How This Chef Handles Dietary Restrictions | Anthony Bourdain's The Mind of a Chef | Full Episode

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0:07 BOURDAIN: Gluten-free, vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian,

0:10 no soy, no dairy, no nut products.

0:13 Restrictions like these can drive a chef crazy.

0:16 There are those chefs that take a hard line: "Eat what I cook and how I cook it,

0:22 or eat somewhere else." But chef David

0:25 Kinch has taken a more empathetic approach

0:28 and uses these restrictions as an opportunity

0:30 to challenge himself and his kitchen to get creative.

0:34 KINCH: He had no earthly idea.

0:36 BOURDAIN: Each guest has a menu catering to whatever restrictions they may have,

0:39 be it personal preference or actual allergy.

0:43 Enter the Mind of a Chef.

0:46 KINCH: You can actually taste the sun.

0:47 I don't know how we're going to top that one.

0:49 This is the fun part in cooking.

0:50 Cheers.

1:03 (sniffs)

1:18 KINCH: A year and a half ago,

1:19 we took the final plunge and went to a single menu.

1:23 Going to one menu is in essence asking people to trust you.

1:28 People are saying, "Well, there's no choice.

1:31 We're paying good money,

1:33 let's see what you can do." But a single menu is

1:37 a myth unless you don't honor any restrictions at all— vegetarian,

1:43 vegan, pescatarian, no dairy, no red meat, gluten-free.

1:48 I've had people who won't eat white food.

1:54 Nothing pleases me more than every single person has

1:57 their menu written out at 4:00 in the afternoon.

2:01 Anita at 22.

2:01 This one is no onion.

2:03 Fire four lamb, table 40 at 9:00.

2:06 One no red meat.

2:07 Thank you.

2:09 KINCH: And then there's the person who shows up where they forgot to mention...

2:13 Did this five-top, did they tell us about all these restrictions?

2:17 Yeah.

2:18 KINCH: "It says here you're a vegetarian,

2:19 not vegan," and they're vegan since their last visit nine months ago.

2:22 We have to adjust it on the fly at 7:45, and the restaurant's full.

2:26 We bounce around every station back and forth and back and forth.

2:29 It's too painful to recall.

2:31 (laughs) Okay, so I have a party of 30 here.

2:39 10 of the 30, one-third of the party, dietary restrictions, this is what we got:

2:45 mineral water only, cannot eat cucumber, raw tomato,

2:49 soft cheeses, olives, smoked salmon in sandwiches.

2:53 Can eat: simple sandwiches, prawn sandwiches,

2:55 low carb, low sugar, nuts only in salads.

3:00 Less than half of that actually involve allergies.

3:03 There's always a joke in the restaurant when

3:05 people say no red meat, and it goes, "Oh,

3:07 serve them veal anyways, it's not red yet." Allergies to us,

3:19 it's if it harms your health.

3:22 That's when I'm concerned about allergies,

3:23 if your body reacts to it, not because you don't like it.

3:28 KINCH: James, at Commis,

3:29 is not afraid to cook exactly the food that he wants to cook.

3:34 He's someone who's very, very efficient, smart, and good with his hands.

3:40 The best way to cook meat is on the grill.

3:43 It uses a lot of senses.

3:44 You can touch and feel the meat as it cooks.

3:47 Something very primitive about it.

3:51 KINCH: I remember it being, as a young cook,

3:52 you would not have this pink color here.

3:54 This would have been derisively referred to as "baby

3:57 beef." How come you're not in jail right now?

3:59 They haven't found me yet.

4:01 (chuckles)

4:03 KINCH: People eat lamb, people eat suckling pig.

4:07 Why do you think there is this stigma of veal?

4:09 Do you think it has something to do with, like,

4:11 rabbits, the fact that they're really, really cute?

4:15 Veal is what they thought a veal was 20 years ago.

4:19 Same thing with the whole foie gras argument.

4:21 There are old school methods and there are modern methods.

4:25 I think everyone's conscious of being sustainable and humane now.

4:31 KINCH: It's a beautiful piece of meat.

4:34 So now I'm making my oyster purée.

4:36 Chef, can you mind shucking some oysters for me?

4:38 KINCH: Yeah, of course.

4:42 Surf and turf is one of my favorites.

4:44 Every country has its own surf and turf— the infamous steak and lobster.

4:47 Even in Thailand, cockles and pork.

4:50 This is kind of like an homage.

4:54 So I'm going to start with milk,

4:57 agar— a seaweed extract— and then it gets cooled down, put over an ice bath.

5:03 Make something like a milk block.

5:06 Later, we're going to puree that with the oysters.

5:08 KINCH: But I don't eat baby animals and I have a shellfish and dairy allergy.

5:12 (chuckles) Sometimes, you would hear some of these allergies and you feel,

5:15 like, getting taken advantage of.

5:20 KINCH: If I was truly a boy in a bubble

5:23 and allergic and cannot eat up to two dozen things,

5:27 which some of these cards have,

5:29 and then they want to sit down and have a 17-course meal,

5:32 you have to ask why they want to come to the restaurant.

5:37 And we all work very hard to deliver that experience,

5:40 but you know, we just need the diner to meet us halfway.

5:42 KINCH: Yeah.

5:43 Especially in restaurants where it's a single menu every night,

5:45 we want them to fully experience what we do.

5:50 Hospitality, for me, I believe it's a two-way street.

6:00 (whirring) KINCH: Should I shuck another oyster?

6:08 Yeah, let's throw another oyster in there.

6:11 (whirring) KINCH: When we're creating certain dishes for the menu,

6:20 sometimes we have to not include something

6:23 in a dish because we feel it's the best

6:26 thing for it because of the amount of people who will choose not to eat it.

6:31 We are slightly handcuffed by people in giving our best possible experience.

6:37 But, you know, we are in the hospitality business, we're here to please.

6:42 We need to trust our diners,

6:43 because if it is a serious health issue, we don't know.

6:46 We can only joke about it in our kitchens.

6:50 Chef, will you do the honors of slicing the veal?

6:52 KINCH: Sure.

6:58 That's gorgeous.

7:00 I love serving meat with the fat on.

7:02 That's the real true essence of the product, is the fat.

7:06 We have oysters.

7:12 Morel mushrooms and dill powder.

7:15 The spiciness of horseradish, but I'm using mustard greens instead.

7:19 Some raw onions.

7:20 KINCH: I'm sorry, I can't eat raw alliums.

7:23 (chuckles) So the dish is not intentionally to say,

7:27 "Bug off, allergies." As chefs,

7:30 we want to cook the best delicious dish the best that we can,

7:35 and that's how we went at it, but it kind of saddens me that diners are not

7:38 willing to try and trust the chef and taste their creations.

7:46 KINCH: More for us.

7:47 (chuckles) Good afternoon, Mr.

7:52 Johnson, courtesy call to confirm your reservation.

7:54 Are there any allergies the kitchen should be aware

7:56 of in regards to creating your menu for tomorrow evening?

8:07 KINCH: The one we hear every night is gluten allergy, soy okay,

8:12 which, you know, soy sauce has a lot of gluten in it.

8:15 You know, it's soy bean and wheat, fermented.

8:20 If something's going to cause your stomach

8:21 to cramp up if you have celiac disease, it's going to be soy sauce.

8:26 It begs the question: why do people say that?

8:28 If they have this illness,

8:30 you would think they would have an understanding of it.

8:42 Well, a food allergy is a body's overreaction to a foreign

8:46 object coming into it that it doesn't think should be there.

8:50 It reacts as if it's a foreign invader and attacks it.

8:56 Things like wheat and fish, tree nuts and peanuts.

9:00 And if you are unlucky enough to have a true food allergy,

9:04 you would go into anaphylactic shock, and that's the end.

9:11 Celiac— C-E-L-I-A-C.

9:14 Celiac disease is a problem that occurs when

9:17 you eat a certain protein in wheat that's

9:20 responsible for making bread rise and have fabulous

9:23 little holes in it that destroy your intestinal villi.

9:27 Those are the little fingery things

9:29 that have a big surface for absorbing nutrients.

9:32 If you have diarrhea, you have vomiting,

9:34 all kinds of horrible problems, it's best to avoid it.

9:38 Bread is obvious, pasta is obvious, Pop-Tarts are obvious.

9:42 But much less obvious is the stuff that goes into sauces and processed foods.

9:48 You have to read labels really,

9:50 really carefully and pray that they're telling

9:53 you the truth and know what they're doing.

9:55 Ice cream doesn't have gluten in it, or at least it shouldn't.

10:00 Some people have intolerances.

10:02 Those aren't the same.

10:03 You either have celiac disease or you don't.

10:07 But the number of people who feel that they are gluten intolerant is expanding

10:11 so rapidly to the point where it's

10:14 created a fabulous market for gluten-free goods.

10:18 Fortunately, wheat is not an essential nutrient,

10:21 so to exclude that from your diet makes

10:24 you feel better and cuts down on calories.

10:31 (birds chirping)♪♪

10:53 Salmon allergy.

10:54 This one is vegan.

10:55 No dairy, no dairy.

10:57 No chicken.

10:58 One nut allergy.

11:00 Gluten-free, soy okay.

11:01 Gluten-free, soy okay.

11:06 One no uncooked alcohol.

11:08 KINCH: The dining public are much more aware of what

11:11 goes in their body and the effect that it has.

11:14 You don't want people to perceive that they're getting

11:16 the exact same dish with the protein taken off.

11:19 There has to be some sort of thoughtfulness that went into their dish.

11:23 Chefs would be very unwise and probably disrespectful

11:26 if they didn't take that into their repertoire.

11:31 We try to be hospitable and do everything that we possibly can,

11:35 but sometimes we know that the best thing that we can add to it,

11:37 like for instance a soup, is a chicken broth.

11:40 But we don't add it.

11:42 We just end up putting a really nice

11:44 vegetarian stock in instead and be done with it.

11:47 But a lot of times, the limitations and the restrictions

11:49 could spark another section in your brain of creativity,

11:52 and then, "Oh wow, maybe this works even

11:54 better," while still being delicious and not missing anything.

12:00 KINCH: Brooks Headley is this great punk rock drummer who also

12:03 happens to be the pastry chef at the four-star Del Posto.

12:07 He is a vegetarian, he used to be vegan,

12:10 and it affects his way that he thinks about food.

12:13 They gave you grief about that at Shade?

12:17 Shh...

12:18 We're going to make silken tofu ganache.

12:22 It's a vegan dessert that we turn

12:24 into a free-form chocolate crème brûlée on the plate.

12:40 I've got some brown sugar here that I've mixed a little

12:43 pure vanilla extract into, and then I'm going to add some salt.

12:46 Desserts with no salt in it are sort of joyless, you know?

12:49 We're basically just going to turn it into a smoothie.

12:53 KINCH: It's now joyful.

12:55 We're starting on very low.

12:58 And the silken tofu will really liquefy, almost.

13:01 (whirring) And that's pretty much it at this point.

13:11 KINCH: That was violently simple.

13:13 (chuckling): It's true.

13:14 And then at that point, all we really do is add the melted chocolate.

13:19 KINCH: When you say "vegan," the one thing

13:20 that doesn't pop into people's mind immediately is chocolate.

13:24 Milk chocolate obviously has milk, or white chocolate has milk powder,

13:27 whatever, but chocolate itself, there's no dairy products.

13:30 (whirring) I don't really want to heat it up too much.

13:33 KINCH: That's beautiful.

13:36 And that's really all I want to do.

13:40 If you've got a little streakiness, just kind of...

13:42 KINCH: That's okay?

13:43 Kind of do the rest by hand.

13:44 KINCH: Yeah.

13:46 Basically what we have right now is a tofu ganache,

13:49 and this is going to firm up in the fridge.

13:51 KINCH: And how long does it take?

13:52 I like to do it at least a few hours.

13:54 Overnight, you can be sure.

13:57 KINCH: Chocolate pudding.

13:59 This is after it's set up overnight.

14:01 Pretty much like a soft ganache.

14:03 KINCH: That's going to go where you want it.

14:05 Sure, and the thing that's cool about

14:06 this is there's no hydrocolloids, there's no gelatin.

14:09 There's nothing else to stabilize it except

14:11 the stuff that you saw us put together.

14:14 And I like to just kind of give it, like, a weird free-form shape on there.

14:19 We'll take the sugar.

14:22 And then my favorite kitchen tool: the propane torch.

14:26 KINCH: Yeah, this is a Brooks Headley dessert, all right.

14:29 I see this coming.

14:31 When you're torching something, going like this doesn't really do anything.

14:33 You want to just kind of like...

14:37 KINCH: And the chocolate's not melting.

14:38 It's not even moving it at all.

14:40 KINCH: It's not moving it at all.

14:40 It's so cool, I love it.

14:42 KINCH: I'd say just a little bit there, but that's kind of cool.

14:45 This is the part where I really want to touch

14:46 it to make sure there's a crust, but I have to...

14:47 you know, you want to wait a couple seconds.

14:49 KINCH: You have to be patient.

14:50 But you can see it's very, very thin and very sheer.

14:53 KINCH: Like a real crème brûlée.

14:54 Exactly, because that's what we're going for here, you know?

14:58 At least in the past, a crème brûlée was sort of abused and made in mass...

15:03 KINCH: Trio, a trio of crème brûlée?

15:04 Oh, my God.

15:05 Made in massive quantities and without that perfect, thin,

15:09 custardy deliciousness with, like, the perfect crust of sugar.

15:12 It is one of the most unctuous, delicious, perfect desserts.

15:17 KINCH: How many people get this dessert?

15:19 We never know, we always have it on hand just to make sure

15:22 that if someone who is vegan comes in that we have something for them.

15:28 I like to zest like this.

15:32 Get little chunks.

15:34 KINCH: How do the philistines do it?

15:35 Normally, it's just kind of like...

15:37 This sort of violent action,

15:38 like I want to destroy the citrus or whatever, and that just...

15:41 that just seems so wrong.

15:45 As beautiful as this is or whatever cool products and techniques we put into it,

15:48 the end result is someone comes in and eats something and then leaves happy.

15:53 That's our job.

15:57 We want everyone to leave completely psyched.

15:59 You know, we don't want anyone to leave and feel left out.

16:02 It's funny, we don't actually serve a normal crème brûlée.

16:06 Maybe I'm going to put one on the menu tomorrow, so...

16:08 KINCH: Oh, that's great.

16:16 Creating a dish, there's no checklist.

16:19 Inspiration comes from many different paths.

16:23 Order in, two-top.

16:26 KINCH: Funny story, I went looking for a condor

16:30 on a hike and I never found the condor, but I found poison oak.

16:35 I got on a plane to go to New York to do an event,

16:38 and getting a call from the staff.

16:41 "You know, this fish, it's no longer available,

16:43 "and we can't do the set "because the vegetable's not from the farm.

16:46 What should we do?" I'm sitting here bathing

16:49 in calamine lotion in a hotel room in misery.

16:53 "I really don't have a chance to do this.

16:55 "Come up with a dish and keep me posted

16:57 on what you're going to do." That's exactly what they did.

17:00 And they sent me a photograph with a lot of new ideas and techniques.

17:04 It was done in the spirit as if I had been intimately involved with it.

17:16 Right now, it's not completely vegetarian, but it is meat-free.

17:20 It has a really nice smoky element

17:22 because we replaced the bacon with smoked fish.

17:27 Everything in here was mostly about the aromatics.

17:31 All the broth is really contributing is the artichoke flavor.

17:34 We now have the broth semi-clear.

17:37 I'm going to take some fresh thyme and I'm going

17:40 to add this to the broth and let it sit

17:44 just for a couple minutes until we get to the point

17:48 where we feel that the thyme has made its contribution,

17:51 and it will happen very fast.

17:53 It's essentially finished right now except for adjusting the seasoning.

17:58 However, gluten-free people cannot have this dish

18:01 because of what we season it with.

18:04 All of our dishes are seasoned with soy.

18:05 I'm going to try and season it correctly.

18:10 During the process, we added pinches of salt in there,

18:12 we added a little bit of vinegar.

18:13 I'm going to taste.

18:15 It's almost there.

18:28 I think I nailed it on that one.

18:32 We're going to make fried artichokes in a very interesting and unusual shape.

18:37 Starting to see the yellow of the base.

18:39 I'm going to stop here.

18:44 Going to remove all the green, as much of the green as I possibly can.

18:49 Green's going to be bitter and tough.

18:52 Even the small amounts there I'm going to want to get rid of.

18:59 We're going to create long ribbons with this.

19:03 Nice long artichoke ribbon.

19:07 And once it's fried, it can get grotesque in its shape, twisted or gnarled.

19:13 This is black cod, which is a local fish.

19:16 It's very, very fatty.

19:17 It takes to smoking and grilling very well.

19:25 There's a couple of different techniques for doing this.

19:27 Some people like the skin lays flat across the fire.

19:30 I like to have it as close to the bottom of the fish as possible.

19:36 That's the fish fat hitting the fire causing the smoke.

19:43 Don't want too much of a flare-up.

19:45 Skin's sizzling already.

19:47 Working with the fire, moving the fish around.

19:50 Super crispy, almost like a potato chip.

19:57 A touch of a fish sauce.

20:00 Trying to avoid the skin.

20:02 We worked hard to keep the skin crispy.

20:07 The first dish they sent out the night it was on the menu,

20:10 they sent me a photograph.

20:12 It was spectacular.

20:15 Beautiful piece of black cod with fish sauce.

20:19 It's the green of leeks that have been charred and mixed with olive oil.

20:25 Crispy artichoke ribbons.

20:29 It's elegant, it's very colorful.

20:33 By its very nature, it's a very feminine dish,

20:36 which I think is a very apt description for many

20:38 of the dishes that come out of our kitchen.

20:41 And the last thing to finish is that beautiful artichoke broth.

20:44 It's about the synergy between the fish and the artichoke.

20:49 My job a lot of times now is to promote the restaurant and be engaged outside.

20:57 I enjoy cooking, but I think there was a period

21:00 I was relying on managers more to run the restaurant.

21:03 I was still at the restaurant, but I wasn't as engaged perhaps.

21:09 Of course, this is all in retrospect.

21:10 Obviously, the fire causes a lot of introspection,

21:14 and you start thinking about how you did things.

21:18 Perhaps you're being given the opportunity

21:19 to do things a little bit differently.

21:27 All is fine, the staff is great, but I miss being in the kitchen.

21:33 That makes me happy.

21:35 It makes me happy to do that.

21:38 (indistinct chatter) As a young cook, food is everything.

21:46 You'll go eat anywhere as long as the food is great.

21:50 But you realize that a lot of people come to restaurants for different reasons.

21:54 Not everybody comes because they're food-obsessed.

21:59 They just want a nice night away from the kids, they want a comfortable chair.

22:09 It's like the theater.

22:10 It's an event, it's entertainment, and you go because you want to experience

22:13 what a particular restaurant has to offer.

22:21 We try to find that right balance.

22:23 How do we cook for ourselves and challenge ourselves, yet at the same time,

22:28 create a satisfaction in customers that perhaps will

22:31 even come back and visit us a second time?

22:35 If there is a restaurant with a brilliant chef and nobody goes,

22:39 is he actually a brilliant chef?

22:43 (sniffs)