket with no packaging. You take your own containers and have them weighed. You shop, you take them to the till and the weight of your containers is subtracted and you pay for the net weight of your groceries. Supermarkets in many parts of the world have killed many small stores, … [Read more...]

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