Expat discovering food and restaurants in Berlin with Parimal Satyal 🍽️ 🍲

🇳🇵🇫🇷🇺🇸🇩🇪 Join us as we explore Berlin's culinary scene with Parimal Satyal, an expat with a passion for cooking. From street food to high gastronomy, Parimal shares his experiences, favourite dishes, and builds expectations about what will be his first cuisine repertoire open to everyone. Tune in for a delicious journey through Berlin's life and discover the power of food to connect cultures.

#podcast #germany #berlin #france #cuisine #food

Follow Parimal on 📲:
https://neustadt.fr/

Transcript

[Music]
This is Expat Experts.
[Music]
Welcome to this episode of Expat Experts. Today, actually, we're recording from Berlin with two guests.
One will talk, the other will be very proud of me also at some point.
Yeah, actually, we're recording with Parimal here. Already known in the podcast actually, like, from when it was called The Auslander.
Born in Nepal, grown up in France, studied in USA, currently living in Berlin.
I think we covered the majority of that in the previous episode.
You're UX-UI designer at open project, a writer, a little bit of men of renaissance, let's say, like this.
Oh, I'll gladly take it.
You study languages as a hobby, you do music, you ride bikes, you have aviation, science, small web, data privacy.
A lot of stuff going around, I suppose.
Lack of focus, it sounds like.
I know about that. Then cuisine, which is probably what we will talk about later in today's episode.
But yeah, for all of the people who are listening to us, just please remember to follow us on our social media.
Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, wherever that comes, especially in Spotify and YouTube. Follow the channel, because that helps.
Of course, it's the only way of listening and viewing actually from now on also in Spotify, as they introduce this option to upload video in Spotify also directly.
So you can see the episodes, not only listen to them.
But yeah, let's go for it. Let's go for it. Let's start.
So just before starting, I would just recommend to everyone who is listening to this episode that maybe goes to the episode number 10 of what it used to be the Ausländer, which was the first episode that we recorded together.
And actually in there we covered everything until arriving here in Berlin.
Right. That's the pre Berlin show.
So we talk about you, of course, being born in Nepal, but then growing up in France, studying in the United States, at some point deciding to move here.
But actually at the very point of time that was pretty recent, the move to Berlin.
Yeah, I suppose it had been, I don't remember exactly when we did it, but a couple of months after, I think. I didn't know very much about Berlin as someone who had lived there at the time.
And now it's already nearly more than three years, actually.
Yeah, over three years. Oh, cheers. It's a nice bordeaux from 2019. Yeah.
So I moved in, I suppose, in April. So it's almost three years rather. And it's been quite a ride in the sense of a lot of it is exactly what I expected.
And some of it is definitely not what I expected. And I imagine that will go into the bit.
Yeah, we will definitely go into it. In that sense, like the city didn't match the expectations that you had, at least not completely, as far as I understand.
Or you were, because at the end you came here for not for pleasure, 100 percent, but you you came here because you like me, we work from home at the end or remotely.
So we had the opportunity to have this flexibility in our side. And you didn't came here because you needed to come.
No, no. Yeah, you're right. I didn't need to come to Berlin. I had two main reasons to come to Berlin.
So the first one would be, well, I already spoke some German. It would be to improve my German.
If you want to go to Germany to improve your German, I think any other city would probably be better than Berlin for that.
But I mean, I did make some progress. That's obviously that.
The second reason was because I've lived in I had lived in Paris for so long that I was afraid that if I don't move somewhere,
if I don't even try to move somewhere, that I will always regret not moving and that I will just sort of be stuck in a city. It'll be by default and not a choice.
And Berlin was the obvious choice with my friends. A lot of my friends, including my friends from France, were and are in Berlin, including in this in this class.
OK, yeah, cool. But one of the things that you were talking about and what's probably the main reason was language.
Yeah, in a city where clearly it's losing its German more and more progressively, especially in the center of the city.
I mean, as soon as you go a little bit out of what we will call like the most posher, hipster areas of the city,
you can start listening more and more German there. But at the end, if you go to any bar and any restaurant or any service, it's English.
What do you hear? Yeah, I mean, it's it's it's funny because there's almost two parallel worlds in Berlin.
You can if you want to live in a completely English world. I don't want that.
So I try to stay away from that. However, imagine if you're a group of friends and you're all sort of international.
If there's one person doesn't speak German, then because people can speak, generally,
people can speak English or at least the people around me.
We tend to gravitate towards the most common, optimal language or the most optimal common language, which is English.
That's that's that's a sort of personal level with you between friends.
And then there's the the the other side that you mentioned that you go to a bar or a restaurant and it's all already happened to me that I order in German as they are definitely about as well as and and the person says, do you mind?
I don't you know, do you mind speaking in English? I don't speak German.
So but that's one world. And there's the other world, which is more sort of people who are German, who are from Berlin.
And they're in certain areas. You can still hear the Berlin dialect.
It's not that common, but you can. And I'm always happy to find out sort of seek out those those areas.
And in those areas, you have to speak German, which which is brilliant.
Yeah, it's how it is in a lot of other cities in Germany.
I assume that at the end you you even like learn the dialect of the region and not the academic.
Yeah, as you did in Hessen. More or less.
Frankfurt is one of these other cities that if you want, you can also live in an English world like a bubble.
Yeah, but it's what you say. It's literally a bubble of like certain people.
And if you want, you can live your life, of course, in that.
And then rely on the friends who speak German to call for whatever you need if you need something that they don't speak.
Yeah, the administration, the administration. Yeah, that's the biggest one. That's the classic one. Yeah.
Well, with that said, at the end, like we were talking already a little bit of areas of the city.
What it's from now, like from these years of experience, your favorite part of Berlin.
Oh, that's a very tough question, because as your listeners and your viewers now
might know, there's a lot of the different areas of Berlin have their own charm, their own sort of personality.
I would argue that I like where we are in Friedrichshain, where in Friedrichshain, so not in, right near Prenzlauer Berg, it's calm.
It's residential. You have lovely wine bars, which is a very important detail for me.
But then if you go to other places like if you go to Mitter, I always avoided Mitter because I had this image that it's a very sort of touristy area.
But there also was a lovely restaurants and lovely bars. You're starting to see a theme here.
But my favorite area would actually, I would argue, not be an area at all.
Which is a very unfair way to answer the question, but I'll do it anyway, which is if you like cycling,
it's very easy to go out of the city and have access to sort of Brandenburg, the region next to Berlin or surrounding Berlin very, very quickly.
So you can go even, for example, to Poland on your bike very, very easily.
And that that ability to be in nature so quickly with infrastructure that I would argue is very well developed is probably my favorite place in Berlin.
Yeah, at the end here, it makes us know and it shows a little bit that your hobbies actually fit more or less in this city.
But at the same time, you are saying that some expectations were not met in here.
Like what is the negative part of how you're seeing here?
Yeah, I suppose I wouldn't quite say the expectations were met.
I would say that I didn't have very clear expectations.
So I mean, you can find everything in Berlin.
You can find any niche, any sort of interest is has its place in a city like Berlin.
I suppose for me that what I am not a big fan of is the fact that it relates to what we're going to talk about later, which is the food culture.
You can find amazing food in Berlin.
And there's great street food.
If I had to sort of pick different types of food, we go from home cooking and then you go to street food.
This food you make like a medium, like normal restaurant and then gastronomy, right, like the very gastronomic restaurants.
I think Berlin does the gastronomy, the gastronomic restaurants and the street food exceedingly well.
But that middle ground, which is just normal restaurants, right?
They're, in my opinion, little too expensive.
And also the culture around food is not.
That's more to do with, I think, how cost important Berlin is.
And I find it less exciting.
So the food and wine scene is definitely there.
You can find amazing things.
But culturally, I think that people are less excited about food.
So that's one, and the winters can be a bit harsh.
A little bit, yeah.
Probably it's the length also, no?
I mean, it's a part of, like, I think the last episode we talked about a little bit, like this downside of,
I talk with a lot of people who lived here in Berlin or in Germany.
And it's if you have like one or two months of harsh winter, you survive.
But if you have six months, it starts to become like hardcore on your mental health, especially.
A lot of people were saying lack of sun.
So would that be the part that you miss from France?
Or if you could take something from Paris and bring it here, would it be the weather?
No, really, because it's not the most exciting thing in the world in Paris either.
No, no, no, no, no, it's not. It's certainly not going to be the weather.
No, for example, this last winter was brilliant. I loved it.
We had snow, which I really like.
It was never too harsh.
The reasons why for which the weather was so good, perhaps are not particularly positive.
No, not to be celebrated. Nevertheless, the truth is it wasn't that bad.
So it wasn't a problem at all.
The city, you know, I mean, it's a city that's very sort of wide.
It's very large just in area.
So it means that the whole city is very... it's not very dense, which means that you can,
if you're already not feeling great, struggle to sort of...
I mean, there's a lot of grey, there's a lot of grey, and you can feel a bit overwhelmed by that.
I don't think that's the biggest thing, though.
The biggest thing I would bring from France to Germany, to Berlin, because...
would be the cheese. Oh gosh. You know, you can find really good French cheese as well.
But cheese wouldn't be that far away. But it would be just the excitement...
I would just say the excitement, not like an event, but just the general excitement of living.
Like things like great conversation, the sort of... a little... the... being...
Alimut, this present thing of here, like ways of talking about things.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's curious because it's a city that has thousands of activities.
Like it's one of these cities that if you want to do something, there is always something to do.
There's always, yeah.
But then when you talk with people, especially people from here, from Berlin, born here and raised here...
It's of course making a majority out of nowhere, but it's not the reality for everyone.
But I met a lot of people who are kind of like dark or like...
Not dark in the sense of being dressing in dark, which also is very much a black thing.
But like this mood of like, I don't know, maybe they are super happy with their life here,
but they don't show it, you know? - Yeah, yeah. No, you're right. It's a lot... I mean...
It's a feature also of Berlin. I think it's something that's quite positive, is...
If you're someone who doesn't like being bothered, who doesn't like sort of making a lot of conversation,
if you're not very social as... you're not a very social creature, well, Berlin is very comfortable,
because no one generally bothers you on the streets or your interactions at the supermarket.
I was going to say at the bank, but who goes to the bank these days? But at... Well...
I'm Greeks a lot. - You'd know about that. So you can sort of have your own space, which is also...
I do enjoy that a fair bit, but I will say that there's nothing really I dislike about Berlin.
I think the reason I'm considering moving back to France next year, moving back to Paris,
we'll probably get to that as well, is because I miss France. For me, I miss the excitement around...
sort of how animated things are, how animated conversations are, and also a bit of... Oh gosh...
I was about to say I like some of the negativity there, but that sounds really... I don't mean that.
What I mean is I like that it's a bit... There's a bit of everything, you know? It's a bit more expressive,
and not just necessarily people. Yeah, the mood is more expressive, and yeah, but that doesn't necessarily mean...
I don't necessarily think that's better. I think it fits me better. But certainly Berlin...
So in that sense, that's why I would say it's not like my expectations weren't met.
I wasn't entirely certain, and I'm glad I came, and I know that when I leave, I will miss Berlin a lot, especially the cycling.
Makes sense. In that thing, at the end, you're just saying that probably you're planning to go back to France at some point.
I mean, do you think it's also related to the idea that you grow up there, and maybe you're so used to the ways of doing it, of a place...
The fact that at the very beginning of the episode, you were saying that you were moving here because of the fear of like...
only being in one place, and then suddenly I realized that I never moved, or I've always been here for the comfort, which is okay.
A lot of people do that at the end. Do you think that you are actually going back due to the same fact, in the sense of like...
I know that, and I mean, at least now you have the comparison, no?
Exactly. I mean, it had always been my goal to live in Berlin for a while. I want to say always.
Before moving here, I spoke about it for five years. My friends were all sick of it, genuinely. They were like...
"Either just do it already, or stop talking about Berlin." So in some ways, I had to do it at that point.
If I didn't do it, because around the time I moved, I was very, very comfortable in Paris. And of course, our jobs...
Do they know that we are colleagues? We're colleagues. If not, now they know. Now they know, yeah, we're colleagues.
Where we work, it's a remote company, so I could have worked from Paris as well. But I decided to do it because I wanted it, and I'm glad I did.
But it was never meant to be a one-time move. I... Sorry. Yeah. Allergic to Catalans.
We were reduced to this. Nice ways.
You'll probably have to bring the levels down. No, sorry. Yes. I was saying that... Yeah, it's not necessarily a one-way move.
It never is for me. Even when I go back to Paris, I might say, "Oh, perhaps..." One of my goals is to live in Italy for about six months.
To make sure I learn how to make pasta properly and improve my language skills. Or in Denmark, also for the language skills.
That's what I was asking. Like at the end, you're considering going back home. What you consider home at the end. Exactly. And...
It was there, the idea of maybe doing a step in between that as a more definitive move, or it's just like, okay, you want to establish Paris as a base to be there.
And then what you're saying... Exactly. I don't preclude the possibility that I might live somewhere else for a bit, but I want my home to be Paris.
So if you moved to, I don't know, Denmark, Copenhagen, or like North of Italy or Italy, it would be more the idea of going there from time to time.
Couple of months to something there. Preserve your apartment probably in Paris. That's great. But that's really what you just said, because you were like,
oh, if you go to Denmark or the North of Italy or Italy, so clearly it's two different countries. Yeah. I mean, as you know, we are also taking the look at moving to Italy.
And I mean, now being in Athens, for example, like for us going to South Italy, the difference for being in Athens and being in Napoli.
Yes, food, probably, language, of course, and different ways of being. But it's at the same distance from home. We don't win the proximity to families, for example, or what we call home.
Which is the end, what you are trying to do, which is like establishing a place that you call a fixed home, and then like moving around a little bit more flexible, but having a base.
Yes, correct. I think that would be fair. Nice. So one of ten, how much do you miss France? Oh, gosh. You see, you asked me the wrong time because I was just there yesterday.
I got back yesterday. So at this particular moment, not a whole lot because you know, there's always that battery, right?
Like it gets discharged and I've got to go back and have my sort of recharge of France. And I come back here and then allows me to enjoy Berlin even more.
So at this particular moment, not a whole lot, but in general, I would put it at, you know, I think what to be fair to Berlin.
I would say on average, I miss France when I first got here the first year, it was probably like after the initial honeymoon period, probably like six or seven out of ten.
Now, I'll say four or five because I do go back every once in a while. But if I've not been there for a while, then I would say the fair bit. Makes sense. Good restaurant and friends in that order.
No, France last. What about Nepal? I know that your parents are in Nepal, back to Nepal, back to the bottom of Australia.
You're right. Yeah, for some time. So that never entered the equation like going back to Nepal as a time thing or as a very.
That's a good that's a great question. That's a great question that my mother will be very happy that you asked.
No, you know, it's so my parents were not there either early or when we report when we record the last episode, they were with my brother in Australia.
So my brother's in Australia. So now we have family in three continents, which is, you know, which is interesting.
And so what I so my relationship to Nepal is very interesting. We spoke about it in my first in the first episode episode 10 of the I was Linda.
And the thing is, it's so when my parents were not there at all, they were I've got family that I miss.
Uncles and cousins and such, mostly cousins, mostly cousins.
I was going to say, oh, there isn't a particular uncle I miss at all, but that would be a bit rude to the many uncles might be, might not be listening.
I'm just digging myself into it. I'll get out of there. So anyway, so now you cannot go back to now I'm banned.
No. So it's been a time my family is there and I was there last year.
I think it takes a while to sort of rediscover the place that you were born. And yes, I am there is a lot of Nepali in me, obviously.
I spent the first 18 years of my life there. And so the goal now is to try to go back at least once a year.
You know, apart from the pandemic, we used to see each other at least once a year anyway. But that was not necessarily in Nepal.
So now I want to do that. And also also relevant to the second part, the podcast, I am starting to discover sort of food cultures in Nepal that I was completely unaware of,
because I was raised in a particular sort of part of the city in a particular type of family.
So like anywhere you're exposed to only maybe two percent of the actual culinary spectrum that might exist in the country.
And so now I'm getting interested. And the irony of the thing is I've been watching this. This is a completely free plug for someone's YouTube.
There's a guy called Tongui. He's a French guy. And he speaks Nepalese, Nepali, sorry.
He speaks Nepali. And he goes around Nepal and tries to discover the terroir, so local food from different regions.
And I'm watching these videos and thinking, gosh, I've not tried most of these things, so I want to do that.
So it's a French guy who's introducing me to Nepalese cuisine through YouTube.
And my brother is is, I think, a little more connected to that these days.
So through him and through channels like that, I want to sort of rediscover and perhaps rebuild that bridge to the point.
Yeah, that's definitely something I want to do soon. But as you know, I say as you know, I'm someone who really is focused on things that are around me physically.
I have trouble thinking of things that are physically far away.
And that's also one of the reasons I want to go back physically every year. And that'll allow me to be there both physically and mentally.
Nice. Yeah. So maybe before just jumping to the second part, I want just to propose a little this or that.
Let's say like, oh, hello. If you need to choose, like there is no option, you need to choose one option or the other. Right.
It's someone it's pointing. Yeah. So with a gun. A or B or else. I have to live in Germany forever. Right.
So exactly. Full hipster Berlin. Oh, gosh. Full Techno Berlin.
Oh, that's the question. Full hipster Berlin or full Techno Berlin. I thought these questions were going to be easy.
I'll go for full. You know what? Techno Berlin. Yeah, techno. OK. Yeah. Yeah.
I that's a funny one. Parks inside of the city or leaving the city.
Oh, leaving the city. Exiting. Yeah. Like I want to be able to go out. And that's why I like doing.
OK. I mean, I still want parks in the city, but yeah, it's an interesting thing, because at the end, like a lot of, like,
people who live in Berlin says this kind of dichotomy of the city. It's a gray city, architecturally wise, especially.
Yeah. But then suddenly, if they compare it to other big cities of Europe, it has a lot of parks.
Oh, you know, so in the city of Berlin, which is still a city I love, it's extremely green.
And the number of lakes you have around. But you hear this sentence like it's extremely green next to extremely gray.
You're right. Yeah. This is really funny because it's like putting the two opposites like I understand what it means.
But in the winter it's not green. Yeah. No. And when you come here, even if you come in winter, at the end, like the parks are still absolutely green, if it's not snow.
But yeah, yeah. Oh, you're right. That's literally. Yeah, that's a very good point. I understand.
You need to be here to understand that the architecture, it's brutal. Yeah. Special parts of the city, it's even more brutal.
It can get very dirty, very quick, this city, let's say like this also. But then suddenly you go to, I don't know, Treptow Park and you have kilometers of park to walk.
Yeah, no, it's. Without any problem. This is amazing. And also, again, in defense of Berlin, the historical sort of significance of the city.
I mean, I'm very interested in espionage. Well, that's an odd thing to say. I'm interested in the history of espionage.
This is still a very. Berlin was at the crossroads of so many cultures and so many sort of significant events, events in world history, European history, but also world history.
So the remnants of that are still present. And for example, you can still see a very strong division to the east and the west. Yeah.
And I find that fascinating. But beyond that, like I said earlier, you can ride. You can wake up in the morning, take your bike bicycle, ride, have lunch in Poland and come back to Berlin and have dinner in Berlin.
This is possible even today, right? I can do it quite easily. So we're very much in central.
I would argue that Berlin is a central European city, not a Western European city, because, you know, we're not in terms of the latitude. We're not that far from from longitude story, not latitude from Austria.
Sorry, in Vienna. Sorry. And Prague. I don't don't take my word on that. Do check a map because I am not very strong in geography. So when someone looks at a map and what on earth is he talking about?
But you get what I'm trying to say. I don't know if there is a lot of people in geography listening to my podcast. If they are no problem, they will they will comment. No problem.
OK, next question. And I have two more. One might be putting you in conflict with the German people, whatever you respond. That's fine. And the second one probably will put you either with the German or the French.
So the first one, it's Berlin beer or beer from anywhere outside of Berlin. Oh, anywhere outside of Berlin. It's obvious. No, there is people who are very strong opinion.
About beer? No, I mean, the south of Germany, Belgium or I also like the beer scene in Denmark, but certainly not Berlin beer. No, it's not. No. No, just not very interesting. I mean, Germany is brilliant for beer, but it's mostly all from the south. Right. OK. The last question.
This section. German bread or French bread. Yes, not even a not even a not even a competition. I mean, I know it's supposed to be better. OK. To be fair to Germany, there's the variety is brilliant. And there's lots of like interesting grains. I mean, I'm a creature of habits. I like, you know, when I go to the boulangerie, we're going to talk about all the croissants and the beurre en chocolat. That's that's it.
I'm talking about pure bread. Yeah. I mean, but I'm not pastries. Exactly. No, that. Yeah. In that case, I want all I need. Right. Me personally is in in baguette tradition or in baguette classic, you know, just like a baguette or the tradition that I be beyond that. There are also interesting things in France, but I very rarely get anything else. So a lack of imagination, perhaps.
but I'm very very it's a blend like white bread.
- No, that's all right.
I mean, I've, and I in here in Germany,
they are very famous to doing other kinds of bread.
- Other kinds of bread.
- Black breads, grains with varieties
a little bit more like toasted stuff
and a little bit more different.
If you're a classic person who you want like baguette,
you know, in a classic white bread,
let's say like this of course,
you will go for the French bread.
- Yeah, and also you know, it might be healthier, right?
But I would also put it to you that drinking water
is healthier than drinking wine.
And here we are, the reason we drink the wine.
- Yes, that's also true.
But yeah, now that we are talking about food,
maybe we can directly jump to the second part.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, let's do it.
Let's do it. - Sure.
- Perhaps a cheers?
- Sure.
- There we go.
- Let's go.
(bell rings)
(upbeat music)
- The expert building a cuisine repertoire.
(upbeat music)
- Let's start with the second part.
Everyone who follows Paramount in social media
knows that her histories are literally a 90% cooking,
10% cuts and by cuts, I mean, Carl, only this normally.
So I proposed which topic we wanted to discuss
and of course like I led that to the guests.
And in the end, you are cooking a lot.
You cook a lot at home, but you also like,
as we could see in the first part of the episode,
one of the main reasons where you like to like one place
or the other, it's the quality of the restaurant,
it's the quality of the, I don't know, the wine bars,
this is where you can go out and have a good meal.
Where does the cooking part comes from?
Like when did you start cooking?
- Well, that's, yeah.
I don't remember a start because,
and I think it's a family thing,
but for many people it is that.
And I've got a family who loves being in the kitchen.
So in my family, we've got like two different cultures.
So my mom's sides of the family were,
they're very specific about how they cook food.
It's very traditional approach,
but not traditional sort of traditional Nepalese,
it's traditional to her family.
So that was there from, I was very young.
My dad is, he likes improvising, he likes experimenting,
but we always sort of have loved food,
we've always cooked a lot as a family.
And often when we have like a dinner,
I wouldn't say we argue to decide who cooks,
but it's sort of almost like,
you want to be the one making food.
So I think from a very young age,
I think it came from my parents.
And then when, you know,
as you move to different areas of the world,
as you grow up, you start developing sort of a taste for...
Haha, tasteful.
A taste for the food cultures,
not only because of the flavors,
but for what food represents socially,
and the importance that food has for people
and people's sense of culture, people's sense of identity.
So I'm very drawn to that.
And so once I don't know when it started,
I do know why it's there.
Okay. Yeah.
So it comes from family, but at the end...
You cook a lot of French recipes generically, no?
Because at least what I've seen is that you have a very...
established recipe book or whatever you have in your mind,
French wise.
Do you still cook any Nepalese food?
Yeah, no.
I mean, you said that you are starting to discover,
like some YouTubers and whatever now.
So are you also trying to get to cook that?
Yeah, okay.
Good question.
So right now, my...
I love, you know, so pianists, people who play the piano,
use the word repertoire in English.
And the repertoire are the pieces that they play,
that they're comfortable playing.
So you can say, all right, you know,
Greek concerto in A minor is in my repertoire or not.
And I am building my repertoire as...
Chef is a big word,
but someone who likes to, a hobbyist chef.
And the dishes that I'm working on right now,
Italian and French.
I love traditional French cuisine.
And when you asked me how much you miss France,
on a scale of one to 10,
my mind was eventually, immediately going to,
how much I love French food and French brasserie and all that.
So in terms of cooking, I am mostly working on that
because that's my culture.
That's the culture that I didn't get from my family.
I got the love of cooking for my family
and the love of eating together with my, for my family.
My love for French cuisine or Italian cuisine
is my own thing.
I also, I think, I don't know if we've talked about it
in my last episode, in the last episode in which I was a guest,
but I became French in 2019,
so I became a French national.
Yeah, I think I mentioned that.
And that also somehow, you know, some people say,
oh, it's only a technical thing.
No, not for me.
It was a very important part of my life.
And I sort of had this intense desire to really
be more in touch with this country that is now my home
and is my only country.
I'm only a citizen of France.
And so I once found this rabbit hole,
this wonderful rabbit hole, you know,
often when you say that, you know,
you're trying to dig yourself out.
No, I'm quite the opposite.
I'm a rabbit.
That's a weird sentence.
I'm a rabbit who is trying to dig deeper holes.
- And cooking the rabbit at the same time.
- Yeah, cooking the rabbit at the same time.
Oh, delicious with the oven with a bit of herb de Provence
and a bit of olive oil and nothing else.
Brilliant.
So yes.
- Half of the listeners of the podcast
who are not Mediterranean are leaving the podcast
because who the fuck cooks rabbits?
- Oh my God.
I didn't realize that was a trap.
- Now let's talk about snails.
- Yeah, sure.
Snails are not that common.
They're from Burgundy, the classic ones.
But delicious.
- We do them.
- Oh, you do? Okay.
So, but to answer the second part of your question
which was about Nepalese food.
Now, this is, I am cooking more Nepalese food,
but my goal is very particular right now,
which is that there's food from Nepal that I know.
Three categories, right?
Food from Nepal that I know.
There's food from Nepal that I don't know
that I'm curious about trying.
And then there's food that I grew up with.
And for some reason, the food that I grew up with,
I can't find anywhere else in Nepal apart from
when my mom cooks it, when my aunt cooks it,
so my mom's sister, or when my grand aunt cooks it.
Because it was a very familial thing.
- Coming from the part of this family that you said
that it's more like traditional cooking in that sense.
Like that they follow more like the rules.
- Yeah, yeah, it's not even the rules.
What happens is, and I have to be very careful
when I explain this part, because my knowledge
of this area is very limited.
So a lot of the influences on that side,
there's the police, there's a bit of Indian,
and there's quite a fair bit of Persian.
Because they are the Shia family, and they,
I don't know how much I can talk about this,
not because for legal reasons, just because my knowledge
is limited. - You're correct, yeah.
No worries. - Yeah.
It's because they were related to the royal family
back in the day.
They were not the royal family,
but they were closed around it.
And so in that world, there was a lot of very strong
Persian influence, and there are some techniques in cooking
that are not, you can't find them.
- So it's arriving to a point that it's more like
familial recipes than traditional Nepalese food.
- Exactly, it's not, yeah, exactly.
At the same time, I'm asking which part of the family it is,
because it tends to happen like this.
Like the part of the families, or the families
that are following the recipe book in a very strict way,
tend to have a recipe book.
- You're right, you're right.
- The part who is, or the cooks, or the chefs
who are very creative, they tend to improvise things,
and they tend to like, oh, I open the fridge,
and then I see a little bit what I have.
- That's my father, that's my father, yeah.
- I'm going more into that direction, although I would
really, really love to have something from my grandma,
for example. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- And luckily I never met, or my grandpa, who died like,
some years ago, and then he was cooking fish
into another level, and these recipes, I know that my mom
know how to do them, and I learned some of them from my,
from both my mom and my grandma, but there is some of that
that I would have loved that was written down somewhere.
- Exactly.
- You know, like, and that's something that I miss,
I miss absolutely.
- But that's exactly it, so when part of my repertoire
is right now, so the things I'm working on,
the pieces I'm working on if I were learning to play
the piano, which I also am, that's another topic.
- Of course, as a man of very instance.
(both laughing)
- I'm not very good at it yet, is, so French food,
but traditional, because traditional French food
is about techniques, so escoffi, the sauce, you know,
the basics, and then, but also regional food, I love that.
Because food tells a story, and in some ways,
I think I'm not actually interested necessarily in the food,
I'm interested in the stories that these food,
these recipes tell.
The second bit is then Italian, but I'm really focusing
on pasta, and the third bit is going to be then,
the familial recipes from my mom's side, because I think
if there is no documentation of it properly,
and if there is a risk of these recipes just not--
- Being lost. - Being lost.
And I'm fascinated by people who are librarians
or are interested in archiving, sort of.
- So are you even considering keeping them,
like doing some kind of blog out of it,
or some kind of like-- - Absolutely.
- You have a small web, not because it's small,
the web itself, it's because it's designed
in a small web approach for everyone who doesn't know
what a small web is like, the antithesis of like--
- The corporate. - Making webs complicated.
- Yeah, and the antithesis of the corporate web
where there's a financial incentive.
But you're absolutely right, my goal is to try
to document these recipes, put it on the web,
so, and essentially open source all of these recipes.
I have no interest obviously in keeping its food,
yeah, the food is, I've been criticized rightly
for being a bit too conservative with those foods, right?
But it's, and you know, the anti-fusion guy,
that's not entirely true, what I don't like is when
there's things that are mixed together
without understanding of the why.
If the why is there, then I'm fine, so--
- The Japanese-Peruvian approach for--
- The Japanese, yeah. - I went to a restaurant
the other, like, some months ago, like, they were doing
Japanese-Peruvian cuisine.
And of course from the various extract parts you see,
like what the fuck, what are they doing?
- Yeah, mix it in one, yeah. - Mix it like, mm, it just ended
that they are two guys who are married and one is Peruvian
and the other is Japanese, okay, whatever,
I understand the story behind it, and that's all it.
But it's difficult to mix.
- Yeah, it's, I mean, if you are working with the techniques,
you are working with an understanding of the ingredients,
right, and an understanding of the interplay
of these things, then something beautiful
can come out of it. - Sure.
- And one of my, oh gosh, this is gonna sound so pretentious,
but as a French person I do have the right.
(laughing)
I already have that-- - Oh gosh!
- Already have that reputation, so--
- Building stereotypes of French.
- Some of them are not bad, so one of my favorite recipes
to work on, and I'm also giving this away,
because it's not mine to begin with, is,
so there's a dish called poulibaskets.
You know, it's from the Southwest, classic with,
with poivron, poivron, peppers, with peppers, tomatoes,
and it's with chicken, also usually from the South,
and it's a lovely sort of dish that's slightly soupy,
piment des plaits, and there's a dish,
there's a version of that dish that I create,
which is the risotto version of it.
So using the liquids from the soup, rather, the sauce,
use that as the bouillon, the broth.
Thank you.
For the risotto.
And that allows you to make a poulib--
Risotto basquets.
So it's a poulibaskets in risotto form,
and then you serve the chicken on the sides,
when you do the dressage next to it.
So this is sort of, and the pretentious part is for me
to call it my signature dish,
but it is one of my signature dishes.
That's fusion, right?
Yeah, but at the same time, like, I don't know, hey,
if you share this, but at the end, like,
I'm a person who likes to try restaurants and go and have,
not all the time, of course, I am not as rich to do that,
but I like to go to this kind of, like, Estrada,
you were saying, like, not the middle-class restaurants,
but from time to time, going to something
that has a Michelin star for example.
Or two Michelin, it doesn't matter, like,
something that it's there or that I can try,
because the curiosity.
What it has been happening to me for quite some time,
it's that there was a set way of doing Michelin right now.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And that there was a lot of restaurants
that were really repetitive
in what they were doing in that sense.
And some of them trying to mix that were
not for what you were doing.
So, losing the tradition of where you are,
and I'm going to say that from perspective, I don't know,
I remember a Michelin star in London, Indian one.
Incredible.
Okay.
Like, I mean, you know the Indian from Indian food,
either because you've been in India
or because you taste here from Indian restaurants,
which normally they need to reduce spices,
they need to bring it a little bit down
because of like, if not, people don't buy from them.
No, which is sad.
Of course it's sad, but it's what it is.
They need to, they at the end, they adapt to the thing.
Or they don't have the ingredients
for doing what they would do at home.
Yeah.
Being a Michelin star in a place like London,
there is a lot of Indian community.
Yeah.
It was an incredible experience,
but because it was still traditional,
in the sense of like, they were reinventing Indian cuisine,
but they were doing Indian cuisine.
Yeah.
They were not lost in something
that it's not from anywhere.
That's a big risk, I think, in cuisine in general.
You do want to add your touch, you do want to be innovative.
Because there's something, you want to surprise your,
I was going to say viewers,
but your guests, what have you, you want to surprise,
you want to give them an experience.
But it's the same in music as well.
You can get lost in trying to be innovative.
And I've also found myself sometimes in that,
music trying to do all these things.
Then you realize like a four chord song sometimes
can elicit pleasure and excitement and joy
without needing the complexity.
So then you have to go back and ask yourselves,
what is that complexity for?
And if you can answer that question,
and the answer can be as simple as, oh, it's fun.
That's enough, but you do need to know the why.
I understand that at the end, it's different that you explore
and you play around when you are cooking at home
and then you're trying things.
And most of the things that they do
in this kind of restaurants, you cannot do it at home.
No, no, no, no, you can't.
But even if you explore mixing things at home,
it's you doing your thing and that's all.
You are not charging anyone 200 euros or 150 euros, you know.
No, you should be able to do anything at home.
- Exactly, but that's your playground.
- That's your playground.
- To do whatever you want
and then come through the recipe refined or not refined.
Or like it was one of the also the questions
that I wanted to ask you,
because at the end you were talking about like, for example,
having as a reference of your recipes, the French part,
and then having the Italian ones,
which are the two types of cuisines that are antagonic
in some kind of ways.
The French processes are long, are decorated,
are perfected, are whatever.
While the Italian, it's the base of Italian cuisine.
At the end, it's like not for having more ingredients.
It means that it tastes better.
The processes needs to be simple.
- You're absolutely right.
- And need to be traditional.
And how does this fit in your mentality, this two?
- I love this question.
I love this question because I like talking about it
and nobody ever asks.
(laughing)
So I am being asked for once, so I'll answer.
So let's start with an example.
It's a cliche what I'm gonna mention,
but we're gonna talk about carbonara.
Now carbonara is traditional in a way that's,
that the Pad Thai is traditional in which
it's not very old recipe.
Some people even dated as early as the second World War.
So, but it is traditional at least in the space
that it occupies in people's mind.
Now, the carbonara is a Roman pasta.
It's very basic in the ingredients, right?
You have spaghetti, bucatini, whatever pasta you're using.
You have eggs, you have guanciale and you have pepper.
You don't need anything else.
That's carbonara.
- That's the magic of most of Italian recipes.
- That's the magic.
But there is some, and I get frustrated because,
it's very creamy pasta, right?
And so often in France for example.
- With the cream.
- With the cream.
And to me this is sort of, this is a typical example of,
and people say well, if I like it with cream,
why can't I have it?
Of course you can have it, you can do whatever you want.
- Yeah, just call it pasta with cream.
- Pasta with cream.
I think, and this is me, so that's my perspective,
I'm not necessarily saying it's the correct one,
although it is.
So the way to get that creaminess in the Italian approach,
is that there's a process of emulsification that happens
between the, oh I forgot the pecorino completely.
But the pecorino, the cheese and the pasta water,
it emulsifies and the best way to do it is this,
there's a process called manticare.
So at the ends, when you are mixing everything,
well you don't need to do this with,
I'm using the wrong pasta as an example.
I should have used the Amatriciana.
But anyway, the point is, there's a gesture,
which is sort of. - Buttering things.
- Yeah, exactly, so manticare, you can call it a number
of others, in other words, you can use also for that,
but the point is to mix it enough
that this emulsification happens and this creamy recipe,
creamy texture is there.
And that texture is very much part
of what makes it enjoyable.
And so I guess they are diametrically opposed,
because the French approach is reduction, sources,
more complex preparations.
They are exceptions of course.
And the Italian approach is five ingredients,
sometimes three, but the technique is really,
really important.
- Of course, of course, I mean, when you go to Bologna
and you need to know tortelloni, for example,
and they do tortellini a broto, which is with broth,
and it's as simple as it is, like a tortellini pasta,
like of course, but the pasta needs to be done in one way,
the tortellini, depending on what feeling it has,
it needs to be turned in one way or the other to mark
that it's different from the other.
Bringing it into a broth of chicken or vegetables,
it's special because it makes the filling soft,
this kind of things.
I meant it from a very ingredient perspective.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
- At the end, like Italian cuisine is like,
let's try to reiterate on this same recipe
with very, very few ingredients that we have at hand
until we perfect it to a craziness.
I know that France does, cuisine does that also
in that sense, but does it from very different perspective,
like from long boiling time, from long cooking times,
while the Italian it's more like I prepare something
and then I cook it five minutes.
- Yeah, it's Gino D'Acampo said, minimum,
I'm gonna do the accent, minimum effort,
the maximum results and that's often,
I find the credo of, yeah.
Let me ask you, right?
Because you, I mean, your listeners and your viewers
know you fairly well now, but do you,
would you agree that a lot of--
- I don't know if they know me, like actually I interview
people all the time and I'm just like,
they know a lot of my guests, but--
- Maybe they don't know you very well,
so this is an occasion.
So you've got a background that is obviously Catalan,
there's a bit of Italian in you, obviously,
a good part of you is Italian.
You've lived in a number of different regions,
including Germany.
- Yes.
- So would you agree, disagree or have a third opinion
that a lot of great food comes from poverty?
- Of course, I mean, people needs to eat
and the recipes that are the most crazy
comes from times of need.
And that's how it is, no?
And a lot of the things that we eat right now are rich
and they are addictive, that's different.
It doesn't mean that they are good.
Like, there is really good chips and potato chips
in the market, but you eat them because they're addictive,
not because they are extremely good.
My grandma or my grandpa used to fry the potatoes,
the bone of the fish, for example,
and it gives a tasty salt and the chips will never have it,
and you eat it as an aperitif thing,
you eat together with a vermouth, and yeah.
And in the sword pints of parts of Spain,
they call it raspa, and that's incredible.
And that's literally out of meat,
like you need to use the fish until the point of using
the bones of the animal, but that's exactly the same
as cooking bone marrow.
That's out of the need that you start eating
the inside of a bone, bone marrow is incredible.
- It's incredible, and you can now go to a Michelin Star
restaurant and order. - And they will put your bone
marrow as the most sophisticated thing in the world.
But that's because most of these things were discovered
by someone who was hungry.
- Yeah, and I really think, and this is why I think
there's a place for all of this, I do enjoy gastronomy.
I do enjoy it for also the visual and the sensual aspect
to it, it's a weird way to say it, but I often liken it
to an artist working on his or her craft.
But it's a very different craft than when you're in the part.
This is the bit of the place that I'm really interested in.
When you go to a certain part, I discover this, this, this,
gosh, this is very embarrassing 'cause I don't know
what this dish is called.
It uses the intestines and it's covered, but what's in it
is bone marrow, I believe.
So not noble parts of her, of an animal, and I don't even
know what animal it's used, I think it's a lamb.
I don't really like, I don't know, this is why you can see,
I'm getting interested but I don't have the knowledge, right?
So this is an exciting place to be.
And I tried it, and my first reaction was,
this is very interesting.
Second reaction was, why do people eat this?
Because it's strong.
And then as you have it, with some beer, and you have that
amongst friends, then I started loving it.
Also, because there's a certain part of, and I can't even
tell you which subculture in Nepal this comes from,
and I wish I'd researched this, but I'm just speaking
from memory, it allows you to sort of connect to
food that people are eating, and they are so proud to show you
that this is their food.
And it's a way to connect to people.
And so this is the bit that I'm really, so I told you,
there's a familial side, that's different, but I'm also
interested in sort of figuring out what the, or discovering
street food in Nepal, for that exact same reason.
- Yeah, makes sense.
Talking about street food actually also, like, we talk
about it like before, here in Berlin, there is like,
street food from absolutely everywhere in the world.
But not too much of traditional German food at the end.
- Nope.
- Is it a reflection of the, like, the situation of the city,
in the sense of like, experts don't want to eat German food,
or it's due to the fact that German food doesn't have,
the quality to, or like, I'm not saying that there is not
good German food, I'm just saying, I'm questioning, if the fact
that there is three Vietnamese in one single street,
in the non-touristic area of Berlin, it's just a reflection
that even the Germans prefer to grab a quick beer,
be it for, than trying to go for, I don't know, for sauerkraut.
- Yeah, that's a fair point, I think.
So Berlin's never really been too good about German food,
and a lot of German food tends to be, in my opinion,
very hearty, sort of more filling.
- Filling and-- - Yeah, more filling.
And I love German food traditions, and you've spent some time
in Hessen, so you know about Handkiers mit Musik and all that.
- Grüne Soße, Schnittsel, yeah. - Yeah, also, so there is sort
of a lot of originality in that, I think I enjoy that greatly,
but certainly, apart from the Kuriwurst, which is a Berlin
sort of dish, there aren't-- - Using Indian spices.
- Yeah, using Indian spices.
And also a very simplified version of, I imagine,
of Indian spices, yeah.
But yeah, I think Berlin, the strength of Berlin is you can
find food from anywhere in the world, any niche
that you can imagine, like, for example,
Nepalese Momo, this is brilliant.
For Nepalese Momo, there's a Momo stall.
Because Momo traditionally is sold from little sort of stalls
on the streets, and they're made in mass quantities,
then it's not very expensive, it's anyone can afford it.
And it's in Kapenduk, and you'll find one in every 50 meters,
I mean, exaggerating, but only slightly.
So in Warschaustraße, not very far from here,
there's a little stall, and you can find Momo that is 80%
authentic to what you would find in Kapenduk.
For similar prices, if I'm completely honest,
and it's absolutely brilliant.
I mean, this is just almost street food level,
Kapenduk street food level food you're getting
in the middle of Berlin.
That's the crazy thing about Berlin.
It's just insane, like, why?
- Do you think there was a kitchen, like, cuisine,
and now I'm just trying to do the little bit, like,
with the comparison that I know, no?
For example, like, Barcelona, we are arriving to a point
where tourism, it's taking the city.
- Okay. - In that sense, it's difficult,
like, there is of course places that they are doing
Catalan dishes, but there is a lot of places
that are not doing Catalan cuisine,
because we are losing, I mean, Italian restaurants
have always been there, that's not a big deal,
but every time we are having more, like, I don't know,
fast food, also, way of empanadas from Argentina,
Piavenas entering from there, these are whatever,
and the Catalan cuisine, which is rich, you know,
to have their culture in there, it's reduced to very
top notch restaurants, which do interpretations
of this cuisine, they don't even do, like, real,
like, traditional, right now, like, I don't really know
where to have an escudilla in Barcelona for example.
- What is that?
- It's a broth made with vegetables and part of bone
of the chicken, whatever, like, it's a very traditional,
it was assumed to the, let's call it,
Christmas of Barcelona, and we do it with this big pasta
in Christmas, but. - Oh, I gotta try this.
- Now, there is a person doing street food of escudilla,
I don't know where he is based,
but as if it was like the Catalan version of ramen.
And I find it incredible, I find it really nice,
the idea, if the prices would reflect the escudilla cost.
- I see.
- If it wouldn't be a thematic approach to sell Catalan
tradition to tourists, and only to tourists.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- If you would be doing Catalan dishes for the people
who are still living in Barcelona,
which is not a lot of people.
But I think this is happening also here in Berlin.
There is just very few Berliner's living in Berlin.
Like, at least in the center areas of Berlin.
Everyone lives in the outside, and I don't really know,
and I am always being curious about it.
Like, there is a traditional Berliner kitchen around.
- Yeah.
- Or not, or it's like really reduced to the currywurst
that we were saying.
- No, but currywurst is very much, it's not something
that people eat very often, it's a snack, isn't it?
- Exactly, it's like a meat--
- It took all day that you have three meetings in between,
and then you squeeze 20 minutes to eat it.
- Or also, you know, you went out drinking,
and you have it like just a kebab.
There are sort of DDR restaurants.
You did the German democratic republic, or the East Germany
had its own traditional, sort of culinary traditions
that were based on a bit of like, Soviet influence.
- Or Polish.
- Yeah, Polish influence, and there are restaurants
that do that and are very affordable still.
And it's always an experience.
I wouldn't say the food is, it's not elegant food,
but there is history in there, and I always enjoy
going to that sort of restaurants.
And you can also go to, very near from here,
in Wesarienplatz, there's sort of a cushion for Jedeman,
or a kitchen for Jedeman.
So it's for canteen, traditionally for workers, I imagine.
But anyone can go, and the prices are very, very reasonable.
And you get traditional German food.
And shockingly, I've not been there yet,
almost because I'm intimidated to go.
But I do intend on going there, and those sort of places
still exist, and the beauty is, it's open to everybody.
- In Barcelona, and in Catalonia, and Spain in general,
still exists the menu of the midday,
like the three dishes thingy for 10 euros.
But it's not eight to 10 euros anymore,
now it's 15, 16, 18. - It's a bit prohibitive.
- It's just like, it's really overpriced for the service,
that they are paying people in Spain, right now.
It's crazy.
I don't know, it is still the traditional cooking
of whatever, but that's guerrilla cooking,
that we say a little bit, not in the sense of, like,
you fry a chicken quick, and it's what you need.
It needs to be like this, because these people
need to eat fast, because they have 30 minutes break
in between, they're feeding a three courses menu
into a 30 minutes break, you cannot be cooking
a reduction of risotto, or whatever, you know?
It's what it is.
- You're not doing, yeah, you're not doing, like,
anti-sausages.
- But yeah, I think it's getting lost, in that sense.
- And you lament that loss.
- Definitely, definitely, I mean, not only the fact
of losing, like, the Catalan tradition, or everything.
I'm pretty sure that there is, like, places in Madrid
that are suffering the same thing, or in Bilbao,
or whatever it is, that we have a bigger problem,
like, I think, Barcelona, Madrid.
Madrid is still a bigger city than Barcelona,
and it sends, Barcelona is becoming impossible to live,
salary, prices, restaurants, et cetera, et cetera,
at the same point that it's, like, when you have three times
the tourism everyday that people are living in there,
you are having a model of city that is only for tourists,
so you are losing this kind of tradition, so.
- I will say that, one of the cool things about Berlin is,
sure, inflation has caused prices to rise,
nevertheless, it remains, still, to this day,
quite an affordable city, getting an apartment is insane,
don't even try, but if you are able to find your space
in Berlin, you can still live comfortably
without paying a whole lot of money.
It's still more expensive than before,
but compared to any other European capital,
to the west and to the south, well, to the south, depends,
I think we need lovely, amazing things in Genova
for very little money, but in cities like Berlin, it's--
- Genova, it's not the European capital.
- It's not the European capital.
- So, I try to find a flat in Rome.
- Try to find a flat in Rome, yeah, no, I see, yeah, yeah.
But, I mean, just one of my biggest disappointments,
and this is, I don't know why this affected me so much,
this was a period when I was missing France so much,
and I was watching, there's a show called "Dis Pourcent",
it's called "Called by Agent", I think, on Netflix.
I was watching that and it really made me miss France.
That was my sort of way to try to think about my,
when you're missing things, you try to consume things
that are from your home, so I was consuming
a lot of French things.
And my flatmates, in a lovely gesture,
said, "Let's go to a French restaurant,"
and we were three people, we went to the restaurant,
a restaurant quite close to where we are right now,
and I saw on the menu, cacao vins, yeah, classic cacao vins,
is a chicken that is slow-cooked, so braised,
with red wine traditionally, with lots of onions
and use of small vegetables, and it's delicious.
So I ordered it, and I noticed before I ordered it,
that was with white wine.
There is a white wine variation that you can do,
and I thought, oh, this is interesting,
it's a slightly sort of a chef's interpretation,
and it was not cheap.
It was more than what I would ever pay
for cacao vins in France, because French food
tends to be, for some reason, very expensive.
But I thought, I'm missing out a lot,
and it's a sort of a special restaurant, and ordered it.
And what came was, I've never been as disappointed,
I think, in what I've ordered.
It was white wine sauce, that was a reduction.
It was a braised sauce, but the chicken was just simply
sort of roasted chicken, very dry, on top of it.
It's not braised at all.
And to me, charging that much for a cacao vins,
that does not even respect the first two rules of cacao vins.
I was so disappointed.
And the amount of money we paid for that.
I'm sure they have other dishes,
and I wouldn't mention the name of the restaurant,
which is called Chez Maurice, but you know,
it was quite a shame.
Everything else was very good though.
But the cacao vins was a disappointment.
It happens.
Well, arriving to this point, cooking for yourself?
Yeah.
Cooking for others?
Yeah.
Or getting cooked, like, I let anyone else cooking for me.
I think I appreciate all of those things,
but my favorite thing to do is to cook for other people.
I love that.
But to do that, I have to try multiple times.
As soon as I have a recipe in mind,
I'll try two or three times on myself.
Always?
I don't think...
I'm a risky chef.
Like, in that sense, I throw recipes that I've never done.
Yeah, nah, I don't think I've ever given something to a guest
that I'm not really...
And now nobody will want to come to my place, but yeah, sure.
Well, first of all, make sure that he invites you first,
and then, yeah.
For the record, he's not invited me yet,
but in his defense, he is an actor.
You haven't been to where I live ever.
Like, what the fuck?
That's also a fair point.
So yes, I think for cooking for other people, that's that.
I love that.
Yeah, always.
In that cooking part, it's something that I missed to ask before.
Cooking what you cook, which is not from the region that you are,
might be difficult for certain ingredients,
for certain kind of things.
One of the things that was difficult for me, for example, here was fish.
In Germany, I was in Frankfurt.
I don't know if we offered here, but...
Where do you buy here in Berlin?
So for fish, particularly in Berlin,
since there's a lot of lakes in the area,
if you're going for river fish, this is very easy, it's quite good.
It's my problem.
That's, you want the seeds.
Yeah, okay, saltwater fish.
And that's harder, but to be fair, some of the best fish is frozen.
And last time I said this, someone, people were like,
"I'm gonna get, you know, a scratch."
Because, you know, if good frozen fish, that's tiefgefrogen, right?
Like, so deep frozen.
If it's right directly after it's been caught,
that's the best way to transport fish.
Unless you're right next to the source.
So...
Unless your family come to Fishermansia.
Unless... Yes, exactly.
Well, for you, your level of your standards are quite...
Yeah, of course, that's the problem. It's difficult.
It's difficult.
So for my Italian needs, there's Centro Italia.
If I'm cooking a very sort of slightly complicated meal,
I go to Fisher Paradis, but it's too expensive.
Vegetables?
Oh, ho, ho, ho.
In Paris, too.
And I'm not blaming the Germans into this.
No.
Everything that arrives here is from the south of Spain.
It's the weather. It's also the climate, you know.
It's where it is.
But actually right now, it's ridiculous.
I mean, of course, if you go to Basque Country,
or to Madrid in winter, the weather is where it is.
The tomatoes that you will have in there are literally from Huerta down,
or if you have your fruit shop and vegetable shop of confidence,
they will have better quality.
But if you go to the supermarket and grab the first tomato that you find there,
it will be exactly the same tomato that you will find.
Absolutely. In any supermarket.
Yeah. So the tomatoes here come from Spain and Morocco,
and from Belgium for some reason.
So, no. So, you know, one of the things I miss about France,
and Paris, is also that, like, there are streets on there
where you have the primeur, the vegetable sellers,
the fishmongers, the cheese store, and these are separate,
you know, the cave-avent, the caviste,
and all of these things where you can go and buy certain things.
And I'll be honest with you, I didn't really always go to
the primeur for the vegetables.
I more often than not go to the supermarket anyway. And...
It's a difficult concept. I mean, I'm extremely in favour of small shops
instead of, like, big brands, and especially, like, supermarkets
who are providing for that. But...
willingly or not, you are passing through the supermarket for certain products,
because even if you are in the most decentralised country,
Greece is a big example of that. Like, all the small shops are still surviving.
I don't know when was the last time you saw a shop of small buttons of handle doors.
In Greece, there are thousands of them, because they survive,
because their clientele is still loyal to them 100%.
And that's beautiful, but at the same time,
you don't have a provider of cleaning products.
Yeah, you can't just...
No? Like, at the end you need to pass to the supermarket for other kind of products,
and then you buy other things in the supermarket that are not there,
but the quality of it...
Yeah, no, no, it's... I mean, and also, I don't... I mean, I...
We are living in inflationary times, and I always take certain pleasure
in going to the supermarket. Like, I go to my local Etika, and I really enjoy...
Etika has good quality.
Oh, Etika has some... We even have a fresh...
Etika's not paying for this promotion.
Etika is not paying, and they really should be. I love Etika.
And no, but to go back to the... You know, the image of going to a small vegetable store,
there's a good chance that the products that come there, in Paris at least,
most of the fresh produce go through Rangis,
and there's a good chance you're getting pretty much the same...
They come from the same... It comes from Rangis.
But the selection is often different, because in Rangis, you can go from, you know, sort of,
zero to hundred. I mean, I'm exaggerating again.
But, yeah, so I do... But I miss, like I said...
If I'm doing a piezo with my friends, I like to go to... There's a...
One of my friends lives in the Marais, and there's a street called Rue Bretagne.
And there's a particular shop I go for cheese.
There's an Italian trattoria who ripped me off recently,
because I ended up getting two cheeses when I was... I try to speak in Italian,
and sometimes I get overexcited, and I don't listen to what I'm saying,
and I end up ordering more than I actually need.
And then I don't correct myself, because... Yeah.
Because why not? Two kilos of cheese, why not?
Two cheeses is not bad. And, anyway, so there's all these lovely stores.
If we're doing a napevo at my friend's place, we go to all these lovely little places,
and I like that.
And it's honestly the product, the products are also very important,
but the ritual, which of course has no inherent value,
but has a sort of experiential or aspirational value.
And a community value.
Community value, yeah. And that means something to me. Yeah.
Yeah. I hope at some point this will go back, and it's...
I'm definitely... It's something that I will miss from Greece, 100%. Like...
When you moved to Italy.
Yeah, but Italy also, like...
Greece is still in this time, like, in the sense of, like,
you still have every day a market in every different neighbourhood, with vegetables,
with the farmers coming directly to there, and you're shopping from the farmers directly.
Very small shops in these... In certain parts of Italy it might be like that,
and you will need to know who is the producer on everything, but...
But it's remarkable from the Greeks still to maintain this kind of, like...
Oh, I need to visit...
I'm not saying that the Greek cuisine is the most creative in the world,
because it's not, it's rather like the Italian, they go basic and they go simple,
and then whatever, they toast and roast and burn the meat a little bit too much for my taste.
But besides that, I mean, you eat really good, really good prices, and...
And it happens a phenomena that tavernas or restaurants are cheaper than supermarkets,
and that's why there is still a lot of culture of, like, going every single meal to go out, wherever,
because if you try to reproduce what you order in the tavernas, it will cost you double.
Speaking of food, see, for him, I suppose I am becoming the food, because...
Look at that, look at that!
You're not meant to eat me.
Look at that.
Well, I suppose we all appreciate a bit of...
Of love.
Well, this is very tough love, as far as love goes.
Okay, well...
Well, I think the last question just to close,
we are finishing our wines and closing the episode with a wine question.
Oh, lovely.
Red or wine?
Wines?
Oh, I mean, oh, gosh.
Or when, what?
Yes, okay, I think that's a... yeah.
So, generally, I prefer drinking red, but it depends a lot on the weather, the environment, even the lighting.
Right? If it's a sort of low-key lighting, you want red, obviously.
So, for me, if it's white, I prefer things that are very mineral, very dry.
So, typically with, say, oysters, I prefer, like, muscadets. It's very classic.
I'm not inventing anything here. Or very, very dry, like a chablis.
You know, I do enjoy those. Or chablis is a classic.
Yeah, from Burgundy.
If it's a red, my natural tendencies go towards deeper sort of full-bodied wines,
like with Sirable vets, from the south of France. Could also be from Italy.
So, they are more spicy, more sort of peppery or...
I'm translating from French. It's...
Boisé, charpentier, woods-like. Yeah.
But then there's also, sometimes I enjoy Vins de macération. So, orange wine, right?
So, a white wine that has been treated like a red wine, so there's some skin contacts.
That sounds weird in English, but I do enjoy that.
But more for apéro before the dinner.
And in terms of, as far as bubbles go, I'm a big fan of Crements.
So, from Deloitte, there's lovely minerality from the Loire region.
Or obviously from Alsace. And I promise you, I did not pre-prepare that sentence.
I genuinely, these are the wines I like the most. What about you?
Oof. It's difficult, I mean, I've lived...
I was raised in a world of reds, let's say like this.
And moved to world of whites. Completely.
Because at the end, here in Germany, especially when you move to the Rhine...
The Rhine region. ...and the Mausoleum area and everything,
the predominance is the white wines.
If I need to choose from here, I'm also going to the driest sense of it.
Sometimes with white wines, they are OK. For me it's more like an association of white wines during the day.
Yeah, with the sun. With the feeling of the sun. It's a little bit more summer-ish vibe into it. Let's say like this.
And I really like a variety, it's called "Grobustaminer".
Oh, Gewürztaminer. Also in Alsace we have that.
I mean, I enjoy a good red, but lately also in Greece, the white wine quality is better than the red wines.
But if you're going to try any Greek wines soon, I would definitely go for a region that is called Nemea.
Oh yes, that's the only one I've heard of.
Beginning of Peloponnese, actually we were there a couple of weeks ago, we buy 20 bottles of wine.
Well, that's what you do. I mean, we went to producers directly and that's where you try the wines and it was really, really good experience.
And we tried actually Grobustaminer from Greece. That's very new to me. Yeah.
Crazy thing because of the end, of course the soil is different, the region is different, so it was very, very, very dry variation of what you would expect of a Grobustaminer.
And really, really good quality from a producer called Barafakas. Oh, there you go. Nemea. This is his turn to plug producers. Yeah, really, really nice.
No, and also I've got to say, like in my answer, there's an inherent bias for French wines. And that's what happens if you're French.
You tend to focus on French wines. And one of the things I learned after coming to Berlin was I discovered Slovenian wine, Austrian wine, and...
I mean, I have my favorite Catalan wines and Spanish wines, of course, but it's not something that I can access easily right now.
Yeah. I've been seven years outside of my home town. So at the end, I'm just like drinking that when I go to visit my parents.
Obviously, yeah. The whole sort of Catalan wine, I'm sure, is such a huge rabbit hole in itself.
And so for me, I'm right now working through sort of a long dog, Côte du Rhin, and I'm starting to enjoy Bordeaux, which is why we're drinking Bordeaux.
I didn't used to enjoy Bordeaux, or it wasn't... Yeah, it didn't appeal to me too much until I visited a château in the Grave area.
And now there's so many other regions, so we tend to focus on that. And then everything else, I'm just sort of happy to have someone explain it to me.
But perhaps I cannot really gain a lot of knowledge on that yet. I need to build up my knowledge about French and maybe Northern Italian wines and that's the focus for now.
Yes. So to close the episode, favorite dish, favorite dessert, and favorite wine.
Yeah. So this is going to be very sort of in the now, right? Of course, of course. Everything is in the now in this episode.
Like, probably in four years, your recipes are already in your website. There is Naples food in there and you can explore different things.
Yeah. Okay. So if we're talking about in the now, I'll do an entrée-plat dessert and a wine.
So this is very much now. This is not my all time favorite. I would start with a very simple dish, which is les oeufs mayonnaise, or off mayonnaise.
Which is just, it's a very simple dish with eggs and mayonnaise. It's simple, but I love it. I love this word in French we call it "regressive" food. I'm sure this exists in other languages too.
So, yeah. So les oeufs mayonnaise for the starter. For the dish, now this is very sort of hard to pick one simple thing.
But if I absolutely had to, I would pick in the French approach, because it's in your primo, secondo but let's forget that.
It would be my signature dish, which is the risotto vasquez. Simple to make and it's hearty. It's got a lot of sort of the warmth of the Southern food.
And it's got risotto. I love the texture of risotto. Got that. Now dessert, I'm not very dessert. But what I would do is I would replace the dessert, and I do this quite often in restaurants.
Other people are taking dessert. I order a digestif. Oh shoot, we missed the whole digestif part. Yeah, that's why I brought it back.
So I would order a digestif instead of a dessert. Although there are some desserts I really enjoy but I'm not really a dessert person.
So I would get a digestif and this would either be... if I'm traveling it has to be a local thing from the region. So digestif is essentially...
- Liquor, licorice. - Liquor, yeah. Like vegetables, fruit.
- Shortening. - Yeah. Like if I go to Denmark, it's équavit.
If I'm going to France, it could be something like a cognac, an armagnac, chartreuse.
- Limoncello. - Limoncello, averna. That's one thing.
So I love this, and so that would be my entrée, plat and dessert.
- Wine? - Oh sorry, wine, yes.
- We don't say wine region, if it covers better. - Long duck. It would be a red from a long duck.
I know it's not very exciting and people listening are probably going, "Yes, really long duck, it's a very common region."
I love, you know, like a Pissant Loup or a very basic long duck with the classic sira, mauvaise, grenache, sans-saut.
That's sort of in some mix, right? It's like my home...
If you're music, you've got the tonic of a scale and that home note for me is the red long duck. So I'll go for that.
Nice. Thank you so much, Perimo, for accepting a second episode, doing it in your place in Berlin.
Thank you so much for having me again.
I'm excited that we did this one finally in person and not online. I'm trying to reduce the episodes online,
but thank you so much for the invitation and for accepting the joining us.
Thank you so much for listening to me, because as some people might know, I'm never going to say no to talking.
It comes quite naturally to me. So thank you so much and congratulations on the rebranding recently.
It's very exciting. You asked me for some advice about the colours and I'm glad you went for the colour I fixed.
I'm very, very happy with that. - You would be surprised, but you are not the only one who said that one.
Literally, 80% of the people were going for that colour, so at the end I thought why not, no?
It's a lovely colour. It's very exciting. Thanks to all you listeners as well and do tell your friends about this podcast.
Thank you a lot to all of you who are listening. Thank you, Ambulance from Berlin, for destroying this outro.
As always, don't forget to subscribe to the channels and follow us. Check out part of my websites and social media also.
I'm sure it will be on the notes. - Maybe you will learn some recipes.
Hopefully. I'm not got you around to that. - It will be alright. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much as well. Bye.
[Music]