Daniel Humm: 3-Michelin-Star Chef & Owner of New York’s Eleven Madison Park - Swiss Values, Fine-Dining, Sustainability, & Excess

0:00Well, I'm very excited for you to be here today. particularly because you're closer to the real life stadt guy than i am you're swiss from switzerland yeah i'm nowhere near it so i'm just a fraud you're the real life stadt guy so daniel hum it is great to have you here i'm very excited to be here too and it was great to meet you last year in stockholm likewise and now uh to get to know you more i'm excited. Likewise. I mean, your reputation absolutely precedes you. You've done incredible things in the world of hospitality and fine dining and food from philanthropy and what you've done for food sustainability, both as an author and as an actual philanthropist and someone who's actioned incredible things.

0:46You've done amazing things for food itself and culinary experiences, but also the ingredients used. And you have an incredible story based on what I've read online. So I'm very excited to hear it from you personally as well. I'm excited to share. Thank you so much. Thank you for being here. Around the world with your host, the Stade Guy, we welcome you back to the Stade Guy podcast, sharing stories of excellence with those in the know for those who just know. Whenever I think of like fine dining, especially at your scale, I think of like ratatouille and like the really intimidating food critic and that everyone is like that in the world.

1:28Everyone's like so scary and like so focused and you're actually just this very kind, cheerful, positive person who's not as intimidating as your kitchen. Thank you for saying that. Yeah, I think, you know, I actually think Ratatouille was great because it made kind of fun of it and there's a lot to make fun of it in our world. but I think I do believe you know there has to be a certain discipline and rigor to do what we do on a daily basis because it takes an army of people to do what we do so there has to be a certain sense of of of structure and maybe that's why this image I also think that fine dining i even don't like this word um but i i think there um there has been a great evolution and and i think places don't feel as stuffy as they once did for sure yeah so i mean let's go straight to the stade reference let's go straight back to switzerland I'd love to know more about your upbringing in your early life and what that looked like so close to Stad.

2:57You know, Switzerland is a magical place for sure. Part of it is magical. And there's also some darker sides like to every place. but I think I feel very blessed to have been, you know, had the chance to grow up there just in terms of like being so connected to nature. I think in Switzerland, wherever you are, I grew up in Zurich, but even in Zurich, you're so close to nature. And I think Swiss people have a real appreciation for nature, but then even beyond for like you know it goes to the water we use it goes to the you know trash that we uh create or not create um i i think inherently i got a sense of like uh sustainability at a very early age you know what it means to compost to recycle I mean that was like ingrained in me from day one in a way like now living in New York some of those things are still not here 40 years later and we're still trying to have composting and recycling in New York so it's a magical place but then there's also other parts of it so you grew up in Zurich city center pretty much yeah i mean how just to paint a picture for those who haven't been how much nature exposure do you get while still being a young city person i wanted to be a professional bike cyclist okay and so i was racing uh mountain bikes okay from like nine year old to like 20 year old and uh i was traveling all over mostly Switzerland but Europe as well and you know those races it was usually like on the weekend so it was always like a three-day weekend in different locations and usually in very remote locations a lot of times in the mountains and so for me it was always I was always in the woods and and and out uh biking and and also switzerland is very seasonal so i i also got always exposed to the to the weather um and i really wanted to be a cyclist and and cooking came by accident and literally by accident because i had an accident uh biking uh when i was 20 years old and it was kind of a very hard fall that then I had to be airlifted and was quite injured and so it just put everything in perspective.

5:54At that time I was like oh maybe cycling is not such a good plan. I was also I was good but I wasn't the best and in cycling there's only a few people who really make a living and uh and and in that moment i sort of made the pivot and i was sort of i never finished high school because i put all my effort into biking well um but i had this love for food and in the off season i was very lucky um to um had the opportunity to work in some kitchens and in Zurich there's the Hotel Boralock. And yeah, when I was 14 years old, I started like working at the Boralock whenever I had free time. And in the beginning, it was really to get a paycheck.

6:45But then over time, I sort of fell in love with it. Okay. So your love for food, was it also in the dining room? Did you love to eat as much as you love to cook? I did love, definitely. my mom was a great cook and so I was always exposed to like fresh ingredients from an early age I understood the difference of a lettuce that just came out of the ground versus a lettuce that is bought in a supermarket that's in a plastic bag it's a world of difference and I think that very simple thing when you actually really understand and I know you you you think about quality a lot or you you know you certain things are actually real quality and certain things are just perceived as quality but they're really not and i think you you make fun of those things which i i think we need to um i i do think also as a chef a lot about luxury and what is really luxury because i'm in the field of of having a luxurious restaurant but some of those ideas that we perceive as luxury or maybe ones were luxury are actually no longer luxury and then other things they're perceived as more simple but they're actually the true um luxury i mean even for me growing up i always had this fascination of like the three michelin star uh restaurants or even like the the palace hotels and all these like i i had this fantasy or this romance in my head that everything in their life was so yeah romantic and and glamorous and I wasn't able to access these places because I grew up, you know, very, very simple.

8:52So these places weren't really available to me. And then sometimes I would walk by these great restaurants or hotels and I would sort of have a glimpse inside of what that might be like. and there was also I was very intimidated by those places and later on and now you know I'm able to go to these places and I do spend time in these places and sometimes I wonder I'm like wow like what was I intimidated about this is like a joke in some of these places like service is bad and like you know and I'm like oh my god like that was false to be intimidated by those places but back to my accident like when I had the cycling accident I took this athlete's mentality towards the kitchen and for me in a way it was a competitive thing and I wanted to not just be a chef but I wanted to be the best chef and I studied the Michelin stars and the Comillo rankings and all the rankings that exist and there are so many so I'm like this is like a perfect field to be competitive in and I'm a student of the French cuisine as well and I studied it I read all the books that there are and and I started climbing this mountain of haute cuisine and there were very defined rules Michelin basically created the rules of what it means to be a fancy restaurant and I play I I learned the rules and I played by the rules.

10:51I cozied up to the right people, the influential people. And I started playing this game and I loved it. I loved the game. I started working for some of the best. And then when I became a chef, I wanted to be the best and I wanted to win every award there was, from the smallest one to the biggest one. And it's quite exhilarating because it's measurable. And so you set your goal about wanting to have one Mishnah star and then you get your team behind it. And then you reach that point and then you get more people behind it and then you want to get the two stars. And so it's like you're able to build this incredible team behind it and everyone is hyped on reaching these goals.

11:48I think there's so much to unpack on that page of things. But I'd love to just before I get too excited and roped into that, I'd love to go back in time to you getting that job at Borolac as a 14-year-old who loves biking, right? And is intimidated by fine dining. yeah that is a rare turn yeah a lot of people like food as diners myself included yeah and feel intimidated by fine dining also myself included but i don't feel invited into such a kitchen particularly not when i was 14 years old yeah what is it that drew you to french fine dining in particular and that excited you about being in the kitchen yeah no that's a really good point i mean i think it was this romance that i had that wasn't quite accessible to me but maybe through the back door the kitchen it somehow was and uh and i wanted to see what it what it was all about and i think um i mean i did love working in these kitchens where it's quite you know the chefs are like with the big chef hats and the perfectly starch whites and the long aprons and and i think there was like somehow this nobility about the profession there was like this pride um that these chefs had and i really um that really really spoke to me and but in the beginning I was just like putting, when deliveries came, I would help putting the vegetables away and clean the vegetables and basically just get them ready for the chefs to then prepare.

13:52And yeah, I always felt comfortable somehow in the environment of a kitchen. What I later also recognized is that I think in the restaurant business, there are a lot of people who didn't finish high school or didn't have like these degrees. And what I always felt beautiful, it was that whatever you brought that day, you got rewarded for it. So like anyone in the kitchen or in our industry really has an equal chance. It's basically what you put in, you get out. And so I was willing, you know, to put in a lot. And I feel like I received a lot. But I think also I came from like challenging family dynamic.

15:01And for me, the holidays were always something I didn't look forward to. And what was nice about working in a kitchen was like you work on holidays. and so now you don't need to be like worrying about oh what's going to happen this holiday you you have an excuse and you you can work in a kitchen you can kind of like disappear in the kitchen and for a long time i i feel like i it was a place for me to to disappear in and there are like we even our meals that we share every day our staff shares their meals together and we call them family meals and I think there is a true sense of family that exists within restaurants or hotels.

16:01How old were you when you ultimately left Switzerland? I was 25 years old when I left Switzerland. Okay and made a trip to New York. to san francisco first i was um when i was 24 years old um i i started my first chef job um after working four years in a three michelin star restaurant at 24 i i got my first chef job and it was in this little restaurant called gust house zum gupf an hour outside of zurich beautiful restaurant on top of a hill that's overlooking Lake Constance and it's just in this magical place in in Oppenstel actually very idyllic exactly what you picture Switzerland to be and in that place at 24 years old I got my first Michelin store everything happened kind of very fast for me.

17:03So I was there for a year and a half. And then I got a call from a Swiss hotelier in San Francisco running this place called Campton Place. And he called me out of the blue. And he said, I'm looking for a chef to run this restaurant here in San Francisco. And at that point, I didn't speak English. I'd never been to America. And I never thought of america as a culinary destination quite the opposite and uh he was very convincing but i was like no this i don't think this is for me uh but then he was also very persistent and then eventually he said i'll pay you a trip um i'll fly you out you spend two weeks here and uh and then you make decision and at that age I thought well a free trip great California yeah California and so so I went and he picked me up him personally picked me up at the airport and that left quite an impression on me he then drove me not to San Francisco, but straight to Napa Valley.

18:20And we went to go see, we were there for two days and we went to go see some of the great wineries. We ate at the most well-known restaurant there called the French Laundry. And I was completely overwhelmed by positive impressions. It was the opposite what I thought. And there was at that time there was this excitement about fine dining because it was the beginning of it almost. It was different than in Europe. In Europe already it kind of felt a little bit stale and old maybe. And here in California people were like super hyped about fancy dinners and products and artisans and and farming and cheese making all this stuff and uh and then we went to san francisco and they kind of continued um going to the different restaurants to the markets and i was so blown away that by the end of the two days i knew that I would do anything to get this job.

19:37Wow. On the last day, I was asked to prepare a meal, and I prepared a meal for them, like a five-course meal for the general manager and the chef at that time and some of their friends, and then they offered me a job. We applied for a visa, which was a student visa. they offered me$50 ,000 a year salary which at that point I didn't even ask what that meant later on I realized that it was close to nothing because when I needed a place to live I actually couldn't afford it but then you know over but but that's how much I wanted it It didn't matter what I was paid. I would pay nothing and I would want it.

20:32And I think that is part of maybe who I am is that I do lead my life in a very emotional way. And a lot of all my decisions are basically gut decisions. And then I'll figure out the details later. there but when something really pulls me i'm just gonna go for it and and that that has that has worked for me uh really well i think i can rely on that instinct much more than than the intellectual part uh when you overthink things i usually don't get it right i mean the the environment you were in in switzerland i assume was very different to your environment in san francisco yeah how did that impact you as a person at the time i mean when i was first arriving in san francisco and we're driving through like the neighborhoods it was so foreign it was like incredibly foreign and uh and then even you know being in the place and everything smelled different the sound of the city was different the flavors were completely different I had sushi for the first time in my life I had Thai food for the first time in my life I mean there's none of this in Switzerland I mean maybe now you see glimpses of it but not 30 years ago.

22:17I'd love to actually touch on that briefly. 30 years ago in Switzerland, for those who don't know, what was the food exposure and the availability of an international palate even in a city like Zurich? Yeah. I mean, there was like, maybe there was like one or two Chinese restaurants. None of them very good. of course a lot of italian restaurants the kind of french restaurant which is similar to like the swiss restaurant um there was like a spanish place that we would go to and and that felt like exotic you know but not much but not much uh there there was no sushi uh there was no thai food there was none of that.

23:11It's a whole new world. Yeah. And so my mind exploded. I think my curiosity, um, you know, it was unstoppable. Like there was just like, it was, it was one of the most magical times of my life because, um, I got exposed to so much. It was like going from black and white to color.

23:43When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp. The secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans. Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th. And never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end-to-end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone. Learn more at whatsapp.com. I know that in Switzerland, there are incredible values that exist in the household, but also transcend the household into the way people work together, converse in the streets. And people who don't share those values are usually not celebrated as much in society, to put it lightly.

24:33If you don't do it the Swiss way, not exactly accepted within the Swiss people. when you went to San Francisco how did you manage the Swiss values that you I'm sure were a big part of you in your life in a place that's pretty much the exact opposite like San Francisco especially then it's like the definition of liberty of self be who you are we accept everyone I struggled in Switzerland with all the rules especially when I was young because I yeah I was sort of like I didn't quite ever fit in I didn't fit in to the school system I struggled to fit in and when I got to San Francisco I felt free I felt that there was an acceptance a lot less judgmental like in Switzerland people are quite judgmental and if you don't fit in like you said you kind of have a hard time so I felt incredibly free I felt like anything is possible but funny enough and a lot of people talk about this but as you get older all of a sudden things catch up and you're actually a lot more like the things you didn't want to be and with time I started to really appreciate the Swiss values And I think when you find the right balance of openness, but also the values, I think that's kind of like the perfect balance.

26:31And Switzerland, to me, is a magical place, but it can feel quite small at times. Can you define some of the Swiss values for the audience? Well, I think, you know, when you give your word to something, that means something. I mean, if you do a handshake and you say, you're going to do something, you're going to do it, you can rely on that. You know, people do what they say they're going to do. People show up when they say they're going to show up on time. I think there is a respect for the environment. You know, if you park in an illegal spot in Zurich, there will be people that will come up to you and say, you can't park here.

27:28Not the police, just pedestrians, you know. Civilians. I do really appreciate that. people don't litter they don't just put trash in places they're not supposed to I also think there is people even with a lot of means they don't show it in the way they do in America there are no mansions in Switzerland maybe in Stadt there's a few

28:10but it's not the swiss way no actually even in stad the mansions yes are unassuming from the outside that's built underground yeah yeah yeah you're right stad away yeah which of those things did you miss most when you made it to san francisco well in the beginning I didn't miss any because I just felt free

28:35and then I was in San Francisco for two years and then I got an opportunity to move to New York to take over 11 Madison Park I've been there now for more than 20 years I never thought that that would be my life's work but it happened to be my life's work 11 Madison Park is one of the most beautiful restaurants you can see find anywhere in the world it has a real sense of place it's in a historic building that was built in 1928 it was meant to become the tallest building in the world but then the Great Depression hit and then they ran out of money and the building that was supposed to be 100 stories tall ended up being only 30 stories but it's still an entire city block and the scale of the ground floor and the arches to the entrance are the scale of a hundred story building and so it's quite special it's on madison square park it has these huge windows overlooking the park the flat iron building is is sort of in the backdrop um it feels like you can feel the heartbeat of new york it's in the heart of new york so the place almost is bigger than any one person uh than anything we do in there but I just started to feel fall in love with the place so much and more and more and more that it was impossible to go anywhere else and luckily I was hired as an employee and luckily a few years later I was able to buy it and so yeah to own 11 Madison Park is a dream come true and it's something that I think the work with 11 Madison Park it sort of never ends it's sort of a gift that keeps on giving back to that mountain that I was climbing that I thought like the three Michelin stars or maybe the number one spot on the world's best restaurant list, I thought those things were sort of like the mountaintop, the pinnacle.

31:23But as I achieved them, I realized that some of these achievements actually felt quite empty and that none of these rankings really matter that much. it mattered to motivate a team to get behind an idea and that these things were measurable and that created incredible energy towards improvement and making the restaurant better. But when we achieved all of them, they quite felt hollow or empty. and it felt like that we didn't have as much meaning. It also felt that some of those rules or principles to get there felt quite antiquated and that we had to reinvent the restaurant to be more purposeful, to be more in touch with the world of today actually um we we almost got blinded by by reaching these awards and and and sometimes i feel a little bit guilty about it that in the journey to reach these goals that i didn't like check myself if the direction was still the right one we almost blindly were chasing these awards learning the rules played them and eventually were able to win in that game um that i feel like was like sometimes not the right game um but i also very grateful to all these awards um because well I benefited from them tremendously and also I think because of those things I now have um a platform that people pay attention to and I think now it's just about using that platform in a way, you know, we have the opportunity of creating what is the fine dining of the future supposed to look like?

33:48What is the new luxury? And so that's been really exciting. The desire for success and greatness at any expense is the experience that most of the world goes through while on that mission. so being aware of the the negatives of that even though you feel like you're in late to the game it's better than not doing it at all it's a great thing, most don't do it at all so it's an incredible thing and it's a beautiful thing I'd love to hear and learn more about I would love to though I've never had the pleasure of dining with you at 11 Madison Park not back in the day, not today either which I'd love to fix at some point but I'm very curious about how you would describe the experience for someone dining with you 15 years ago and someone dining with you today and how that's developed well I'm very inspired by the French cuisine and it's something I I studied and always paid attention to and so in the beginning I would say or 15 years ago and and we already reached you know the heights of like the three Mishla star I think it was more about the technique and it was just sort of like the excellence in the way you you imagine it to be where things are executed perfectly in the most precious environment with the best wine list and the service and the perfect suits and and the champagne carts and the caviar and all those things i think executed at a very very high level consistently but very much in sort of like the school of French gastronomy.

35:57And I think it was a lot more about the craft than it was about the creation. And in a way, I do believe that even the most creative people, artists or musicians, they do have to master the craft before they can start being creative and so I think in my journey that's been very much the path where it was about how do I cook the most perfect duck with the most perfect crispy skin with just the right seasoning and uh and and that was the majority of my career only uh when the pandemic hit it was sort of like it started to become repetitive it started to feel like there is not really much innovation left and we started to recycle ideas and you know the pandemic here was quite difficult I mean our restaurant was closed for two years closed no business nothing and during that time I transformed the restaurant I started a non-for-profit organization called Rethink Food and we take food from restaurants or grocery stores or farms that are left behind.

37:39We prepare meals for people in need. And in the pandemic, I transformed 11 Madison Park into a community kitchen. We cooked about 6 ,000 meals every single day in little cardboard boxes,$3 cost per meal. And we started distributing them all over the city. amazing i'm very proud to say that um rethink food uh has continued to grow since the pandemic and last year we were able with a lot of other organizations but rethink has created 12 million meals well last year so it's incredible So I'm very proud of that work. And in a way, that work made me realize the power of the language food has. Food is such a beautiful thing.

38:40It touches everyone, all of us. We all have experiences with food. We all have love for food. It nourishes us. We need food. And so using that language for good all of a sudden became the thing that was essential to me. And so what does that mean for 11 Madison Park? Well, we know that the world and the climate is in a difficult place. and me as an expert, knowing where these ingredients come from and also knowing how it's changed. Like some of the ingredients have disappeared completely. Some of the ingredients used to be farmed and now they're farm-raised. Even the taste of things has changed.

39:40A strawberry rarely tastes like the strawberry you remember from growing up. And so I felt like I needed to use this platform for change. And I know that plant-based eating is a better way for the planet. And I know some of these ingredients like a Kobe beef, when you really think about, I don't know how luxurious it really is. it's expensive but it isn't really rare even and usually it comes in a frozen block shipped from Japan is this really what we need is this really the highest form of luxury and I think our industry also went so extreme that like there were dishes where they had like Kobe beef topped with sea urchin and caviar and shaved black truffles and some people even put a gold leaf on top maximum gluttony the highest level I mean one experience I remember and it was actually in Switzerland a restaurant that I'm not going to name but it it was on lake geneva and it was on this most beautiful day in switzerland on the lake overlooking the mountain that still had like the snow cover on it and i was sitting there for a meeting in this michelin-starred restaurant and i remember i had this dish of a uh of a langoustine from South Africa with a caviar from China and it had finger limes on it from Australia.

41:46And I'm sitting there in the most picture and I'm like, we're fucked. This is absurd. And more and more, I saw these kind of things and well during the pandemic we decided that we would start a farm upstate we decided that we wanted to only serve vegetables and creatively that was really exciting for me because I always felt that chefs that worked well with vegetables were always the most impressive to me because, you know, everyone poaches a lobster the same way, cooks the duck the same way. One does it with orange. The other one does it with rhubarb. The other one uses sweet onions. In a way, everything felt kind of the same.

42:49But when someone worked with the vegetables, and I had this amazing experience once, early in 1998 and there was a chef called Michel Brault in France and he had like a vegetable dish on the cover of his cookbook and when you went there a lot of the dishes were vegetables and that really moved me and so creatively it always felt like the greatest challenge to work with vegetables because that's where the chefs really showed if they were you know shining or not and and yeah it's been a beautiful journey I think you know it was difficult in the beginning because it became very political it's very can be very polarizing I think there's like the vegans on one side you know they're such a minority but they're very loud and I never saw myself in a box I just wanted to work with food and I wanted to create beautiful meals and today the restaurant And the meal is more poetic.

44:08It's more creative. It's more unpredictable. It's a new language. It's a new language of fine dining. My goal was no longer to reach all the stars, the Mishnah stars, in a way. The goal was bigger. but then in the end when our restaurant was named three stars using no animal products that did feel like a win in some ways because i feel like it was again it was a measure and it was a measure that even one of the oldest organization that rates restaurant can actually change and so it was a measure of change now um and so i'm very proud of that i love that that's incredible yeah there's a few things you touched on that mean a lot to me and excite me about luxury in particular which is a big talking point in my world on that guy and it's the obsession for the process rather than just the product and these product cheat codes you spoke about like that dish in Geneva which is the wagyu with the uni with the truffle and I'm always far more impressed as a consumer but also someone just on the sideline by simple ingredients making something profound through a profound process to say it simply I'm more impressed by a great pizza than I am by something covered in caviar totally right I find more complex and more of an expression of craft and passion to make a great pizza.

45:57And I think that transcends food. I think with clothes taking some things that would otherwise sometimes be ignored, like for example, Laura Piana have this amazing line called Gift of Kings, where they took merino wool and turned it to something incredible. With watches, creating incredible movements versus just covering something with diamonds, which would be the cheat code in that category. I think every industry has these product cheat codes and also has this underlying beauty of processing craft. But for me as a consumer, when I thought about fine dining, I never thought about the beauty of processing craft because I always imagined this fine dining consumer as this gluttony-obsessed, wine-guzzling, otoro loving foie gras swallowing person who's who's addicted to like you know like the best the best of us and i've avoided them for that reason yeah when i travel to a new place and someone recommends oh this place is three michelin stars i get turned off yeah i'm like i want to go to the trattoria and the the old lady who specializes in this thing and and have this more wholesome meal.

47:09Totally. Not that it comes from a position of superiority or a position of judgment by any means for the craft or for the cuisine, but it comes from a level of judgment that I assumed on the consumer. Yeah. I always assumed that like these three Michelin star fine dining places are like kind of stuffy and like obsessed with like more and more and more and like presentation versus craft, right? So I love that you're talking about these, simple ingredients and local ingredients used because it goes against everything I believed about fine dining yeah I've must have gone to under five fine dining restaurants in my life except for the three Michelin star I've been to in Japan which is rather simple in ingredient use and rather local yeah the rest were exactly what you're talking about of like this from here that from there yeah and it was always part of the voiceover by the server or the chef and that was the selling point yeah when you took this leap did you worry that the consumer would feel differently about this than you do and if yes or if no where did your conviction in your mission come from to go against the norm?

48:31I think because it was the pandemic when I made this decision. And during that time, I almost lost everything. We almost went bankrupt. We had no business. There was nothing. In a way, from that place, making a decision was very powerful because it didn't feel like we had anything to lose. we only had to gain. And if the pandemic would have not happened, I don't think I would have ever had the courage to make that transition because I would have worried way too much about what the guest would think. But reopening the restaurant from a place where we had no guests and every guest that would come was a plus.

49:27We didn't fight to keep guests. We almost fought to have guests in a way. So it was like a different place that we started out. So I didn't think about the guests that much. I just felt in my heart, I felt so strong about it. And again, like I said earlier, I make my decision more like emotionally. And emotionally, I had no interest or energy towards opening the same restaurant like it was before. We had to do something different. We had to use this platform to somehow shine a light on there could be another way. There has to be another way. And, you know, the magic of cooking is really about like making an onion or a tomato or a pea or any of those kind of humble and simple things.

50:40like when they're in the right hands and they get elevated to be something luxurious that's the magic of cooking and it's not about slicing a piece of toro and shaving some truffle on top there's very little magic there so how would you define that magic and luxury because you're undeniably in the category of luxury So what does luxury mean to you? You know, to me, I'm lucky that I've spent a lot of time in Japan. And I'm very, well, I was very inspired by the Zen Buddhist cuisine. It's called Chojin cuisine. And I've spent time in some of those temples. and I've been able to experience these meals, but also the preparation of these meals.

51:42Even like time, as like the time as being almost an ingredient, like the time it takes to grow something, to think about a dish, then to prepare the dish, and then even taking time to enjoy the dish. so everything kind of being slowed down and and and I think the pandemic slowed everything down and I think it gave me and hopefully a lot of other people more time to listen and so yeah I think the luxury to me is about the time it takes to create something the thought that goes into it and then and then to prepare it and then also to be in a place where I can only have this here this can't be replicated to me that is the greatest form of luxury bring me to a place where I can have something that I can only have in this place which is not the case for the a Torah with the truffle.

52:59That's right. I didn't have that anywhere now. That's right. I am fascinated by the obsession it takes to get to that point. I use the word obsession intentionally because you have to be so obsessed with your craft to be the only person that can deliver that to your client base. And I'm someone who admires obsession, but doesn't actually take part in that for my career my career is actually not based on specialty but actually more in like being a generalist i do five or six things yeah i create these videos i frown and i advertise for businesses i start my own businesses it's all like this this modern jack-of-all-trades way of doing business and it all sort of comes together and i i feel like i'm on nearly the opposite side of the spectrum of someone who is incredibly specialized in their craft like you.