Interview with the mentors from The Taste

24 December 2013

/* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}

The following feature is available free for reproduction in full or in part.

Nigella Lawson, US chef and author of Kitchen Confidential Anthony Bourdain, and the classically-trained French chef Ludo Lefebvre flew in from LA two days ago, at the end of a punishing series shoot for the US cookery series The Taste. Not only that, but they were up before dawn this morning to start filming for the UK version of the show. But incredibly, sitting in a nondescript room near the show’s stunning set at Pinewood Studios, the three betray no sign of the exhaustion they must be feeling and are engaging, eloquent and enthusiastic.

The Taste is a unique blend of fiery cookery challenges, blind-taste eliminations and simmering egos as the contestants battle it out to please the palates of the judges to stay in the competition. But they can only give the judges one spoonful of their food – and every tasting is done blind, so the judges never know whose food they are eating. As each judge mentors four of the contestants, they may easily end up voting someone from their own team off the show. Here, the judges discuss everything gastronomic, from the show to British cuisine to their guilty food pleasures.

 

Can you try and explain a little more about what the show is all about?

NL: We taste all the food blind, and we have just one mouthful, on a spoon, from each cook. We don’t know who’s cooked what. We have no idea if it’s been cooked by a home cook or a chef or some other catering professional. This continues throughout the whole competition. So you might easily eliminate someone from your own kitchen, someone you’re mentoring. So we really are judging only on the food.

AB: It all has to do with how wisely we pick our teams. We’re choosing them based entirely on one mouthful of food from someone we know nothing about. It could have been an incredible mouthful of food that leads us to believe all sorts of things about them that may turn out not to be true at all. But it’s then our job to mentor them, raise them up, guide them through the various elimination challenges.

NL: And the one mouthful thing means you have to think about food in a slightly different way. If you were cooking someone a meal, as you eat, the flavours develop, and you would not want everything to be turned up too high. When you have one spoonful, you don’t want it to be turned up too high, but on the other hand, you can’t say “Oh yes, they’ll feel the heat by the third spoonful,” because there isn’t a third spoonful, so everything has to be delivered upfront.

AB: You’re telling a big story in one mouthful of food. The ability to tell that story concisely, without over-complicating it or leaving anything important out, is an adjustment the cooks have to make. But it also makes it a level playing field between professional chefs and home cooks. Technique is of little importance, presentation is of absolutely no importance.

 

So the aesthetics are completely irrelevant?

NL: Yes. In fact, we’re often slightly alarmed if it looks like someone has spent all their time making something look pretty.

AB: And one thing we saw on the American show, which I’m sure will happen here too, is that the professionals make the same mistake again and again and again. They over-complicate, they seek to dazzle, they fall back on technique and extraneous factors, and forget about the importance of just delivering a pleasurable mouthful of food likely to elicit an emotional response.

NL: Which is, in a way, the province of the home cook. Home cooks are just thinking “Can I cook something that tastes good?” They’re not looking to do something novel with the fanciest ingredients. But of course there are good home cooks and bad home cooks, and good chefs and bad chefs. Really, it’s about the palate of the individual.

 

You all mentor your teams of four. Do you get close to them during the process?

NL: We get very invested and very involved. You have an hour in which to cook with them in each programme, so if you spend too much time chin-wagging with them – which is easily done – then you’re not going to get an awful lot cooked. But there’s certainly a rapport that builds up, and the longer people stay in the competition, the closer you become with them. But you can also feel very warmly towards cooks in other mentors’ kitchens, if you like the food they cook every week.

AB: I’d say we become very, very involved with them. It becomes a case of Stockholm syndrome. We only know them within very restricted parameters, but it very quickly becomes not about us but about them.

NL: Cooking is an emotional experience anyway. So when you cook with people, you do bond with them in a particular way, and you feel you’re finding out much more about them than just the way they approach food.

AB: When you love food, you are automatically romantic, and when you see people rise above expectations, when you see people with unlikely backstories, cooking far beyond the level you thought they were capable of, week after week, even if they’re on another team, you become very invested in how they do. And it’s devastating when someone you’ve come to really like and respect, gets sent home.

 

What are the different attributes you each bring as mentors?

NL: I think everyone should answer for themselves here, before it gets too ugly!

LL: Look, they are all jealous of me, because I’m French. It’s not my fault! I trained in France, I trained with a lot of master chefs. I learned like it as the army – it’s “Oui, chef,” and that’s it. You listen to the chef, you do what he wants. I run my kitchen the same way here on The Taste. Listen to me, and that’s it. That’s the way I want it. I’m here to make you better, so listen to me. That’s it. It’s very simple. I’m always right. They are lucky to be with me in the kitchen. I’m very passionate about teaching people how to cook. I love it.

AB: I’m as great believer in the idea that old age and corruption beats youth and beauty every time. Ludo’s a better chef than I, he has a stronger culinary background, he’s worked with chefs who never would have hired me as a prep-cook or even a dishwasher. But I’ve been around the business for 30 years, so a lot of what I try to do is figure out what Ludo’s going to do and try to be smarter or trickier. I’m not going to go head-to-head trying to get my crew to make a better classic French dish or take Ludo on head on. We’ll try and figure out what he’s not doing, and do that. Let’s do something different. I’m much more about strategy.

NL: And I’m completely different because I’m a home-cook, and not even a trained one. I love food, I’m a food obsessive. I’ve eaten a lot, and I carry on eating a lot. For me, what’s important about food is the emotional connection it makes as well as how good it tastes. As much as possible, I encourage the cooks in my kitchen to develop an authentic voice, while learning a language they didn’t have before. I’m not going to teach people technique – anyone who’s ever seen my technique knows I have no technique to offer – but I feel very passionately about flavour and taste. And it’s surprising how often actually quite successful cooks do not taste their food enough. It’s about taste, taste and taste again. I’m not sure you can teach palate, but if I have people who aren’t very experienced and have maybe only cooked a narrow range of foods, it’s about giving those people certain things to taste and encouraging them to understand what the components are.

 

You’re dealing with people who put their heart and soul into this, and then, the nature of the show is that you sometimes have to be quite critical of them…

NL: Not of them, of their food. That makes a huge difference.

AB: It’s awkward when you get a mouthful of food and you not only hate it, it angers you. And you express that, and then you find out who made it, and it was someone on your team, who you like, and care about.

NL: Yes, it doesn’t feel good. And sending people home – I hate that. I’m such a conflict-averse person, that having to tell someone “Sorry, your dream’s ended,” is ghastly.

AB: And it only gets worse as the competition goes on, of course. It gets worse every week.

 

Have you ever had any angry reactions from them?

NL: Defensiveness, sometimes. But, on the whole, in the shock of the moment, they behave pretty well. They may well, I’m sure, be pretty furious afterwards.

AB: We have our moments. You see it on a lot of cooking shows: “Joel Robuchon, what do you know?”

 

There’s sometimes a bit of conflict between you guys ion the judging panel as well, just adding to the spell. Is that good fun?

NL: Yes, it is. I’m used to it; I come from quite a large family, I have siblings who will tease me, irritate me or amuse me as they choose. I think the important thing [on the show] is we respect each other’s opinions,. I don’t think a disagreement has ever continued when we’ve gone off set. But of course you clash, if you’re defending someone you really believe in, and that person is being attacked. We can get ugly.

LL: We all have a different palate. Some stuff that I like, Nigella and Tony don’t.

AB: What’s more fun to argue about than food? If we all went out for dinner together, we would probably have some kind of spirited disagreement about some aspect of the food. It’s a particular joy arguing about food with Ludo, because it’s so deeply felt.

NL: When Ludo shouts at me, the difficulty is, as brutal as he can get, he’s just so charming and endearing that I can’t really get angry with him.

 

When you guys go out for a meal together after filming, does the face of the head chef drain as you walk in and he sees who he has to feed?

NL: We don’t go to those sorts of places. When we were filming in LA we had the most fabulous Korean barbecue. There’s something rather decadent about working on a food programme all day and then going out and having an enormous meal in the evening.

 

On all of these shows there’s a nasty judge. Who’s the Simon Cowell on the panel?

NL (to AB): You can do that. When you say “You have committed a food crime!”

AB: I like to think I’m a sympathetic, nice, warm, cuddly guy, and I try to be civil. I understand these guys are cooking their hearts out. That said, there are a few hot-button things that just make me see white. I’m not putting on an act, I’m not trying to be the bad guy, but there are certain combinations of food that I’m so appalled by, particularly when it comes from a talented professional who should know better, that I feel personally, disproportionately betrayed, and I have been unkind.

NL: I’m not like that, but I do quite like it when Tony says to people: “I know people tell you to follow your dreams – don’t!” But we’re not trying to belittle or humiliate people.

LL: Attend! Sometimes we need to. When someone gives you something disgusting to put in your mouth, they have to know the truth.

 

Do you think most of the participants leave the show better cooks than they came on to it.

AB: Yes.

NL: Without a doubt. Obviously someone has to be eliminated from programme one, so they haven’t had time to learn much. And obviously it’s up to them as to whether they listen or not. But yes, people do leave better cooks than they arrived.

 

You have guest chefs appearing every week, and different themes. What can you tell us about them?

NL: I’m not sure who we’re allowed to reveal.

AB: The guest chefs are good ones. The cream of British gastronomy.

NL: We’ve got a really good variety, because we’re trying to gauge people’s ability to cook in different spheres. As much as possible we try and use different foodstuffs, as well, and try and use different techniques.

AB: There are no ‘novelty’ challenges. There’s no “You have 29 minutes to prepare a meal for 12 using the contents of this vending machine, and you have to do it in the back of this Toyota Highlander while driving around London.”

 

You have mouthfuls to test from all the contestants - do you ever get given mouthfuls that are genuinely bad?

All three: Yes!

NL: At the audition stage, definitely. We have had frightening times.

AB: We’ve had professionals who have just had the most extraordinary brain-lock, where they freeze in the headlights, or try something that might have worked in 1989, but is the very opposite of what we want now.

NL: Or they have a concept, and the concept may be clever, but the actual food doesn’t taste good.

AB: It happens, and it’s unbelievable when it happens. We’ve had incidents of mass psychosis in the past, where everyone has a really awful day and produces far, far below their abilities. Other times you see people reach down and come up with wonderful things, they just levitate.

 

If you have something really spicy, doesn’t it become more difficult to taste other mouthfuls afterwards?

AB: If something blows out your palate, there will be some water and some bread – it’s something we’re aware of.

LL: We can even take a break.

 

They aren’t small mouthfuls…

NL: They may not seem small to you, but when you’re trying to work out what has gone into something, they can seem all too fleeting. You often think “I want to try that again.” Sometimes you taste something new and you love it, and want to try it again.

AB: That’s the really fun bit for me, particularly during the selection process. As happened in season one of the US version, someone made an extremely obscure regional Laotian dish – butt-ugly, but absolutely dead-on authentic, and I just couldn’t believe it. I was so impressed and excited and surprised. That’s a good feeling.

 

So you don’t get towards the end of the tasting and start to feel full? That would make it more difficult for those coming later.

NL: If you’re a greedy person, you always want to eat good food.

 

Are there any foods that you really don’t like, and therefore someone will be at a disadvantage if they use it?

NL: I don’t like green peppers, and unless you’re Hungarian there is no real call for them. But if I liked the taste of something, I wouldn’t abandon someone because they used green pepper. I’m a promiscuous eater, and that is the only thing I have any dislike or disdain for.

AB: I will eat something I don’t particularly like. As a chef you have to all the time. I might not ever want to order scallops in a restaurant, but I certainly need to know how to cook and serve them. And I think that’s true of anyone who cooks at any level.

LL: I like everything. Seriously. I don’t know if I like English food, because I don’t know about it.

NL: I did offer you a spotted dick at lunch. You liked your fish and chips the other day.

AB: Have you ever had deep fried haggis and curry sauce?

 

Ludo, Anthony, what do you think of British cuisine?

AB: My favourite restaurant in the world is in this country. St John. I’m taking Ludo there as soon as possible. I love it here; I’ve been coming for a long time. I love English food, executed well. There are plenty of great restaurants here that are non-English, but I think there are an increasing number of proudly English restaurants serving classic English country cooking. That’s really exciting to me.

LL: I have travelled a lot in the world, and eaten in a lot of three-starred Michelin restaurants, and the best meal of my life was in this country. It was in 2005, at The Fat Duck. It was amazing. It’s very hard for me, as a French guy, to say that. London is a great city with a lot of great chefs and good restaurants.

 

When you get home after a hard day, what is your lazy, guilty food pleasure?

LL: Cheerios and milk.

AB: When I’m over here, a pint of Guinness and a sinister meat pie.

LL: Oh, here, I would say a pint of beer and some fish and chips.

AB: At home, really bad macaroni cheese. Really, embarrassingly bad macaroni cheese. Like macaroni cheese at KFC. I’ll put my hood up and sneak in. Something really nasty like that. Dirty hot dogs, a good, greasy burger.

NL: I don’t feel guilty about any pleasure. I think you should only feel guilty if you don’t take pleasure.