“Momofuku was magnetic, electric, it was what we’d all secretly wanted in New York City but couldn’t quite put our finger on, and I just knew I needed to be a part of it.”
“I see the vegetable taking as much prominence as caviar and foie gras did 20 years ago.”
“I stood shoulder to shoulder with men in the toughest kitchens in the world and excelled and loved it.”
“Ferran Adrià motivated me at El Bulli and now I’m here to motivate the next generation.”
“It doesn’t surprise me that the majority of Brazilians have never eaten the Brazilian ingredients that I serve. There’s a disconnection between man and food.”
When Barber asked Mazourek why he didn’t make a squash that tasted good, the breeder responded by saying that nobody had ever asked him to breed specifically with flavour in mind.
Sometime in late 2003, I found myself standing on the roadside in Querétaro, three hours north of Mexico City, clumsily eating a bistec taco with lime juice dribbling down my arm.
“Perfection doesn’t exist. It’s whether we feel that the moment is completed. I have a bigger mission now.”
“Only in the last two years have I found myself as a chef.”
A three-day jaunt in a nifty hire car was the perfect amount of time to take in the capital and the iconic Lake Bled before combining peaceful countryside with destination dining at Hisa Franko.
“With Noma 2.0, we dare again to fail.”
‘Mummy, why does that lady have pink hair?’ I heard a little girl ask her mum next to me in the salon. I was going full-on bald – the surest way to tell the world I was a cancer patient.
He’s “the perfect example of a contemporary chef,” says Massimo Bottura; he’s “generous, creative, thoughtful and warm,” according to Juan Mari Arzak.
While most global foodies can identify ceviche as a Peruvian dish and tacos as Mexican, many would be hard-pushed to name a typically Colombian bite.
“A chef in 2017 is much more than the sum of his recipes. We have a big responsibility to show the young generation the right approach for the future.”
Eighteen years old and desperate for cash to fund a summer of partying in Ibiza, the future world’s greatest chef did what any teenager might do – he took a job washing pots.
“When I was a kid, kangaroo was only in the pet food section of the supermarket. Now it takes pride of place in supermarkets next to the Wagyu beef.”
There’s a dish on the menu at Brae called Iced Oyster. It’s actually a sweet milk ice cream with a salty twist that’s capable of turning even the least adventurous into oyster fans.
On the long journey back to Peru from Australia, Virgilio Martínez and Pia León were hard at work on their latest restaurant project, shunning sleep and inflight movies to sketch out floor plans for one of their most ambitious projects yet.
A quick sift through the comments reveals not just praise for Barber’s food but also a whole lot of respect and admiration for his vision. One simply writes “Mind. Blown.”
