Food to me is about memory. In my whole career, the people I always love to interview the most are Chefs who’ve worked in seniors homes who have cooked for people who have 50, 60, 70 years of food memories.
When we’re little kids, we don’t like certain foods but as we get older in life, we get more defiant in what we know. I’d probably say about 10% of the Chefs I’ve hired, I’m fascinated by the stories because even if they’re making a meatloaf, you’ve got 70 very strong willed opinions about what it should be like and what the consistency of it is. So food memory is very strong.
My Mom who I lost in 2003 prior to me going to work in Asia was a scratch cook. Her food memories, even though she was Irish and she was a scratch cook, the dinners that we had associated with my mother being scratch cook and my father, now a retired Engineer, he’d tell us, ‘Get it in ya’. And you’d think ‘wow this is a REALLY good’. And then dad would remind us that we’d never see it again. Because that food memory was strong.
My Mom went through WW2 as a young child in London and I remember what she used to say every time we got a little black in our oranges. Because every orange during that time was always black. She’d say to eat them anyway. So it’s about perspective.
The dishes that I have done over my career, I don’t mess around with them, I’m not experimenting, there’s no molecular going on, there’s no classic. I’m just giving dishes that really represent strong food memories for us. If I go back as a kid being English, it’s all about grilled cheese and the salamander, I just love that kind of stuff. Deep fried cheese curds has a strong food memory for me, as does Saganaki Greek-style with my girlfriend who’s now my wife of 21 years. I think that’s fundamentally important.
I’m 51. I’m done with trends, and I’m not really about them anymore. I think we get caught up in trends and we get caught up in presentation. It should be more about focusing on what makes your heart sing when you’re putting food together. I’m just about representing myself and how strong my food memory is.
What Does Food Mean To You? 