welcome to this installment of conversations with Tyler today the guest is Mark Miller who's one of the most extraordinary food mins of Our Generation it's hard to even summarize what Mark has done I think of Mark as the modern founder of Southwestern Cuisine he's well known for having been
the driving force behind opening Coyote Cafe which transformed the s Fe dining scene in Washington DC where we are now in the pandag gormet restaurant well Mark is best known for red sage a Southwestern Restaurant that was one of DC's best for a long time Mark has written numerous books on food on Salsas
on Chili he has the very best book on tacos if you've ever seen a famous poster of all those chilies the Chili's poster well marketed that Mark's been connected with a lot of restaurants he originally studied anthropology at Berkeley and I think of Mark's contribution as synthesizing
anthropology cooking studying food through books studying food through practice he's lived in 20 countries traveled in over a hundred and he understands taste and sensation and context of food it's anthropological setting combined with all this fantastic Real World experience and on top of all
that Mark has been a food consultant for more companies than I can name that's just my very brief introduction to mark and it doesn't begin to do him Justice we'll start the conversation in a moment as our questioner for today's segment we also have with us Megan McCardle of
Bloomberg view Megan is a long-standing friend of mine uh in addition to her writing on politics and economics Megan was arguably the first very first economics blogger and she is deeply involved in the food World Megan to me each year writes the single best guide to kitchen equipment what is new out
each year anyway we'll start by chatting with Mark and then Megan will come in with some questions so food worlds I'm very interested in how you think about food worlds and this contrast between the food worlds of China Japan Tokyo and South Korea you told me you thought Saul had the most interesting and creative
food world of those three and tell us why you think that I've been traveling to all three countries for approximately 40 years or more so I really seen them transform themselves and I've also seen how they ad ad apt and how they acculturate other International influences so I've been
going to Japan since I was a student at Berkeley for you know since 1969 was my first trip I've in China since the 70s soul is the one that I know the least but i' I've been following it for about 15 years recently in in May I went to the the big soul food show where actually ate 100 food products I had
never had before which is interesting but the other thing that happened was was I realized that Soul had moved moved in terms of its transformation of plasticity and creativity there's a restaurant called mingles that every single dish was incorporating in in Chi Korean ingredients but in a very
creative modern way and they were not afraid to move their food outside of the traditional Vortex of what was seen as Korean food and they were using Korean ingredients in a new way that was authenticating a Cuisine now in Japan for instance and they were doing Pizza
they're doing coffee they're doing very good pizza that's almost as good as you'd find for instance in Italy in Japan when you go to eat pizza whether it's neopol either in Tokyo or Kyoto you find that they get to a certain level of the form of it but the flavor and the Gestalt and the aesthetic they can't
quite get at it they they're they remain Japanese you know their the homogeneity of Japanese culture is its strength it's also its weakness in China I I maybe I've been going there and I'm working I've seen some dat of one of the big companies that had 7,000 restaurants
we're seeing that the they're using Western Restaurants in order to create an a sense of modernity and identity whether they'll really use it for their own personal things right now there is no other alternative that social space that's open from children through you know uh going out through celebrations
and weddings and the Western brands or the markers for special So Korea though I was surprised that first of all they've moved so quickly and I the last time I was there was four and a half years ago I would have thought to get to this level would have taken them 20 years plus the level of Italian coffee
uh Pizza um modern Korean French was all exactly where we would be in the United States we'll get to Japan and China but more in Korea the the alley food in Soul and the rest of Korea seem so good to me so if I walk down a back alley there will be 20 different play places I want
to eat most of them will be outstanding it might for instance be some of the best fried chicken in the world it I would agree and but what what's the structure of the food World in Soul and other parts of South Korea that have given rise to that well I think that what has happened it's sort of like
Samsung versus Sony if you actually look at those technological Giants which one has been able to maintain and innovate and for some reason you know Sony lost its way we remember when Sony was the Innovative you know Center of electronics and yet today it's Samsung I
mean not given not the last one that came out but basically I I think the Koreans are forced out of their comfort zone because they have North Korea on their border they have China to compete with being aggressive and they have the the Finesse of Japan so their context of competition just in their own in their
own backyard is such that it makes them that they can't be in there Japan is St is staying alone it's in its own comfort zone and it's going to stay there China wants to move and be Global but it's a big stretch so you think Japan in a way has painted itself into a corner of
perfection there's less you can have very very good French food in Tokyo arguably better than Paris exctly it won't ever be getting any better but it'll be the same French food that would have eaten in in in Paris in 1980 or you can have a quite good Mexican mole in Tokyo I found or Singapore loxa you can
have in Tokyo and the person who makes it might have studied in Singapore for five or six years he'll come back with the perfected recipe but there's no other connection to that food World in Mexico if we look at for instance part of Mexican food like Enrique Cos New York is embracing modern Mexican and yet
doesn't want to learn you know ancient traditional Mexican and yet it's moving beyond its roots and it's becoming Mexican whereas Mexico before was trapped in looking at Spain looking at the US and looking at other identity systems to validate its own food supply and it give a good example mcow my good
friend Ron Cooper outed Del M that's a company 20 years ago that Mexicans would not drink mcow because it was associated with peasant Mexican and today when you go to Mexico see the only thing you can drink is mcow because people want to be Mexican and it's trendy even in
Washington DC and Cho and Korea so the other the problem was Korea was always in Japan's Shadow and they were basically beaten down and defensive and I think right now they're not so we just had a dialogue with fuchsia Dunlop who's written on Chinese cooking the food World in China now how do you see it is
it getting better getting worse is it headed to become large corporations as in America making a lot of soulless food or is it still on the way up that's a difficult question because restaurants that I know and fuchia Nows Like Jesse which is an old restaurant in Shanghai I
was there recently and I've been going to that same restaurant for 20 years from when it had four tables by one family now they have multiple but still the what fuchsia talked about though is going to stop them is the level of status of someone joining a cooking
profession didn't I Fong the dumplings have gone down so what's happening now is even though they have this great tradition of cooking the the workforce is either coming straight from the countryside without being trained the restaurants are making a lot of money because the people who are going there
don't have trained pallets and so they just open up and be better so a traditional restaurant that takes a lot of training and Mo and to go into that it's you're not going to find in the workforce so I think that they're going to go through a period right now of probably um I would
call mediocrity but doesn't the low status of cooking in China in some ways protect them so it keeps pretensions out of the food World it means people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds can become Cooks you can have a grandmother or a grandfather being a cook you can walk along in Shanghai and find a place
where they make dumplings and they simply roll them and no one there thinks of what they're doing as an art but that ultimately enables free entry and gives people a bit of the freedom that they don't have in Tokyo and thus I would say you should be more optimistic about food
in China the dumplings that I used to see on the streets don't forget you you know I've been going to Shanghai since the 70s late 70s they were all over the place now they're very hard to find and the Chinese government by you know is afraid of of basically uh health reasons is now controlling where food is
basically exhibited and where food can be bought and sold and so a lot of the shops have moved into some of the department stores for instance and are there but the there used to be one amazing bow of made out of smoked tofu and bitter greens and mustard and I would just wait for my next trip to
Shanghai and you know for 15 years I would go to the same place it was in the French Quarter same corner and they had the best bow and and you know it's gone and I you know looked all over and I can't even find that bow or I can't find a noodle was where I used to put out my
hand with coins and people would say they didn't have money then and I used to go to the wet markets and just look at what other people were eating and the last time I could do that was like maybe 15 years ago I haven't seen a a noodle like a hundred noodle STS in Mexico you
can still see of course yeah but even there street food is being pushed out of Mexico City somewhere but you go to a bus station in Monteray and you can see 100 the most tacos in the world and we will get to that but let's anyway for Asia for now still let's say someone comes to you Mark Miller you've been to
over a hundred countries eaten in them for decades they say I have two weeks to do a food tour in a Asia you should pick for me three cities what are your selections um I would pick [Music] uh I know I would pick Chong well no I would Chong I would pick I would pick soul for sure soul for sure I would
probably I would pick Bangkok yeah and a tossup between and I would pick I would pick Tokyo and you would pick Tokyo yeah so Bangkok say someone's in Bangkok they don't speak Thai they're puzzled they don't know what they doing they don't have a thae friend conceptually how
should they think about finding the best food in Bangkok go to the you know go to the night markets go to I mean they're they but just the food on the street is just amazing it's probably the best in the world on the street and it has the most variety it's the freshest it's the the
time people also are very clean they're very they're they're I've never been sick once I've been eating food for you know on the street forever um the chu chaa Chuck the largest market in the world has 15,000 boots and probably you can just spend four hours and eat 100 dishes my record in in Bangkok one day
is is 14 restaurants and 75 dishes and I actually ate them all not tasted them so just get a hotel and probably spent less than we'd spend in Washington one night get a hotel in that part of Bangkok and just go eat there yeah I I would go there are some good books there's a street Hawker guide there's some good
bloggers who who are out there it's you know I but I would not be afraid and the thing is is always with street food is always go so the night food is the night food the day food is a day food but even some of that has moved into malls where the Thai people go and they'll do you
know a Som for 50 cents or a dollar and a half and you might see a thousand people if a thousand people if a thousand Thai people are eating there it's it's safe to eat there but I I have a bias against malls when it comes to Southeast Asian food I tend to think malls are worse than street but in Kayla
lour you know they move they went through the entire country and they picked the best street food and put it into the mall so that people could experience the best of the entire country in one place that's the reason that people go to the hotel and also when you go in Singapore you know the
Hyatt and head streets they're actually they have 27 chefs each from different parts of Singapore running each station within that within that one dining room Malaysia or Singapore which has better food H well they're this they're very close so I would say panang is really
interesting is and and um I would say right now though Singapore like Korea is is finally getting out of its out of its straight jacket I think there is some really modern young Korean chefs that are incorporating Southeast Asian uh Singaporean chefs you mean Singaporean chefs that are they know Chinese food
they have access to the best ingredients they know Western food and they have their own tradition from you know Malaysian to uh the original um oh help me there the straight squis the um the peranakan peranakan cuisine which is I think I always think that those cuisines that are older and that you know if they
have great weavings they have great Cuisine because I always say you know you're looking at one mentality if they had a rich aesthetic tradition I know that they had really interesting food so take Indonesia they have great weavings in yes I was I lived in ubo in 1970 but
I'm often disappointed by street food in Indonesia it seems just the quality standard it's a bit like the Philippines they're not as but the great dishes like bines duck that has 28 ingredients in it it's amazing it's amazing dishes it's hard to those Temple Foods those Festival Foods I remember you know three
days at the Feast of the temple the Feast of the coconut God Feast coconut goddess there were 127 dishes made in those three days now let let me ask you some questions about that no but the the variety and richness and we come back here to the United States and you have a
hamburger and a hot dog let me ask you some questions about Chili's the area where you've probably had the greatest impact of all food areas so here I have some mulato chili if you look at a lot of food recipes if you make a Mexican mole you will use more molad than any other kind of Chile
not always but quite typically say in the Rick bis recipe yeah why is that what is it about this chili well first of all do do what you want you've got to open first of all you have to open them up because 90% of old chilies are mislabeled yes that's one of the problems so that you may whatever it
says on the package may may not be true the point is is that mad when you hold them up to the light right like this see it's more you see it's more purple and more reddish more Cent that is not a matat so they defrauded me yeah that's an ancho okay because a malat will be
more coffee is and more dark tones so what what a molat will do is actually have those flavonoids that are coffee and chocolate and those in a mole are the undertones of the wide sort of structure the wide Foundation of those flavors that we really like now the fruit tones and the capsus saes and the
spicy tones or are your basically accessories the ancho is always the Workhorse cuz it carries the most fruit the matat carries the coffee and chocolate which is those more or less fermented Umami more complex sort of flavor noids and then we throw in some guos or arows to brighten it all up and
and get and get it going so if I make a Mexican mole with these fraudulent molat chilies what exactly will go wrong from you're a super taster you can tell the difference what we'll be missing well the thing is is that can I I'm going to taste this for a second we can all taste
it together first of all whenever you taste the chili you notice there's a vein here you want to stay away from the veins always they contain 60% of the capin so you always stay away from the veins and even if you can't see them the other thing is this is old you know and this
is a what's called a grade C chili yes it's a small and it's dried and it's last juice crop so they lose their perfume they're like flowers you know they lose so you what you end up is you end up with the capsacin so this is a little bit bitter did you notice correct like bitter tea a little bit like
lapsang XU Chong there's a little bit of that Smoky Woody mushroomy flavor where is my coffee and chocolate where is it it's not here if you use this in your recipe you'll say it didn't come out well you know what you didn't do you didn't taste your ingredients so you're
not going to get that wonderful warm flavor that matat is supposed to have and if I want a real molat chili how do I actually get one given that 90% of it according to you is fraud well or at least misleading or someone made a mistake you need to recognize when just the plast okay the other thing when you
buy chilies the thickness of the flesh is the most important thing so all fruits where do the tannins come from Skins seeds and stems so the thicker the flesh yes the least percentage of tanin and that's what Mexicans do they look for the most pliable they look how thick it is and when you hold up to the light
they can tell how ripe it was before it was dried how much fruit flavor is going to be there those are the big Primos so when you're using a mole you're really reincorporating fresh fruit complex tones into it this the people it is the Chili's the last thing they're looking
for is heat that's the last thing they're looking for now two other chilies here's they and also they notice it's still bitter on the pallet yes it's like yeah and it tastes a little bit like the fruit leather that's kind of stale this one claims to be a nacho but we're happy to hear your revisionist
take on it this is bigger for one bigger yeah and it's a little bit um darker it's got that really dark dark dark almost black blackish Brown look you you need to hold them up to the light because that tells you so that's that's red like an ancho okay it's pretty even inside there's no um mold if
you get one moldy chili right out of 40 it'll ruin the mole one lot people don't look for them and when you rehydrate them you taste the oil so this one you the leather again fruit should taste like a fruit leather don't think chili see the the what we talking about with fuchsia the Paradigm and what you have
in your head when you go after the taste is what you will taste if you think chili isn't go for heat you shouldn't you need to think fruit leather which fruit which fruit do you get tell me the fruits you get not let you not which fruits oh it's interesting um is it Cherry Apple blackberry blueberry
it's uh it's like a maybe maybe Apple maybe Cherry not blueberry not Blackberry no but I think comes it's definitely like Cherry it's actually black cherry or sour cherry yep and it has a little bits of of what's this in this and there is this black current ciss ciss almost like the French ciss
flavor at the bottom the point is is that when you work with ingredients I don't care if it's chili coriander I have four different corianders from Indian to this or cumans the when you cook an ethnic food a pores chef and I work Guama what they're doing is they're controlling
their pallet it may look like that those ingredients are not important they're not expensive but they're very very important of course and that's why this is not a bad entro I would say plus okay and here's supposedly a paa tell us the difference well this be P should be
longer for one thing and it should be really get those black currant black fruits Blackberry when you again think black fruits so is this just an ancho have I brought you three packages of anchos actually maybe um seems that's what yeah that's what it is that's it is everywhere a little thicker they are
really wide then yeah a little bit this was the second one was the best one second one was the best one most fruitful most fruit tones freshest and less tanic which you don't want like a bitter wine or a bitter you don't want tannin and what's your economic theory of why these different
chilies get mixed up and they're all anchos notice the amount of liquorish though the amount of black liquorish in this one the reason is is that the wholesalers basically uh part of it is they're run a lot of times by non-mexicans even if they're run by Mexicans they only know the chili that
they grow up in their region like I'm teaching in a seminar in Mexico City at the end of the month yes and I can literally take out chilies and hand them to Mexicans that don't know what they are even though they they're from another area of Mexico how many different kinds of Chile do you know um
I had once had a collection of about 250 in my garage but they're not there some of them are the same like Aral interesting story so I was traveling around Bhutan yes and I was going from town to town and I had the chili book this book with me yes and there's this there's this myth in Bhutan that Chile
come from Bhutan and book there it is and so I would show them that they're not from bhown and what they are and I started tasting them then the next Village I would go in everybody was waiting for me all the kids and the chefs they would say are you can I see the chili book we Are there really
chilies outside of Bhutan are there chilies in the rest of the world can you tell us about chilies and every town I went to it was the same thing but here A whole culture grows up with this history that they actually have had chili of course the the Portuguese brought them
into Thailand and then they migrated through the trade routes into um into Bhutan and that's how they got there and and they're only the Cayenne varieties they're only the arales and so forth they don't have any of these chilies even if you grow these chilies for instance let's say you grow these chili
in Washington DC it won't have the right um flavor because it won't have the right uh ultraviolet which has to be grown in the mountains above four or 5,000 ft and it doesn't have an alkaline volcanic soil that needs to be in the central me Central Valley of Mexico
makes the best anchos and pacas in the world and when you go to the market s Louis that one Village in that one place makes the best particular in what state is that in state of Mexico state of Mexico yeah it's amazing though that they know they're chilies now there's a
debate in Mexico right now you probably know about this that China is exporting cheaper chilies to Mexico but some of the Mexicans don't like this how will that play itself out what's going to Happ they they don't have the flavor profile part of it is um they they basically are undercutting the market so
you see them in waka they they're anchos there I can tell um they're very very bitter they're very alkaline is um they don't have a good flavor and but people are buying them because of economic you know necessity or or that they don't really know the difference so but when I
work in Sweden with the spice companies I'm not allowed to buy Mexican chilies which really offends me because of the micro levels of of of of bacteria that are on them and they're not radiated so we can only use in Europe for instance radiated things they have to come from Peru we don't buy them from Chile but we
buy them from Peru but all my sauces I then have to adapt and because I don't get great Unos of great M but you can adapt now here's a jalapeno pepper very popular in the United States I can even go into a giant or Safeway supermarket and they will have these they seem to my
untutored palette to at least be serviceable why is the jalapeno so popular in the United States it's probably because of basically it's the Chile of northern Mexico where most of the migrants workers come from um and it was part of the TexMex tradition it's very simple uh you can use it fresh
mostly just right away it doesn't require you can you know cut it up use it in the Sal you know salsa Fresco you can put in the blender you can cook it in eggs you it's it's a very chilly it has for me a lot of flavor that is more akin to the green bell pepper with heat
I prefer pablanos which I think they're richer and the pablano as you know is the predecessor we have one right here yes the pablano and this is actually where the bell peppers come you know well it's a chili you but this has much more depth it doesn't taste like green pepper it's it's not gaseous and it has
what I call real green chili flavor there's only two in the world that have New Mexico the true green chili grown at high altitudes grow if you grow it at low altitudes it's the Anaheim this one again grows in Mexico roasted I think it's Supreme now interesting no one one of my favorites no in China they don't
use it they don't grow it and even when I see it in the markets in China I went through China uh with the chef once and we bought the chilies and we would roast them and actually put them into China we took over the restaurant because I got tired of eating the food that they were
so we were actually near kashar or something and they couldn't believe of the flavor of a roasted chili that was cleaned without washing and then strips of it put in a stir-fried lamb dish and how actually good it was here's a habanero Splendid orange color what's this good for nothing isn't it too hot
well it's big which which is which bem me that it might not be the right one so well it's get good smell so okay the Habaneros and the chesi family the tropical family yes you want to use it for its tropical tone so what you do is you open it carefully and capsus and hits your nose here you don't actually
have to touch it it'll you can feel it right there you should know the heat of everyone go easily across the nose now here though you get a wonderful orange mango papaya scent now this roasted and with the seeds and the veins taken out reducing the heat by 60% it's still
going to be hot because I have 20% left in the flesh is going to actually round out and pull up all that beautiful tropical aromatic and that will make that pineapple or salsa or jerk that'll make it wonderful you smell the tropical this don't don't touch where it is but just smell and think orange mango fruit
pineapple it's amazing what's the most underrated chili in the world most underrated chili in the world uh I would probably say the pablano the pablano yeah I can do a 100 dishes I can do 100 Salsas with this one chili how about from Peru the yahi yamaro that might be
one of myoto and AI there you go absolutely and what makes them special well they don't have the depth and complexity they you know they're more jungly which they Chili's don't like high nighttime temperatures they like cool nighttime temperatures um the Roto when you have a pedito though I mean you
got to be in ziche heaven when you were just down in Lima and I go there all the time um those chilies though when you make dried sauces out of them they don't they don't have a marriage of complexity like the Mex the Mexicans kind of like when you're in Bali and you're looking
at a weaving from 1900 that's a triple eot the complexity of perut per this is just what Mexicans attain with their sauces you know the pre-colombian peruvians had every single method of weaving and yet the Mexicans the reason I'm attracted so much to Mexican food is that they literally have probably the most complex
uses of of spices and chilies in the world no question nobody in Mexico where's the best region to eat uh I would I would still say um the three regions that I like pbla yes I'll be there in two weeks I think p is underrated I like the the the the mo ver in the morning and the mo amaros of the
of the seven mes the mo amaros there is better than Waka people talk about waka waka is good but not in the city of wak it's a little overrated now you have to get outside the the place that has the p deaka The Great Smoke chili the best smoke chili in the world smoke for 3
days with seven different Hardwoods requires 9 hours in a Land Rover to get to that Village so you have that chili is is being still made by one Village in the entire world nobody makes it they won't show it to anybody even Diana Kennedy has not seen it we've all been to the Village so you still have
products today in Mexico that are actually not only are they world class they don't exist anywhere else in the world and the Chinese could never duplicate it never so let's say you can pick not a city but one Village in Mexico and I'm going to send you there for a week and all you can do is eat
which Village do you pick um only do is it in the old days I would have said Merida but not anymore I I uh I would still say um I like pbl today near p p yeah that area and your take on prehispanic Mexican Cuisine so it has a lot of insects it has Fried Worms it has mosquito larvae and those were as you
know they cleaned the canals they actually got rid of the diseases that way the most interesting thing though you know what it's about it is we actually went to the museum yes and looked at the pre-colombian mates that were done for the Nix themal yes and guess what what they were never washed
they were never washed why is that so they all they they when you NX them all corn right it be you actually it becomes more nutritional because you free up all the amino acids yes so the Italians said they got pgra yes yeah so but what happens is people talk about how fat
Mexicans are and how pre-diabetic the reason is is that they are using a post-industrial diet that wasn't the probiotics weren't put back in So traditionally the metates were never washed they had levels of probiotics in there that were put back in and the women for the texture inside the
tortillas would use wild grasses that actually contain the largest amount of wild yeast so the reason you look previous to 1925 in Mexico there's no diabetes is the probiotic and digestibility one of the reasons is of the Masa itself so let's say we send you back but also the flavor changes I was
up in the mountains with the woman and I had the best tortilla I've ever in my life and I couldn't figure out why she was getting this flavor she had a 500y Old Farm the reason was what what happens when you use probiotics in yogurt and ice cream and te you change the flavonoids yes so essentially Not
only was it about health she was making a more complex flavor and interesting dish now the reason that I study what I go to Villages for is to study those perceptional patterns of how and why are they getting more complex flavors they don't buy things on Amazon to go to the
store or go to Whole Foods you know they are actually using their body as this as this window of opportunity to create complexity so I send you back to Central Mexico in the middle of the 18th century a how good is the food and how recognizably is it like 1750 let's say how recognizably is it like in your
opinion what we would get in the outskirts of Waka today or near Puebla or in Guerrero well it depends what class you are we'll say that they're you know whe you're in a ranch in northern Mexico enough money yeah to buy what you want I would say it's probably very similar to what except for the except
for mosa you know Masa intervention in 1925 After the Revolution because the government wanted to control the food supply and that's why tortillas are so cheap that was the same thing in France when you go to France today why buy GS of the price they are so but the food in
terms of the you know what the Spanish brought was pigs they brought obviously pigs sheep you know beef unfortunately it ruined the the the ecosystem of the pre- Colombians which was not depend on rooting animals the same thing they did in the Caribbean as you know right for trade Europe could not grow its own food
Europe and if you take Columbus leaving 30% of the people were starving to death without Warfare if you throw it Warfare in the end of the N 15th century would 50% of the people would have been dead in New York today why can I not get good new Mexican green chili at a restaurant
can't they just put it on a plane and fly it over I would pay twice the price but it's not good why why is this the case well maybe it's not roasted then correctly maybe they're using it you you need a fire roaster it needs to be done within the same time that it's picked
and it comes at the end of the season in terms of the the best time is at the end of August now there is a chili that's even better which is called the chili bado which is the red chili cuz this is from New Mexico yeah when the green turns red the rers right okay that chili before it gets dried is actually fire
roasted and then peeled and then dried that chili is Sublime it's called chili pada now we're losing even in New Mexico or Mexico that tradition came up from Mexico was north of Monteray what I'm afraid of is we're beginning to lose those the pallet and those ingredients
that those when you talk about a historical dish what I always think is so when we look at Masa which chef ever told you that you must put the probiotics back into a lot of ever told me that a lot of chefs in New York are talking about organic corn but they're not talking about really resurrecting
the complexity of the flavor of the native people you know why because they don't go to The Villages they don't eat there and they don't use their brain to think about how are these people achieving that level of complexity they're not shopping for it chefs are Shoppers today here's a piece of purple
corn I bought it in the United States but as you know in Mexico there are many colors of corn it's vastly Superior to even good corn we get in this country what's the future of corn is the future of corn that the varieties from Mexico somehow will be replicated spread
evolved and innovated upon or is the future of corn a kind of monoculture where most of it is boring a few strains of it taste good but are not really that interesting and the different colors of corn in Mexico eventually disappear um I did the corn posters after the CH posters and and there are eight 862
varieties of corn and you know all of them no I don't know them but they're they're in they're in the University of Seattle in the Gen whatever the C you know the point is is that as I think that corn um has a lot the North American Indians grew 400 so corn even in the United States before the winter
wheat we always ate corn bread corn was a big part of our culture not just for ethanol yes but I you're I think as soon as we I think because of what's happening in the United States about natural I think I think that once people put their pallets and really cue them up and they can tell the difference in
varieties is when we're going to get much more varietal sort of differentiation the market if I give you six varieties of corn and I tell you to eat them and you can't tell the difference then you probably are not unwilling to pay for them if I gave you six varieties of red wine one is a
Bordeaux from the first growth and one is basically from Trader Joe's and you can't tell the difference well you probably don't but this happens that a lot of people can't tell the difference with wine but we still Market the different strands maybe people are fooled or it's a placebo effect but
people are are are interested in change today and what's happening in that place in time so let's say that the 400 varieties of Native American corn come back to the North America yes and let's say that you're in Portland there might be varieties that can only grow in
Portland only grow in Maine only grow in New Mexico the point is is that corn you will probably like like for instance the microor industry we talked about that in Portland if if a community wants to engage its food culture on the community local level it can be amazing Portland
is 400 beers why can't they have 30 40 varieties of corn just in Portland it'll come there'll be a corn restaurant in Portland that'll say you know what we are not growing the corn that everybody else has we do this and we have recipes from all these cultures that use corn from the Andes to Mexico and we're going
to open a corn restaurant based on corn you know that grows that did grow at one of my growers in New Mexico everybody when I first open the restaurant in Santa Fe can't grow this can't do this can't do that regular you know can't do anything right well Elizabeth Barry my grower grew
482 varieties of beans without electricity on land that was essentially the Anastasia used to use in the 4th Century to these Bean Pots do we actually know how many beans or the variety of what a diet was native cultures France Boaz we get into that but he collected 254 salmon recipes a
quut book would have been 3,000 recipes the the average American housewife does 79 in her lifetime so who's richer we now move to the underrated versus overrated segment of the talk okay you're free to pass on any of these but I'll just shoot out a few things you tell me if you think they're underrated
or overrated the Michelin dining guide overrated now it's it's it's it's too status orientated it's dated it I I probably I bet you the average age of the inspector is over 30 I don't trust anybody in a company if the the mean age is over 305 anymore I think that they're
out of touch I think they're replaying old record old old themes and I think the Michelin guide is about uh status a reification of a belief system in a particular food and culture system that was based on the aristocracy the fast food restaurant Chipotle well they they just got knocked
today their stock just went down other you know I they're closing their chop houses which I knew they would they can't do that um Chipotle had a goodd space it did a lot of Education they developed Neiman Ranch for instance the problem with every big food company not just Chipotle you have 2,000 restaurants you
say you're cooking the food but the food comes from two plants of a factory like Minot that does 200,000 pounds a day so the public transparency are you actually cooking the food or are you manufacturing it so I think every big food chain is probably going to face that this this this I don't know this
gal of where if you're cooking you can't be a chain so I I I think that I think the era of big food companies is actually over and a company like Starbucks used to develop you would go into a town and you see Starbucks and it was familiar and known sure now all you have to do is like oh I'm in Columbus
Ohio coffee oh this guy is doing fair trade interesting Guatemalan blend oh I'm going to go there are you that information you don't need Brands right you don't need Brands anymore the the consumer used to have Brands as guide and Trust today that there are other ways of of developing that we're in
consumer level three this consumers are defining Brands and how Brands gets used I I think that the idea of brand is probably well you're an economist what do you think it's dated I agree the idea of Brands is in some ways on the way out uh you're a big lover of the culture of
the American West so there's a lot of movies about the old west uh the movie High Noon overrated or underrated no I underrated still Cooper is amazing Gary Cooper is amazing I mean I it's in my you know I think that those are epics I think that that's our mythology of America all of America and
and those are our heroes those are our our Gods from Zeus you know our Gods from Olympus and we need those we always need something like that to grow up with otherwise we're we're left with whatever's on TV maybe this is a loaded question but Southwestern Cuisine now is it overrated
or underrated it's not appreciated so it's underrated and why underated because it's hard to get the right ingredient it was yeah it was just too difficult and the chefs today are not interested you have to translate three great Traditions to for me to do modern Southwest you have to know Mexican yes
you have to know Native American and you have to know the history of the European influence on the western Traditions things like the cattle drive and those things which is you have to know all three traditions and all three Ing gradients and you I mean I read I I had
to read 400 books just to write this book yes and it took a lifetime your red sage red s red sage book but I I think that the even chefs in my own kitchens for instance could even after 11 years could still not make some of the sauces after 11 years in the kitchen some of the sauces have 30 to 40
ingredients and each ingredient each time has to be tasted because an eggplant like a good when you're when you're in Japan yes why is why does it take 15 years to be a good temporary Chef cuz that eggplant in June is tighter has less water is less bitter than the one in August it where has a
different batter different temperature so that 20 courses will require that Chef to make exactly over 75 85 decisions for each meal he does through each week of the year one my Sushi bgo he knows 1,900 ver so if you're a good Southwest Chef yes I don't think I don't you have to know at least 40 or 50
chilies you have to know all your spices your beans your vegetables uh you have to know uh game you have to know drying and roasting probably you need to have three or four 500 recipes under your belt mhm what's the most underrated European Cuisine I think I think hunger I've been
going to Budapest I think it's I I would say right now the Budapest is on fire I'm having great food great wine uh I think it's uh amazing I love the peppers there too and they love the chili have you been to kashka to the chili Museum no I have not it's amazing I think that
and they're doing amazing things and they you know I I would say right now the London is always exciting because it's the most inter National most open but I I have had some great food I I've had meals in Budapest for €40 that equal anything in Paris for 400 and the most overrated cuisine in Europe right
now old French cuisine what French cuisine especially in the center part of Paris that's the more of the historically dated sort of tried and true I I think that even a good finding good french beastro I was in Paris if you you know it's difficult I think that the I think that I think that they're in
a they're in a Iden crisis I think that the the French themselves are like are again like the they trying to reinvent themselves yes but they don't want to let go yes and the younger chefs the best we went to berue which is the high the hottest restaurant it's a Japanese Chef
who's lived in Paris he's got this gastro modern thing that's going on three months and he's only serving cocktails no wine and and I took some older French people and they just couldn't get it they thought that it was an abomination they he had he had taken he wasn't interested in French cuisine
he was reinterpreting where French dining and authenticity is in in 2016 so the younger chefs are concerned with authenticity and the authenticity of that experience for their guests is more important than an authentic technique and recipe where in the world do diners
have the most advanced exploratory best pallette at the macro level not for one particular thing us us why do you say that because they're just the most they have the least Hang-Ups about identity systems with food there we used to be food morons right no we were food ignorant there food ignorant okay means you
can't learn okay I think I think we were and we were intimidated by we were kind of colonized by the idea of European culture and in French food Chinese food and we were I came from French Canadian and I was told also as immigrant groups buy for status and power within a society they
generally refer to the a third so the Italians didn't like the French you know I lived in Boston my grandmother she if she saw a piece of garlic she would have she would have disowned me you know and I think if you're but the point was I think right now as a Multicultural Society and the chefs are
traveling they're opening and what's happening in the media is that they and because of the Immigrant populations people experience those level and the younger immigrants we're into our third generation so Casia for instance third generation Vietnamese in La we got the
big right up in New York Times I've been there a couple times you get other chefs who are extending their own Traditions uh you know you talk about uh Slanted Door you talk about cosm in New York City right what we're beginning to understand is what I have fought for my
whole life is ethnic food is as complex as any expensive French restaurant is or often more so now you teach classes in tasting appreciation is that correct pallet coaching pallet coaching yeah with companies generally and you try to teach the executives or the workers or who is taught well we try to teach
everybody um depends uh most importantly if a brand is to have a brand s we won't get into branding but let's say that I'm working with the culinary department just the culinary Department some uh culinary uh what we want to do is bring the marketing people in we want to bring
the consumer research people and we want to bring in the culinary people because we want a lexicon of what is what are we describing what is the experience we're not creating a product we're creating an experience and what is the consensus for what we like and don't like and what's good so women women have
a different palette than men so if I'm create if I know that the the objective consumer jerky for instance more women are eating jerky women don't like to chew we know that okay the point is women also like more natural flavors not as much dramatic flavors as men so once we know this fact and we bring everybody
in we create jerkies we would though go through um that's a different if we have for instance a hamburger that's something something simple sure six layers in a hamburger is 36 possibilities of eating it so one of the things like next time you eat a hamburger just put it upside down take
your favorite hamburger from your favorite brand and put it upside down you'll see that it eats completely different all the fat receptors are now in a different mode it's almost like turning something to a mirror and so the experience and expression of it is completely people don't think that food
do everybody I watch People in AA you know what they do they eat and they take they take a glass of beer or wine they're drowning it out I say what you do is you light up and set the stage take the beer or wine first and then use the flavors really yeah because but people have bad they have bad taste
habits they're not trained to taste and what's another of a bad taste habit that a lot of Americans have that you could else no attention no attentions so I we make them put in their mouth right first of all uh texture temperature movement and flavor which one is first
and second Always by the semi-automatic nervous system you have no control over tell us s okay first one is texture anything you put in the mouth second one is temperature so obviously if it's crunchy and hard and hot you're natur not going to understand the flavor your brain is just going to activate it's
defense system is it too hot what is it it's a foreign object in my body okay so yeah I'm going to be really upset so am I gonna the point is is that if you get it that's why Sushi is kind of interesting because sushi comes out of this Acceptance in Japan of the body and S and sensual yes and so it's a
movement into projecting sensual and know we're getting up but the sensual space of how we use our body so fuchsia talked about crunch what's interesting to me would be about the psychology of why do we have that because they choose to do something and they choose to not
do something else but anyway if you put something 10 seconds in the middle right then chew because you get the retronasal there's two parts smell first first of all smell like in a wine thing get the right software in your head so is it a fruit or is it you know is it a hot dog
get the Right Chew for a few seconds then stop and then the enzymatic response is 10 to 15 some flavors take 30 minutes to develop on the palette completely but I always take 10 seconds and then chart what I'm going to ask you yes is it a fast flavor or a slow flavor okay okay so lemon is fast okay pork fat
is slow is it long or short mhm okay so for what do you mean long or short okay a glass of wine can be very long it can be very short but raisins we always start with raisins we take something that people know okay so is a raisin long or short actually it's long how many then we go for so it's fairly slow
it's fairly long and taste occurs over time and space do not use cognitive systems for sensual perception what you're doing is vocabulary is symbolically compressed in order to be expediated in terms of the way we communicate right however it does not communicate sensual otherwise we would have no
paintings poetries or music right well once you tell people not to use words that really throw that you have to activate other cognitive perceptual systems so so no words no words body temperature body temperature um don't chew don't you minimum of 15 seconds and then memory is important what I want you
to do then is taste it the second time cuz what you will have missed is that basically it's gone by you're going to fill in you know when you scan and you read yes you can actually see understand by scanning the brain scans known flavors it fills in complexity you taste
at 200th of a second you have 2,500 taste buds each one has 10,000 nerve endings those 2 million perceptions per second your brain is going to be have to figure out where to put them and how to categorize them unless you have preset categories and really quickly so memory
you've had it and I let you do it the second time you will see that you can fill it in and you you'll be able to get the richness the complexity and the length of the flavor but by telling people taste occurs over time and space just that sentence is the first one I always start with you have to move into
that perceptional way of thinking about taste it is not immediate it's not cognitive it's not electronic it's not oral it occurs and the enzymatic response of the Body for breaking down the flavonoids it takes time and what people don't give me is time they don't give you time they don't give me
perceptual time so how much how much does the culinary Cutting Edge depend on context let's say we took a Mark Miller equivalent of 50 years ago and fed that person not a very young you but someone your age now 50 years ago who knew the foods of that time fed that Mark Miller
The Culinary Cutting Edge of today how much would he be able to appreciate it a lot a lot a lot yeah I think because the context of using the body and perceptual space Remains the Same okay I may have changed from Alena from shapanese to Alena to you know we're toing about generations of restaurants I
think that chefs or I think that what culinary art does is it moves our ability to move our perceptional sense of exploring the world just as a weaving or painting does and it creates other realities that we may not have actually realized that we're there but we're
there when I talked about chilies I was the first person now H why was I the first person to write a book that chilies had flavors they've been eating Jiles for 5,000 years yes I went to Robert mandavi we did a seminar and I proved to him that they were like grapes and that when you blend chilies into
mole it took as much art and complexity as a wine maker and he was actually shocked but he said I was correct yes but he had never thought but he had never tasted right sometimes so don't go in with the wrong perceptional don't think that Chile are hot for instance sometimes I wonder about this you're
what in my opinion what is sometimes called a super taster you can taste fine gradations and different flavors and items a level Beyond how much other people can even people who might call themselves Foodies right you have some special sensory ability well actually this the the term and you can read how
super taster is about the number of actual taste buds per centimeter on your palet and actually I am not logically a super taster in terms of the number of receptors that I have I don't think that Baron bernon you know who's one of the greatest art critics or you know or turn
actually had extraordinary eyesight but you're you're maybe better than a super taster it's at the cognitive on your tongue what I try to do is what remember the book the shallows came out I I try to do deep tasting like deep reading are we looking for patterns that exist within the perceptional space that I am
not that I wasn't looking for before so all of taste is about part of its memory part of its perception part of it's connecting those complexities I I am I would be also interesting enough I'm slightly handicapped because I have a little bit of auditory processing disorder so what
happens is when I was a child all of the world around me was categorized into taste I don't I don't I can hear fine but it creates cognitive dissonance I can't drive the car the point was because I learned that my brain can actually look at tastes and actually make the world around me sensible that
when I looked at a raisin people would said what do you mean that there's more flavors and raas says no pay attention listen listen carefully if you ever listen to a like a Harps sortis people can't they they their retention span is has to be so precise that it's a difference of a 40th of a second now
when you play another electronic music you don't develop that skill set how many different flavors or kinds of soy sauce can you distinguish by taste oh I've done a panel of 40 at a time I think that I've done I've had a kitchen uh home of up to 70 at a time um and you can tell one from the other you
learn by saltiness by sweetness they all they all have a characteristic profile of of complexities of uh um mamies as we might call them flavor dark Rich tones uh if you put 10 if you put if you put 15 Cabernet in front of me I can still tell you can do that anybody can do that
so we generally don't think of shur soy sauces as being that complex so when we taste it we don't when we have if I tell you this is a $800 bottle of wine you turn on your complexity sort of perceptional scan but I tell you that this is a a Mexican taco you you don't turn It On You' already Prejudice I do
but yes you do you do so soy SAU is to me or when you're in Japan the pickle on the table will tell me within 20 mi of where you grew up and where you live and the and the Sho at the at the sushi each great sushi house not sushi bars actually Blends their own shoo and I can
tell not only whether you're from Edo but what generation are you from the 30s the 40s or the 50s of what generation did you actually grow up to actually believe that that was the style of the shoyo and if you're in Kyoto these people they you know they they Japan is
really good that way because it is literally those 40 regions are so maintaining that isolation that you learn the differences from going from one to another I I can go from I can take a train of two hours in Japan and cover more culinary differences than you can in the United States thank you for
those wonderful remarks Mark with that I turn the questioning over to Megan McArdle of Bloomberg uh well um huh this is it's a little weird being the only questioner uh talk about why you talked about how women and men's pallets are different how is their cooking different
I mean I there's a a editor I know uh now at eer was it seor then who said that uh that male cookery was all sort of knives guts and fire um KN knives spice and fire I think was how she put it and that often seems like a fair characterization to me my guy friends really want to load up the heat they
really I remember having a guy tell me that like the secret to to really good cooking was just dump Cajun seasoning all over everything um what you know how do how do women cook differ well I mean you you we're not going to get into developmental Theory here characteris I I can tell you that
you know the general broad Strokes women are essentially more concerned with internal experiences they are more motivated to talk to someone in a at a dining room table and a guy will look at the television you get four guys in the four women talk to each other for you know the point is is that they early on
there's there's there's a better internalization of the phenomenological world inside the body so they actually begin to recognize those characteristics of things that are what I would call Body perception so that tends to be a little bit more subtle it tends to be a little bit more in time um and they
don't like the transformative process as much as understanding the the and this I'm going out but they would prefer to accept the flavor personality as is and understand it rather than change it into something that I do so like fuchsia said if you took that carrot that pork that kidney
and just made it spicy that's what guys they want to take change it and transform it they want to create something new they want to actually not allow if you allowed nature to take its course then you wouldn't be cooking you don't have the heat you're not transforming the spice and so we're
women except for Lydia Lydia Shire in Boston she's the only woman that I could never tell women tend to actually believe that their that the ingredients should be left alone Alis Waters or that school of of cooking and that you can literally coax natural ingredients into
something that's complex and satisfying and sophisticated and healthy and it's sustainable it's even better but man you know I I believe that if we go that too far that we're not going to learn how to make moles that we're not concerned with other black beans soups I would rather
learn how to make when I lived in Guatemala every woman in the village made black bean soup not one of those women ever told me you know I I I go to the I go to the market and buy organic black beans so mine's better not every woman knew how good her black bean soup was the best woman in the village she
was 37 steps and she really got me going so I traded to her weel now women tend to be more focused and more creative and more subtle it doesn't mean that they're not as Rich a tradition it just means that it's a different level of recognition uh does that make sense yes absolutely Mescal or tequila
uh chichicapa by Del m is my favorite mcal in the world and um when it's Tequilas I still go for silvers not the unless you repres and and a margarita you should always use Silvers because they don't have any wood and if you're using fruit whether it's a mango strawberry anything else that idea of
the gold coin or the upscale that's just a marketing ploy to make more money but it makes makes them more money but it makes worse Margaritas Mescal I mean Mescal though was and is a native tradition built on Extreme attention to Nature and it's only wild Agave each one of the penes
that Ron uses only can produce 400 cases a year and it's it's totally out of that Village and that tradition and even though those 20 Villages or within 100 miles they might as well be like two continents apart because they're they express the whole world of you put five painters in Paris in 1900 and you get
different paintings in the same building in wmart right your favorite guilty pleasure bad food oh it's not a bad food it's ice cream ice cream is is God's gift to to depression flavor any particular oh I like them all I I I happen to like cold I have a very sensitive palette so I won't eat any hot
soups or teas or or things I always eat cold uh when I when I can get it and that's preferable um that's that would be my my preference is and and if if you had to say um hot Fred Sunday how's that so uh I am someone who we talked about this a little earlier uh I have never
been able to stand the taste of cooked fish and I have been trying because it's good for me and my husband loves fish but that fishy flavor makes me gag um how would you advise someone like me and you know obviously this is a broader question than just fish is someone who
has something I'm generally pretty willing to eat almost anything but you have that one thing or you have a couple things where you're desperate to like be able to tolerate it how do you how do you go about learning well we talked earlier that I I don't eat cooked fish at night because the enzymes in
your body change and I I eat raw fish and chish but you actually may be the Super taster because super no super tasters tend to have and that's problem of the problem with parents who don't realize the child they become very fixated and they like that don't like things because they're so powerful
Sensations for them children in particular don't really know what to do with that category so if they had something that was green that was very bitter that's why they won't eat green beans and won't they associate then the entire category is something that they're going to be defensive about your
question about cook fish would be have you ever tried like flame broiled you know sashimi and a sushi I can I like a seared tuna right that's basically raw inside just has yeah I can totally eat that it's when it's like a cooked salmon or something no but how far is it cooked
you know how many degrees uh no I I I I'm not I'm not daring enough to cook my own fish because I hate Flav flavenoids develop and change over every two or three degrees that's why it's a Moma the more you cook meat it's going to get no the more Livery it's going to get fish is exactly the same so what you want to
do is get a piece of fish and find out 130 I bet you the higher on the more more objectionable flavor noids have not developed it's cooked 135 is cooked it'll go up five but I would just go home and do salmon and hbet I would start with halet because it's has it's it could be the oils it could be a
combination of oils and flavor Nos and or we could just you know make a really spicy fish when we go to Country Mar in Mexico City and just put red and green chili and throw it in the grill and I bet you would eat it it would be wonderful the Su Revolution how do you
feel about this well I I've been working with it a long time I worked with American Airlines in the 8 90s I'm worked Cuisine Solutions one of the it it is an amazing technique and it tends to be overused by chefs who believe that a perfect texture is preferable to a more complex uneven now the brain
actually it's wrong though because the brain doesn't know what it is it knows what it's not so te teaching flavor is not teaching what that ingredient is it's teaching what it's not so if I have a soused piece of lamb and it's not crusted and it's not browned and there's
no myard and then it's not when you look at lamb and it has Rosé 50% it will start darker it'll be more my yarded it'll be cooked what the brain then has four or five different perceptional zones to actually understand and appreciate and differentiate a soused piece of lamb
that's pink all the way through with one texture with no my arding and no flavor of the Lamb developed because it never went high enough well actually won't be lamby enough and it'll taste like a lamb piece of bubble gum or a sponge now I don't I I use interruptive suid so I do a Chinese squab that I
put an intensity I used to brine it for 48 hours with 14 spices mainly cumin and chilies to get it all the way through the scrub then roast it and then deep fry it like the Chinese I found it by S eing it they went in by 2 hour so the fresh was squab was F then I cook it suid at a different higher temperature
even after it's get BR and then I fry it deep fry it so I find that you know that what I call interruptive suit as a technique which doesn't which takes the you get intensity without preserving some freshness so let's say that I did scallops and I do them s my scallops are
cooked for exactly 18 minutes and with a wine dinner I want to match the chamomile in a SV Blan well how do I do that actually I actually put in some fresh camomile with the scallops cook it suid and the aromatic profile goes through I made a little Tata do this and that and that s Blan with that is
amazing what is the biggest mistake that people make when they go into a Southwestern Restaurant and sit down and Order well they want chips and Sal so that's a big mistake why so so explain this well I mean it's it's it's a phenomena that that they first of all they get it free second of all uh chip
are usually done poorly and then the salsa is usually done poorly uh and it's a good excuse to sit there and drink beers and margaritas which is you know I don't need that excuse but what you're looking for is is is something that comes into um let's say buffalo we all we eat more Buffalo I was
cooking Buffalo it was difficult to sell back in the 70s and 8 we know it's healthier we know it has less cholesterol so and the other thing is you want intense small portions of food you don't want to you know so when you're looking at a Southwest menu you want to look for the sauces the
complexity you want to look for things that would probably take you that some things have been cured the like even red sage what was the first thing that we did we actually did a Carpaccio of wild venison we had a tartar mixed of Venison and buffalo with sage we made you know
that was on the first manual red sage in 1990 now if you go around the United States 25 years later you don't find that anymore so uh if you were if answer the question but no that's a if someone came to you this is a game my family used to play in the car someone comes to you and
says uh I'm a fairy you are only going to be allowed to eat three foods for the rest of your life three dishes three specific dishes so not like tacos but a kind of Taco uh you don't have to worry about nutrition you don't have to worry about calories but you have to pick
three foods and those are the only three foods you can you can ever have again which three foods uh certainly Lobster CU I I grew up in in that part of the world Nova Scotia cooked in seaweed you know with butter drawn butter you know um I would say you know my short dinner which is lobster clams and you know
they're all they're all the one meal they don't they're not three foods everyone always tries to live oysters oysters fried clams you know but lobster for sure I would say my second one would be yes I would oh boy I would something spicy and I I Vibe between Thai and Mexican you know is my
two favorite spicy cuisines in the world and I would I would probably say a Mexican sort of you know amazing sort of Taco with great Salsas and and the right kind of you know tortilla the the third thing I might say would be surprisingly probably just a cheleta De Bu you know a 5-year-old cow Northern
Spain roasted completely correctly and the Umami of each piece of meat is is better than any other meat that exists in the world would there are better richer things in Japan but that part of Northern Spain is just amazing what part of Northern Spain is that uh it's
outside of borgos okay yeah and uh it's extension of The Basque area those are working cattle and you saw the film on you know the world world of stake I'm sure and um and there's one that I like in in Barcelona which actually has does the esper drills out of out of the C cucumbers to but I think that the
honesty of French of Spanish food even though I went to El many times about seven or eight times Still Remains uh a Cuisine that those those we talked about the ham that fuchsia found we talked about ham in the dolomites I think that we we look culturally for our I think that we're
always searching for those Foods in our environment that give us pleasure that extend the body into that space and that elongate our perceptional way of interacting with the world so when someone talks about three-year-old Hugo it's not that it's that expensive and it's that complex and that's interesting
that it requires so much of you to actually perceive it that it you are more alive you are more there the ham is more there that sense of presence is there and I think that's what great P that's what a great chef can do you can stimulate that sense of being there and we're losing that the virtual reality
that's happening we're losing our sense of being in presence Korean tacos Korean tacos I know Roy so that's not fair I know Roy personally I think it's a good example Le of what Roy calls authentic food he grew up in La Roy Choy is Korean he is La which has a lot of Mexican food
and the sense of combining his own interior reality into a projection on that plate to me is perfect food w a chef should always be doing I'm not Mexican and the reason that I created modern Southwestern I think it would be a lie for me to do a Mexican restaurant Roberto Sant Benz at fond was a good
friend and a partner of mine it's salsa company is Mexican from Mexico City and does cook great Mexican food and I think that you you can learn but you should not co-opt an entire culture or identity you you you you know I was at that I was at shap penes and I didn't want to cook
like Alice Waters anymore so I was after you know it wasn't my it's nothing wrong with shapanese but it wasn't my food and I was always arguing about it sometimes but the point is when a chef really understands the world and ingredients and can bring that reality to his dining
public that's an amazing amazing you know explosion of of creativity and emotion and theater and it's wonderful right if you had to sum up your food if you had to if you had to in a couple of sentences say this is what uh this is what my food was and why I needed to go do or is hopefully or is no no no when
you I meant when you left shap pise this is we we all created the menus of shape pise it wasn't else but even then no I there a couple I was only because I my one of my advisers didn't say my thesis go down anyway I was supposed to be there for two weeks so um I think that
my food is is a personal exploration of my own exploration of the world and I look at the world through my senses mostly through taste sometimes smell I'm not a bad nose and what I'm trying to do is understand not only the world we live in but sometimes past cultures I try to look at pre-colombian
weavings I try to get a list of all the pre-colombian foods and we see for instance at Central which is a very famous restaurant Lima today that that complexity of these Chas and this and things that grow were probably used and and stimulate the problem is do we actually have the pallet to actually go
back wouldn't you like to live in I don't want to just see a rembrand painting or I love the I love you know this I want to actually go back and eat the food that he was eating in the markets and the cheeses and the things that were done because I want to try to understand where that Painting came from
not only the psychology of the artist so when I read a when I read a cookbook or I go to a restaurant I'm trying to understand the person or the place or the culture fast food so you know no this is the dark the dark side well but uh can it be done well it is done well I
mean fast food is done well in Japan the places I go I eat udon I walk in it's being made by hand it cost $2 I decide what I'm going to put on top and I have a bowl and I timed it it's 18 seconds McDonald's it's a lifetime you know Starbucks Starbucks is 8.4 minutes that is too longes too long robot chefs I I'm
this into into fast food but you know you've seen these machines now that they're going to have that's going to like dice everything and it'll you won't need any human interaction at all what do you think of that probably would anybody notice I I I I really um you know I think fast food I think that our model
in the United States because of the real estate and economics of it is completely wrong I think that a chef should open a restaurant at 10 seats I think he should charge $100 and I think he should make 150 and he should not pay rent or have ex have Labor or have overhead or cost
and what you should do is honor the tradition of respecting the individual so in in Japan they have this policy of not first customer what you there's a policy of not taking you because they don't know how you're going to act they don't know who you are they you're also eating with you're not eating with
you're eating with seven or eight other people as an ensemble you're you're not completely separate so the idea of of re of reinstituting cultural and social space and bonds and honoring the chef is here and put something down there's no waitress there's no menu the point is is
that that's the reality of you and that's a personal connection it's like your mother the point whether it's that point to me is that we have to go back to understanding that food is very part of our our psychological sense of space our body sense of space our pleasurable
sense of space our own cultural identity and if we let other people take over that by organic or this or labels or price then what we've done is given that part of our lives up and I don't know that we're I'm just saying this there's 300 noodle places in Kyoto nobody charges more than $10 or12 they're all
really good they're all a little bit different and guess who does doesn't do well chains that charge $10 for noodles that they have to pay highend real estate like isoya there's two of them in Kyo I've been going to K for 50 years I've never been I'm never going to go there's no reason to go chains only
exist when the local community doesn't provide the same service so in in a in a a street food market it's accessible so I can eat in Thailand a quail for 75 that same quail in Washington DC and New York City will cost me like $18.95 Megan mark thank you very much thank you very much