Hi everyone. Welcome to potluck food talks. We're here once again with Phil W and Fermentation Gandalf, Kevin Young. The Scobie sorcerer. So Kevin, you've been for a really long time now, one of the main guys in the Noma fermentation lab, and I'd be super interested to hear a little bit more about your work and how it ties into Noma and, you know, why you guys put so much emphasis on fermentation.
Yeah. So, I mean, Noma has been using fermentation for many, many years, and we've kind of gotten away from talking about it so much at the restaurant. Like when we drop a dish on a, on a table, we, we no longer say things like, oh, and this sauce is made with fermented this and there's fermented this and that. Like, because so many of the dishes have these fermented products in them, that it's just part of the pantry, right?
Like if you're making a beurre blanc, you don't say, oh, and this is a butter sauce made with fermented grapes. Yeah. It's just wine, right? So it's become such a part of, of the, the kitchen at, at Noma that it's almost like a section now, like you have Gare Manger, you have, I mean, at Noma it's different, we don't have Gare Manger, we have section one, two, three, and four. And the lab seasonally depending, like some seasons are busier than others.
Some seasons there's whole, uh, servings that are, that we're responsible for because there are things that have toji grown on them or, um, their products that we like right now on the juice pairing, there's a kombucha made with honey from our garden, bee pollen, saffron, and sea buckthorn. And the, that's the first time we've ever had on the juice pairing a kombucha straight up as is usually.
The juice pairing is a mixture of like a tea or, uh, a juice and a little bit of kombucha or some vinegar or things like that. This is the first thing that comes out of the, out of the lab into the, into the guest glass.
And, um, it's like I said, it's, it's a changing, evolving thing with the fermentation lab where, you know, this, the, the guide to fermentation is almost obsolete now, the beef garum recipe is the same, the Piso recipe is the same, but so many of the, the products that we put on the menu now, every single time that we create a new menu, we're trying to create new products and that just gets us further and further away from the book that we published in 2018 and 2019. That's crazy.
And, uh, the way the restaurant works for, for those of you who might not be familiar is we're split into three distinct seasons to, to highlight, uh, groups of ingredients that we believe are at their peak at those times of the year. So right now in the summer, it's the vegetable season, uh, where we're, it's primarily when we encourage vegans and vegetarians to die at the restaurant, because we are also doing a menu that is almost completely vegetarian or vegan.
Like we don't serve meat or anything, but sometimes we'll use meat-based or, or fish-based ferments in, in some of the dishes. And we can easily change those up depending on if someone has an allergy versus in the game in forest season where the main course might be duck or, or deer or things like that, or in the ocean menu where you're served a raw scallop.
And it's an amazing dish to have a scallop that's plucked out of one of our tanks, shucked to order, and then you, you're served the, the scallop. That's still quivering that, you know, you still see the muscles pulsing as you as eating it and it's, it's screaming fresh and so sweet and you don't get that experience any other way. And so when we have these three seasons, every single season that's upcoming, we're trying to be better than the year previous.
So for example, like the 2023 game in forest, we want it to be better than 2022 and that had to be better than 2021. And the lab is one of the propelling forces of that improvement because every time we go into a new season, we're presenting new ferments, possibly inspired by the, the by-products of the previous game in forest season, for example, or inspired by by-products from the previous vegetable season of the same year.
The way that we work with the rest of the restaurants is the comparison I give is of an art gallery. So it was a fermentation lab. We're the ones mixing paints and creating as many new colors, as many bright colors and pigments as we can. And we hand off all of these paints to the test kitchen, who are the artists. They're the painters. They're the ones who create the finalized dishes using whatever types of ferments that we produce that they want to use.
They're under no obligation to use everything we create. They're under no obligation to use anything that we create. They just have this image of a dish that they're trying to create and, and they're they're painting their own landscapes or portraits of still lifes or whatever. And then Renee is the final, the final judgments where he is the galleryists, right? And he's got this idea for this 12 to 16 piece gallery that he's going to open up four days a week for 85 guests of the year.
Sorry, 85 guests per per service. And. He can then select whatever paintings that the artists in the test kitchen create to create this all encompassing image and point of view that he believes that he would like to showcase at the restaurant.
So it's a many, many, many step process to go from what we create in the lab onto the menu, but a lot of what goes into the menu, often it starts and it in small part with a lot of the ingredients that was created in the restaurant and the fermentation lab. Well, that's amazing. How would you say, you know, if you, for example, you go, you were just explaining, you go into a new season.
Often you try to develop things that you've done before further, but I'd really like to know how you approach the sort of creative R and D process. Do you go by profiles that you're going forward? Do you go by obviously, you know, I'm sure the produce that's available plays a big part for a certain amount, but you go also like, you have like a set amount of sort of like type of fermentation say, okay, we want to do this amount of lactic, this amount of aesthetic, this amount of like whatever.
Like, how do you go about it? So when we work on, uh, ferments 99.9% of the time we're working on ferments for the next season. So right now in the fermentation lab, we're working on ferments for Kyoto for the pop-up that's upcoming in Japan. And the idea is that so many of the products we make take so much time. That's if we were to try to make it at the beginning of us, like during the the research development phase of a new season, we're already behind. It's like working.
I say it's like working in a magazine. Like if you were a GQ magazine and you're not working on your holiday gift guide by the time September, October runs around, you're in a lot of trouble because you need to have that thing ready by December and that's not a lot of time.
Yeah. So it's the same, the same way that that works, uh, is the way that we work where we're trying to be proactive as much as we can, we have tastings with a test kitchen where they'll come in and we'll present literally like dozens of different ferments that we've experimented on or, or think tastes good and they'll pick through and, you know, out of, out of 50 something products, they might choose six that they liked and to us, that's. So that's, that's a success.
If they like anything, it's a success, right? Because we're not, we're not looking at it. Like if, if they don't use everything we create, then that's a loss for us. It's, it's the difference between a golfer and a baseball player. Like if you're, if you're a golfer, every time you hit the ball, your aim is to get it into the hole and you only finished playing golf when you get the last golf ball into the hole, if you never hit the ball into the hole, you're not a golfer.
You are just a guy with a stick. Right. And conversely, the way that we choose to work at Noma is like baseball and in baseball, your goal is to get on base. And the greatest baseball players, um, just cause we have, I'm sure we have a very international audience, uh, the greatest baseball players in the history of baseball, their average is around 34%. They get on base every time they step up to the plate. That means that 34% of the time they are doing what is considered their job.
And that means that almost 70% of the time they are failing, but those are the greatest baseball server, baseball players to ever play the game because they got on base that often. And just because you strike out, it doesn't mean that you're not doing your job because you have multiple attempts at doing it and it's all part of a team oriented ordeal, whereas golfing is, uh, for the most part of very individual sport. So for us, creativity is, is as much.
Just sort of pinpoints fermentation and, and trying to be very precise, but it's also about trying as many different variables as you can, uh, because you don't know what will be successful and what won't be because it's not relying on, if I think that a soy sauce tastes good, and this has happened before, I think it's always sauce tastes amazing.
I'll present it to the test kitchen and they won't, they won't pick it out of a tasting or they'll use it, but they're like, ah, you know, it's not right for the menu and that doesn't mean that that soy sauce is no good. It just means that it wasn't right for the menu. And then we file that away in, uh, in the mind palace for whenever down the line, we choose to use it again.
And with regards to inspiration and creativity, it's very difficult to be creative when someone gives you a, you know, a high tech lab, like the bridge of the Starship enterprise to do all your fermentations in, and you, they're like, be creative. And then, you know, you start spinning in place, you have no idea what to start with. So, uh, we have certain anchors that we latch onto when it comes to creativity. I mean, a big one obviously is the upcoming season, right?
You think about, okay, we're going into vegetable season. Boom, that's an anchor, right? Cause you know, everything you're going to be doing is going to be with vegetables. Uh, but another one is byproducts. Like this, this season, if it's a vegetable season, like what kind of scraps are we going to end up with? And then you have this seemingly unending stream of product that you can try to turn into something delicious, uh, to work with there.
There's, uh, you know, Renee will come and show us something interesting that he saw, uh, or some product that a guest brought and you'll ask us questions about it. The thing with creativity is it's very similar to when you're a beekeeper and you're trying to start a new hive.
And if you're trying to start a new hive, you have like these wooden frames that they build the honeycomb in and those wooden frames, they all have, uh, small bits of copper wire running from side to side, because the bees, when they build their hive, they need something there before they can't just build in an empty wooden frame, they need some kind of point to latch onto. So it's the same way of creativity at Noma.
You have such an open space of creativity, this wide open wooden frame that built something in, you just need a little bit of a guiding copper wire to, to help you create a cohesive thought in a certain direction. That's super interesting. That's a super interesting angle to, uh, uh, yeah, to consider and to think about it's, uh, but yeah, it makes total sense. Um, I mean, now, you know, vegetable season is in full swing, right? At the moment.
Yeah. Um, can you, or do you want to, um, maybe talk about some things that stand out that you guys developed for the vegetable season? Uh, let's see who would, I mean, I mentioned the, uh, the kombucha beforehand. Um, but they're also working with, uh, uh, one of the dishes is finished with what's called black yuzu and, um, it's not like, I say black yuzu and obviously you guys know with the fermentation lab book and black garlic, like it's not related to that process at all.
It was actually inspired by, uh, the black lime that's an ingredient in the Middle East. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a, a lime that's boiled and blanched in salted water and then dried in the sun. So instead of limes, uh, we, we've started using citrus at Noma, um, just as a, as a sidebar, uh, after the last Kyoto pop-up. So with every, every pop-up, we decide on, on a small handful, a small selection of ingredients that were integral to the success of each pop-up.
And we permit ourselves to use that at Noma when we get back home. That's pretty cool. Which promotes evolution so that we're not just opening up Noma the same way we did before we went to Kyoto or Mexico or, or, uh, Tokyo or Australia. Um, so, uh, one of the ingredients we permit ourselves to use is, uh, yuzu. And I took the yuzu fruit that we had and I treated it the same way as the lime. And I blanched it in boiling salty water, like sea salt, like super salty.
And then I had to use the dehydrator because for those of you who had never been to Denmark, the concept of sun drying anything in Denmark is unheard of slash impossible. Uh, so he's dehydrated, he dry it until it, it'll lose like 80% of its weights and it'll turn into this like hard rock. It looked, it's like a dead ringer for a black truffle. So when Renee came in for a tasting and saw just a massive pile of black yuzu, he was like, what are you guys doing with truffles?
And we had to explain to him that it was, uh, that they were black yuzu. And then he loved them. Uh, they're going on to a district now with, uh, uh, it's a, of course, they use his Danish cheese and it's this, like the, the black yuzu gives this rich citrusy flavor. It's not fresh citrus, but it's also not cooked citrus. It's in between. Um, it's almost a little bit spicy.
Uh, and yeah, like that, that was one that was brand new to the season that was presented last season during the tastings and the test kitchen really liked it. And they ran with it. Amazing. I wanted to ask how, how many things do you have in stock? Do you have like a storage room full of buckets full of fermented things? And how old are they? Are they things that are like 10 years old? Like, what about that?
Yeah, we have, uh, so we have a, an offsite facility where we have 11 metric tons of ferments. Wow. 11 metric tons. Okay. Because you have to imagine every season we're presenting new ferments and the test kitchen are kind of like children where they only want to play with their new toys and the old toys just kind of get left by the side. So every season we're creating new toys, they're using them. And then the next season, those new toys are not new anymore and they want the new thing.
And so then you had, you end up with a massive bunker of all kinds of like amazing, delicious ferments. It creates like an inventory and an encyclopedic, uh, organization where we know everything that's grouped by season. So we know all the shellfish ferments, we have all the wild game ferments we have and things like that. And this is, this is offsite. This is not a normal thing. This is offsite, this is not a normal, because we don't have the space to, to have that kind of facility.
So it's like a, like a massive freezer that we keep everything in so that whenever we need something, it's just a bike ride away and you can make some stuff up. That's crazy. That must be really cool to visit. Like a, like a sort of forgotten, you know, like those bunkers they build into like Swiss mountain sites to like harbor, you know, seats, so nothing gets extinct.
So basically the, the, the pipeline of a dish development is you guys develop the ferments and then there is a tasting, there are some selected and what about the chefs that are creating a dish? What about their process? And you elaborate on that. The, so the chefs that are creating a dish, the, the process is that they'll have a meeting with Renee in the test kitchen and he'll have, it's, it's very, very, uh, analog. He'll have this massive, uh, pad of paper on an easel.
Kind of like when you had like elementary school and teachers trying to teach you how to spell words or things like that. And he'll write at the top, like game in forest menu in 2023, and then he'll write down a list of ingredients that he thinks are cool or that he's interested in and things like that. And then he'll write down a separate list of techniques that he's interested in. And then that's what the test kitchen has to start with at the beginning.
And then over the course of this development period, because the test kitchen, neither the test kitchen nor fermentation lab are involved in service in the day-to-day service. So we don't do meso blocks or anything like that. And the idea is that we can focus on creative work. So the test kitchen, they choose what ingredients they want to use.
They present their dishes and then slowly Renee is like this, this refining filter and he can kind of pick out the different elements of things that he doesn't want to pursue any further and he can elevate things that he wants to focus more on and things like that. And then from that, he then at one point will write down on the piece of paper, a menu, and then list the dishes that have been created. And, and you'll have the name of the dish and then when it's approved, you get a check mark.
So now when you're doing tastings, you, you're responsible for certain dishes that he has to taste.
And then when it's finally approved and you get that check mark, it's like a, I've, you know, I've never been in the test kitchen, uh, as a member, but to them, I imagine it is like the greatest validation and like relief when you, you finally get the dish perfect or as close to perfect as possible, that you get a check mark from Renee and you can move on to the next dish, or you can move on to helping someone else with their dish and things like that. Yeah, that must be amazing.
So Renee is involved in the development of every dish. Yes. Every single dish is approved by him and every single dish is tweaked and, and, uh, refined and pared down or extrapolated upon depending on what he feels is what he wants in, in the final dish. But it's, it's like the comparison I said before, he's a gallerist and he can pick and choose which, which paintings he wants that'll allow him to have a certain point of view in his gallery.
That's actually really amazing to be here because, you know, like it's, um, I'm sure you saw that plenty of times as well. It's so many chefs, especially at such a high level, don't actually have that much involvement with what's going on in their restaurant. As you know, the outside, you know, the general public would think. So that's really, really cool.
Can you imagine like, it's like, um, you know, like Noma has such a strong identity, you know, stylistically, uh, visually, obviously, you know, the techniques that are involved and stuff.
Um, but it's so, you know, like if you see like a dish from Noma, you know, it's from there, you know, because obviously it's evolved so much since the beginning, um, um, but you know, like, how would you say, um, it is because I met, you know, if you're working in a test kitchen, you have to have like a, a very good understanding of the identity of the restaurant, right? You know, like how would you, um, you know, how would you say it is, you know, kind of delving into that?
So the, the way that you would get into the test kitchen, all the members of the test kitchen have been at Noma for, um, a very long, like longer than myself, uh, longer than five years to the point where they have worked service. They have worked on dishes, like they've prepped the dishes that previous test kitchens have done in the past. So they understand the process and they're handpicked by Renee because of their creative ability.
It's kind of like the test kitchen team is basically, you know, seal team Bravo or whatever, they're like the black ops team of people who have been at Noma for so long that they understand in their bones what the mission statement is of the restaurant. Yeah. And then Renee will handpick them and put them in there.
That's one of his like, you know, like Superman is super human strength and heat vision, Renee Rizepi has this inherent ability to take people who work for him and put them in the best position for them to succeed and he has done that for over 20 years now. And there's examples all over the place in the history of the restaurant.
I recently, we posted like a real on Noma where John was, John Reggefeld was talking about Noma and there was a comment, I want to know what, what you have to comment or respond on that. And the comment said anything is possible if you have 40 stagiaires working for free. Which is not the case at Noma anymore because now we have zero stagiaires working for free. We have stagiaires, but they are, they are completely paid now. Which is, was a big deal.
That's something that Renee has wanted to do for a very long time. And I mean, as, as true as the statement is that if you have 40. Unpaid stagiaires doing whatever there is seemingly no end to the possibilities that your kitchen can produce.
But I argue on the contrary, that when you take those, instead of 40 unpaid stagiaires, you have 26 paid interns who commit to six months to a year to your restaurant and they are invested, they are paid, they are given responsibilities, they are treated as part of the team to the point now where instead of 24 interns or 40 unpaid interns, Noma now boasts 35 chef de parties because any of those interns, when they spend enough time with us,
they can jump in and it's, it's to the point now where a chef de party can come off their station and work on staff meal for two weeks and have an intern fill in for them because we screen the interns before we bring them on, we, we give them a proper education of all the facets of the restaurant.
We, we nurture their learning and allow them to see as much as possible and we build them up and put them in position to succeed so that when the time comes to, to help, you know, in a part of the restaurant that they might not be so familiar with, they have the confidence of someone who has been in the building for six months, seven months, eight months, nine months, so they can jump in and, and it, it really makes a difference.
You can tell when, when you have someone on a station who has been at the restaurant for a very long time, relatively speaking. Let's go into the draft. Yeah, we have to do the draft. Oh yes, the draft. So I, yeah, Kevin, as you, did you listen to our drafts? I did listen to the draft. Okay. Before, before, before you say anything, which draft did you think was better? I think yours was better. If you want to hear that Phil. I think, I think Phil, your, your overall kitchen is French.
It's very, it's very French. Yes. Yeah. But it's very capable of extremely delicious food. Like your kitchen probably definitely has three stars. Eric, your kitchen. Is like, I, can I come stage in that kitchen? Like you had, you had Markle Tierra White on production. You had Nadia Santini on pasta and then she's presumably working side by side with Wolfgang Puck on the pizza section. Like that's awesome. And Augustus Gauffier just downing magnums of champagne screaming at people.
Yeah, I picked Wolfgang Puck for his humor. I wanted like a, like a guy, you know, dropping jokes with a strong Austrian accent in my kitchen. Yeah. Like I can guarantee in both restaurants, staff meals going to be delicious as well. True. True. So here it goes. The draft. Okay. So I want to preface this by saying, um, so the original, I, cause I suggested the kitchen draft and the idea behind a draft.
And I'd only learned this because I learned about how they'd select football players in Europe recently. But in America, when you have a draft, you have to be very careful when you do a draft, you do it like, like I would choose and Eric would choose and Phil would choose, and then I would choose again, then Phil would, then Eric would choose and Phil would choose, and you can't pick a double.
So you could say like, for example, Phil took Josh Nyland and then, uh, Eric also had Seiji Yamamoto slash Josh Nyland on his draft. So because Phil went first or, or Eric went first, one of you would not be able to select Josh. Oh, I see. And then that's how it gets into like, Oh, you stole my guy. Or, uh, I'm going to take this guy as my roast, my meat roast. And that means that you can't take him for. D'Harmondier or whatever. That would have made sense.
Yeah. So with that in mind, I did my best to avoid choosing anyone that you guys chose. So I guess we'll get started with, with mine in the same order you guys got started. So, uh, my chef, the cuisine is Corey Lee from Benin. Oh yeah. Okay. Nice. Nice guy. Previously with the French Laundry. French Laundry veteran. Yeah. Um, and he's like extremely technically proficient. Uh, he likes a quiet kitchen.
I had the, the fortune of, of staging at Benu for a couple of days on the job trial and he was, he's a force to be reckoned with. I have the utmost respect for him and the food that he creates at Benu. Amazing choice. Uh, his sous chef. I have, uh, Jeremy Chan from McCoy in London. Oh yeah. Yeah. Uh, so he was previously, he worked at, he was an internet noma previously, but, um, he also, so McCoy is like, uh, in African fine dining restaurants.
So his business partner, um, you contributes a lot of inspiration with African spices and like his, his jollof rice is supposedly incredible. I've never had the fortune of eating at McCoy.
I'm on the newsletter list and I, I just don't have the scheduling prowess to be able to get over to London and eat there unfortunately, but I really like what he does also the guys like a genius, like he speaks a zillion languages, which I think as a sous chef is very important when you hear about the rest of my team and the rest of the people who are working in this kitchen. So, uh, yeah, Jeremy Chan as sous chef on sauce, I have Eric repair of the Bernard Dan in New York city. Nice one.
Yeah. One of, uh, it's a three-man restaurant. The really cool thing about LaBernard and is that they do still have a Saucer station where you have a Saucer who's responsible for all the stock, all the sauces, all the finishing of the sauces and refreshing of sauces.
Like it's an actual, a lot of restaurants will just have the meat, the meat guy do that or the fish guy do that, but in LaBernard and it's a, it's an actual, uh, section and Eric repair eats a piece of American cheese every day to set his palate so that he knows if the cheese tastes a certain way, um, he knows that his palates geared more salty or less salty today. So I think a guy with that kind of attention to the ETL for tasting, um, especially with sauces is super important.
Yeah. On meat roast, I have Daniel Berlin of restaurant Vune in Sweden. Oh, nice. Previously of restaurant Daniel Berlin in Sweden. Uh, I haven't had the fortune of eating his food, but I know that he only serves meats during the autumn when, uh, when he's able to serve wild game and, uh, and things like that. And I don't know if that's the same now that he's opened a new restaurant, but I I've heard very amazing things about his, his game cookery.
It's one of my, my favorite chefs, stylistically. Like, yeah, it's amazing. And on fish roast, I have Laurent Gras, previously of L2O and Cezanne. Oh, very good. L2O actually called L2O because the L subbing out the H and H2O of a seafood restaurant with the L for Laurent. Uh, extremely technical chef.
Another technician that you can kind of, as I'm listing these names, you can see the direction that this restaurant is going now, like very technically precise, very ingredient forward on Autrometier slash Tournante. I have Dylan Watson Braun from Ernst. Uh, he's a, he's a younger guy. He's an EMA, maybe he's not as well known as some of the other guys in this kitchen, but I've had the fortune of eating at Ernst several times.
And in addition to the amazing seafood and meat cookery, I think his vegetable cookery is second to none, especially considering that you two chose Alain Bessard and Michel Bra as your, as your, uh, Autrometiers. Um, I think Dylan is a masterful cook when it comes to vegetables. I also have him at Tournante because then he can help out chefs, Berlin and chefs, Bra on the roast stations. In addition to Sean Gray, formerly of Moafuku Co on Gare Monge.
He's not at Moafuku Co now because Moafuku Co is no more, but I ate there at the bar and it was playful, creative, delicious, high acid, multi-textual, and just a very fun restaurant to be a part of. And I, a lot of the cold dishes at that, at that restaurant were amazing. Um, so you can see the savory side. All of these guys, they have restaurants that are under a hundred cover dining rooms.
Right. Like Libertadien obviously does multiple turns, but the rest of them, like Sean Gray from Moafuku Co had a counter, Dylan at Ernst is a counter. Daniel Berlin is a small dining room. Ekoi is a small dining room. Benu is a small dining room. The idea I have is for, um, if not simply a counter restaurant, but maybe a counter with a few tables, um, on pastry sweet side, I have Albert Adria of Enigma. I think the greatest pastry chef.
Of the last hundred years to also play into some of the whimsy coming from the Armonjay section and also because a lot of his desserts are not super sweet. I'm not a fan of sweet desserts. And then I added a bonus because you guys had production people and things like that. So in my R&D test kitchen, I've got Matt Orlando formerly of Amas, currently of Air in Singapore because, uh, he's extremely creative, intensely clever.
And this restaurant, I mean, the payroll alone for these salaries is going to bankrupt me. So if he's able to turn some of my byproducts into products, that'll help a lot for the bottom line. Nice. So that is, that is my draft. Super nice one. I love it. Very, very nice draft. Yeah. Really, really good choices.