Last night I ate with great friends at the restaurant where our son is cooking. They don’t have recipes. They have a list with ingredients for their five course dinner. But why no recipe? ‘Dad, we work with natural products.’
‘Yes that’s something I understand, so what?’
‘Natural products never taste the same. One duck tastes differently than another duck. A duck that came in yesterday is still wonderful to eat but is different from a duck that is brought in today. So we always need to adjust. We want to outperform the expectations of our guests so everything we do needs to be perfect. We can’t standardise with recipes.’
And yes, he made me feel very proud.