How did you realise that gastronomy was your passion?
“As a kid I used to ask my mum for broccoli instead of sweets. When I was 12 years old I started making my own salads and I realised that playing with different ingredients was actually a lot of fun. Later on, throughout boarding school in Israel, I began to cook for my friends and understand the power of food. Seeing how happy it would make them made me realise that food is not only fundamental as a means of sustenance but also a social force that brings people together.
So far, I have worked in restaurants and for a catering company, as I thought that being a cook was my dream. Working in a catering company allowed me to experience cooking in a different way. Understanding what it takes to feed many people not in mono sized portions, is a whole other way of cooking. although it’s a whole different experience that amount of waste that goes in there is really scary.
However, these experiences taught me that being a cook wouldn’t allow me to “reach” all the people I wanted to. If you cook in a restaurant you are spending pretty much all of your time standing up in the kitchen, cooking and with less human interactions.
If I eat meat I need to be able to understand the upbringing of the animal and its transition from life to death.
One of the most powerful experiences I had was working as a butcher near Rimini. After my first year at the University of Gastronomic Sciences, I wanted to learn two things: the production process of meat and the Italian language. During this time, I realised how much we tend to standardize products and especially the ones coming from animals.
I learned everything from feeding animals properly to butchering them without wasting any part“.
How do you think has been the impact of COVID-19 on the hospitality industry?
“These are times of great uncertainty. I don’t know what to expect from the future and especially what will happen to the hospitality industry in particular. This is a good opportunity for change and restaurants should understand that their employees are fundamental to them and should be supported during this tough time.
The aim of restaurants is to feed people and to make them happy through food, the environment and the atmosphere of the restaurant itself. Obviously, the health restrictions and policies that are being implemented now will threaten conviviality to an extent.
I sadly realised that some restaurants such as “osterie” or “trattorie” might end up closing in the future, as people will either prefer to cook at home, as they had to do during quarantine or just won’t have the money to eat out as they used before. Meanwhile, fine dining and street food, which are at the exact opposite, will probably suffer less from this crisis, as wealthy people will probably keep on eating in high-end restaurants. This is not only a matter of restaurants shutting down and going bankrupt but it will have a collapsing impact of our society.
I was particularly intrigued by the fact that during the lockdown everyone started making bread at home and from one day to another everyone turned out to be a baker. This brought me to write my dissertation on this phenomenon, in order to understand why bread became such a topic of interest among people. Seeing how everyone who started making bread has become a bread ‘junkie’ has been fascinating. The people I got to interview from outside the food world, have been the most interesting, they were so fascinated about how it felt to be connected to one of their most basic foods, that it made them want to change everything about the way they consume food.
Time is an interesting factor, in our day to day life, we’ve moved so far away from cooking. Now that people had it during the pandemic they realized how incredible it was to use their time to benefit their wellbeing, just by doing something so simple as baking your own bread.
I can also see two positive aspects of the current crisis. First, that our planet is having a break from all our pollution and from the damage we constantly do to it, which is having a positive contribution to climate change. And second, that more people started cooking at home and will probably be more careful of the food they eat, as they realised that it doesn’t take much to make a 20$ meal at home.
I don’t know how we will react to this crisis but what if this is only the beginning of a bigger catastrophe?”
How did COVID-19 impact the way you think about your future?
“I believe that politics is one of the most powerful ways to make changes in the food industry. “There should be a ministry of food” as food is everywhere and fundamental to everyone’s life. We should expose more kids to food education and guide them through the discovery of this important element. It’s crazy, it’s really wild to me, that we learn all our life how to do math, who fought who in different wars, what gas our car needs, but for our own sustainability, as human beings, nothing is taught. We never learn anything about what we put in our body, it’s as if all the work in the world is more important than us.
During these months, I came to the realisation that I want to be more in contact with nature and live surrounded by it. I want to produce food for people, but most importantly educate them about the food they eat. I would love to go back to my community in Israel but I know it is a really tough environment to have a farm. There is a lot of bureaucracy and laws to follow if you want to be able to sell your produce to the entire country due religious food habits and laws”.