September 9, 2025 • 44 mins
Chef Ned Bell—Canadian chef, educator, and founder of Chefs for Oceans joins Furqan to explore how chefs can shape a food system that sustains people and planet. Ned traces his path from classic French apprenticeships and high-pressure brigades to leading kinder, high-expectation teams and front-lining sustainable seafood. We get into Ocean Wise, the 2014 coast-to-coast bike ride that launched Chefs for Oceans, and why North America must move beyond “four fish” (shrimp, salmon, tuna, whitefish) to embrace seaweed and overlooked species. Ned shares how chefs can partner with scientists, influence suppliers, and make better choices without preaching—and why his Four Seasons restaurant’s revenue more than doubled after going 100% Ocean Wise. He’s candid about privilege, reconciliation in Canada, and the slow work of education, offering practical advice for chefs who want impact without burning out.
If you’ve ever wondered what a chef can become beyond the pass, this one’s a map and a nudge.
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Website : https://www.nedbell.com/
Chapters
00:00 The Journey of Chef Ned Bell
09:02 Sustainable Seafood Advocacy
18:21 The Role of Chefs in Environmental Change
27:50 Education and the Future of Culinary Arts
37:20 Closing Thoughts and Advice for Aspiring Chefs
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
So hello, everyone, and welcome back to Fugitive Chefs, this
show about chefs and people in food, basically who have stepped
outside traditional kitchens to create something more
meaningful, more personal, more sustainable in many cases.
And today's guest is Chef Ned Bells.
Thanks and thanks for accepting the invitation and welcome to
the podcast. Good day.
How are you for con? Nice to nice to be here and
thanks very much for for having me on.
(00:22):
Now it's a pleasure. So just to tell you a little
more about about you Ned to the people.
But what I know about you already is I mean, that is based
in Canada. He's a Canadian chef to cater
and also a passionate advocate for sustainable seafood.
I think that's the biggest message that I've seen from all
your all your posts be social media or the reports that I've
seen about you. What I've seen is that your
journey has taken you from say top restaurants to finding
(00:45):
something called chefs for Oceans.
And I want to know more about it.
During this conversation, you'vealso worked with leading
culinary programs and working a lot with protecting these
oceans, but through food. So basically in this episode,
we'll talk a little about what can a chef's purpose be to go
beyond the kitchen and do do activism like this?
And how does activism actually welcome profiles, profiles like
(01:05):
yours, How education welcomes profiles like yours?
And how can we actually build A food system that sustains both
people and the planet and the person connecting these is
somebody like your your profile.But before we dive into all of
that, Ned, can you tell us like little more about how did you
end up into cooking as a career?Like why was cooking your choice
of career? Absolutely.
Well, yeah, there's so much to talk about.
(01:27):
I mean, I my path was probably pretty similar to very many
chefs. You know, I started my very
first job at the age of 14, was washing dishes in the local
restaurant. You know, kind of, I don't know,
I felt, I felt at home in in therestaurant community, the family
of restaurants. You know, my I came from a
(01:48):
divorced parents and a broken home.
So, you know, the fact that I had these, this group of, of
great people to work with and kind of, you know, lean on in
my, in my teenage years became quite valuable to me.
And I really just fell in love with hospitality, to be honest.
You know, I, I, I love, I mean, you know, washing dishes,
(02:08):
probably the most important job in the kitchen.
But like from there, you know, then you, you recognize that
food, putting food on a plate is, you know, it has value to it
and you're feeding people and you get, get feedback every
single meal you serve, get some feedback, both positive and
constructive from your patients and, or sorry from your guests.
And, you know, then, I don't know, after graduating high
(02:30):
school, I just, I just knew I wanted to go into the culinary
arts. I, I went to culinary school.
You know, this was a long time ago, before Food Network even
existed here in North America. And so I really went to school
to be a chef, not to be, you know, a, you know, a celebrity
chef or something on television.Like I wanted to cook.
And, you know, kind of in North America, like a very, you know,
(02:54):
Western European sort of hierarchical kitchen where you
have, you know, one chef at the top wearing a big tall hat.
And, you know, you kind of work under him because truthfully, a
lot of them chefs back then werewere men.
And it was very kind of rooted in the sort of structure of the
(03:15):
military. You know, you had the big chief
and then you had everybody else that sort of fell underneath
them. But I, you know, I, I, I felt at
home in that environment becauseI, I enjoyed the structure, I
enjoyed the direction. I probably even thrived on some
of the sort of like, I don't want to say abuse, but like, you
(03:39):
know, the kind of the high expectation and the kind of, you
know, the pressure to perform. I really, I really thrived on
that. And so, you know, that was, I
mean, I'm 52 years old. So I've been in the kitchen, you
know, well over 30 years now. And I just, I just love what I
do. I feel very fortunate to to be a
(04:00):
cook. Yeah, that's, I mean, that
sounds quite, quite a journey, right.
And I mean, before we get into like what got you out of the
kitchen, I would really like to hear more about like what the
people, what the people or I don't know, people you were
inspiring, people who were inspiring for you or kind of
people who you got to work with,which you would like to kind of
share with us. What did you learn in those
years? When you see those first few
years in the kitchens? How was?
(04:20):
How was it for you? Yeah, I was really lucky.
I I did my apprenticeship at theat the best French restaurant in
Vancouver, a restaurant that's still around 40 years later.
The, the chef there is my mentor, Chef Michelle Jacob.
He's from Alsace in France. And he's, you know, that classic
sort of French chef, you know, very strict, very high
(04:41):
expectations. He's the only man I still call
chef because he will always be my chef because you know, you do
an apprenticeship for three years underneath somebody and
you know, you kind of, you go to, you go to battle, you go to
war for them. And you know, he's still a big,
big part of my life today. He's my mentor and has been my
whole career. And I was really lucky.
(05:02):
I, you know, I getting an apprenticeship like I did at
this restaurant in Vancouver wasI sort of liken it to going to
Harvard. It's sort of like it's the best
of the best, you know, like you,you know, when you work for,
for, for someone like that and you and you put in the time, you
put in the years, no one can ever take that foundation away
(05:23):
from you. So my early education and my
early sort of, I guess, setting of my culinary journey was
really, really important to me Doesn't exist the same anymore.
You know, the culinary field haschanged immensely.
You don't need to do a traditional apprenticeship to be
an incredible chef. But back then, it was really the
(05:43):
only path you could take. You know, if you want to be a
chef wearing a white jacket likethis, you know, you have to work
for, you know, a great chef and,you know, put your head down,
shut up and do the job. You know, and I you know, there
was some good and some bad, but for me there was far more good
than than anything else. Yeah.
(06:04):
And how do you process that? Because while you were talking
about it before, you said like it's, it's not like this
anymore. I was curious myself because
when you speak about the way youlook up to your mentor, for
example, and the way you also mentioned how I know and it's,
it's normal to accept that a lotof us function really good under
under pressure. And we kind of wanted that
pressure. We'd like that pressure,
especially when it's with peoplearound you who are also going
through the same. So there's empathy and that is
(06:25):
kind of diving in that. But how do you see that when I
think later on in your career you also become somebody who
people are other, others are looking up to people who are
depending on you or you're training them or you are setting
the rules of the kitchen. How does that transition work
for you? Seeing today's scenario where
kitchens maybe do not accept that much, Maybe people speak up
before this kind of pressure breaks down.
(06:46):
How do you see this transformation?
Because a lot of chefs have spoken to who are who are
younger, say that the the older generation of the ones who have
been longer years in the kitchenwant us to just go through it
because it was difficult for them.
It should be difficult for everybody else.
How do you see that transition within your span of kitchen
cardio? Yes, certainly.
You know, I I really looked at my career like the first ten
(07:08):
years were me becoming a chef. After that I then was able to
become my version of a chef. So early days, you just repeat
what you saw. So you do similar things to what
you sort of you know, were taught or trained or you know,
maybe how you were spoken to or you know, maybe how how you were
(07:31):
treated, maybe in the back of your mind knowing that some of
it was inappropriate and some ofit what you know wasn't cool
even back then. But then when you start running
your own kitchens in your sort of late, you know, mid to late
20s and into your 30s, you realize I don't want to run my
kitchens like that because that's just not who I am as a
(07:52):
person. I bring kindness.
I bring thoughtfulness. I, I know that I get, you know,
I get more, you know, bees with honey than I do, you know, with,
with anything else. I think I've seen like the bad,
so to speak, and now I've seen the transition to the slightly
better. You know, I wouldn't say we're
(08:14):
where we need to be in North America when it comes to how
certain kitchens are run. It's a very toxic environment.
Or it can be, you know, I'm, I'ma white middle-aged man and I
was trained by a white middle-aged man.
So there's an incredible amount of privilege that that I
recognize. And so how can I create an
(08:35):
environment in my kitchens whereI have diversity, where I have
cultural influence, whether, youknow, indigenous cuisine and
culture. And an impact is huge here in
British Columbia on the western side of Canada where I live, you
know, the indigenous peoples have been here for 12,000 years,
a heck of a lot longer than we as Canadians have been in this
(08:55):
country of only 150 years. the US is only 250 years.
So like we have a ton to learn and atone for and immigration
has been the birth of our country.
I mean, everybody from Western Europe that came here and then
everybody from all over the place that came here, whether it
be the Chinese, whether it be the South Asians, whether it be
(09:17):
people from, you know, all over the planet that sort of migrated
to North America over the last couple 100 years.
Really that, you know, that's sort of like why my food is what
I call globally inspired and locally created because it's
inspired by all these great flavors and these great people
bringing their flavors here. Then it's using local
(09:37):
ingredients from this place to sort of make it unique to this
place. And so I try really hard and,
and I think I've been relativelysuccessful at creating
environments in my restaurants and in my kitchens where
kindness, joy, you know, high expectation, you know, we, we
(09:58):
don't, we don't allow sort of mistakes to be made, but we
don't like scream and yell at people when they make those
mistakes like those days should have never been, but they did
for decades. We have to and are slowly moving
past to that. And I think you're seeing that
in Michelin restaurants. You're seeing that in premium
(10:19):
casual restaurants, certainly independent restaurants, that if
you want to keep good people, you got to treat them properly.
No, definitely. And I think, I think what makes
it easier is, is the points you mentioned.
I feel the ones I really liked are the recognition, I mean
recognition of privilege as you said, or recognition of when is
it your place to have an opinion, When is it not your
place to have an opinion. So whence you can't have an
opinion. And then you still know that,
(10:40):
you know, at that point, my, as you said, I was becoming a chef
and that was a process you had to go through.
But then again, you there is there's a point in life, in
kitchen career where you come toa certain point where you can
make these choices and when you're the one who's setting the
rules of the game. And I think, yeah, it's very
inspiring to to hear all of this, this whole context of how
you have personally taken this upon because I think a lot of
chefs in the industry, I mean, firstly, I think the mission
(11:01):
didn't once because the eyes area bigger eyes on them, I guess.
And there's a more amount of younger people inter interning
over there or starting over there.
So they have the special, but not everybody does this job
well, I feel. So it's it's very inspiring to
hear how you've what's your takeon it?
It's really interesting, you know, Michelin only came to
Vancouver three or four years ago.
I think we have, I think 8, only8 Michelin one star restaurants
(11:26):
in Vancouver and it's a world class city.
You know, we've had restaurants over the last couple of decades
that could and should have been Michelin recommended or Michelin
starred. But we didn't have Michelin here
because as you know, Michelin isa bit of a pay to play model
where you, you know, usually have to like invite them here
and write them a big check. Anyway, a lot of the first
(11:48):
generation of Michelin chefs were all white.
And so in Vancouver and now Steam chefs like, you know, I
know that you just interviewed Imran in Toronto and you have
this fantastic chef here named Tushar and this other fantastic
chef named Vish, like Michelin level guys, you know, from other
places, born in other places, but now sort of live here and
(12:11):
are putting incredible food on the plate.
And so it's no longer a Western lens that that dictates.
It's no longer only a Western European lens that dictates what
Michelin is. And Michelin's been progressive
for a long time. I mean, you could go to Hong
Kong and have a Michelin one star bowl of wanton soup or you
(12:31):
know, Michelin bowl of ramen in in Tokyo, but it in Vancouver,
it's still very kind of super fine dining, super small
restaurant, 4050 seats maximum. You know, like I think we we're
going to see that will continue to broaden.
And I think, I mean, that's a whole other conversation.
Is Michelin still relevant? Who knows?
(12:52):
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. No, exactly.
Yeah. I mean, I couldn't agree more
with what all you're saying, butjust to just to get back on
this, this idea of the podcast, because now we have kind of
established where where your beginnings of your career was
and what your career looked like.
And then what is today like? Tell us a little about what is
what is it that you do everyday?How do you define the job that
you do today? Yeah, so it's, it's a bit of a
(13:14):
journey as to how I, how I got to where I am.
So I, I was the executive chef for The Four Seasons Hotel for,
for five plus years back from 2011 to 2017.
And during that time we became the first luxury hotel in the
country. So in Canada to become 100%
(13:34):
ocean wise, which means all of the seafood that we serve on our
menu. We were a seafood restaurant was
ocean wise recommended, which was very rare.
And you know, hence the first, first one ever.
Back in 1999, Monterey, CA, the Seafood Watch program was
started by the Monterey Bay Aquarium and it was basically
(13:56):
the first a sustainability ratings system in North America.
MSC, the Marine Stewardship Council started in London years
ago before, but in North America, 1999 was basically the
birth of the sustainable seafoodmovement.
But that was just in the US in had to wait another six years.
(14:20):
2005 we started a program calledOcean Wise and it was a
sustainable seafood program witha clear focus on chefs, our
restaurants and then our suppliers.
So our suppliers could be our fishers, our fishmongers or our
big suppliers that drive, drive the seafood from, you know, from
(14:41):
the Wharf to, to our restaurants.
And so I, we have a very big country, you know, 13 provinces,
provinces and territories. You know, it's 4000 kilometers
tall, 9000 kilometers wide. Like it's a huge place.
We have, you know, seafood on the East Coast, seafood on the
West Coast, seafood north of us.So we have the Atlantic Ocean,
(15:02):
the Arctic Ocean and the PacificOcean surround our country.
And then we have these huge bodies of water in the middle of
it, the Great Lakes, where we have all these inland fisheries.
So, you know, we're one of the only places in the world that
has all these oceans that collide on the same country.
So, you know, chefs are pulling seafood from the East Coast,
(15:23):
from the West Coast, not so muchfrom the north, but slowly from
the north. So I started to recognize that
it was, you know, we as chefs had this unique opportunity to
engage with each other and then the people that we feed on the
importance of choosing sustainable seafood, healthy
lakes, oceans and rivers. You know, every second breath we
take comes from the ocean. And arguably the birth of our
(15:46):
nation, the birth of Canada, wason the backs of the fishing
industry on the East Coast. So Newfoundland and the coastal
shores of the East Coast. A couple of 100 years ago,
people came here from Spain, from Europe, from Portugal to
fish for a cod and then they would take it back to Europe.
I mean, you've heard of salt codbacalao before.
(16:06):
That's Canadian fish, right? So, but of course, it wasn't
Canada back then. It was just a place to fish.
And so, you know, Canada is an extractive country.
Mine minerals. We cut down trees for forestry.
You know, furs and fish and forests were the birth of our
nation. And so, you know, as we spread
(16:29):
West across Canada over, you know, the last couple of
hundreds of years, we landed on the West Coast.
And we're the only place on the planet that has five unique
species of wild Pacific salmon. Wild Pacific wild Pacific salmon
is a keystone species. It is so incredibly important to
the entire health of our ecosystem.
(16:50):
Trees, whales, bears, eagles, and humans need wild salmon to
thrive because it's a circular ecosystem.
And so if you take too much of one of those things, the entire
ecosystem will collapse. And so overfishing and climate
change are the two largest threats that face our world's
oceans. The fishery on the East Coast
(17:10):
collapsed in the 1990s, and we're kind of facing the same
sort of thing on the West Coast with wild Pacific salmon right
now. Now, it's a very complex
conversation. It's difficult to really dive
into all the nuance, but I recognize that chefs could
potentially raise awareness and educate each other and at the
same time serve the highest quality and best seafood, Not
(17:34):
always the most expensive, but the highest quality and best
seafood. In fact, challenge our fishers
and our farmers to do to continue to do better or to do
better, etcetera. The one thing is, is that
because our country is so big, chefs on the West Coast don't
talk to the chefs on the East Coast.
And Toronto's the biggest city in Canada, followed by sort Of
(17:54):
Montreal, Vancouver, you know, and then there's sort of medium
sized cities, you know, around. So I thought, well, I can, I'm
going to ride my bike across Canada in the summer of 2014.
So I started in St. John's, NL on Canada Day, which
is July 1st. And I rode all the way back to
Vancouver, so 8700 kilometers doing 24 events with the best
(18:16):
chefs in the country. And we founded Chefs for Oceans,
basically a collective of chefs that are having deep
conversations around healthy lakes, oceans and rivers,
sustainable seafood, and the future of our oceans and what
our menus will and might look like and truthfully need to look
(18:37):
like in the future. We only eat 4 species of fish in
North America, something white, something pink, something red.
And by far the most consumed seafood in North America is
shrimp, often farmed often somewhere else, whether it's
Bangladesh or Vietnam or whatever.
So you know, whitefish, cod or halibuts, you know, you know,
orange fish or you know, pink fish, salmon and red fish, tuna,
(19:00):
right? So we only eat 4 things.
And you know, there's, I mean, there's 10,000 edible plants in
the ocean. Like we should be eating more
seaweed and more sea vegetables.But unfortunately in North
America, because we don't have aton of historical culture, we
like square chunks of flavorlessprotein in the middle of our
plate. And we need to, we need to
diversify that. Yeah.
(19:21):
And, and how was this, I mean that how was this interest bond?
Because I mean, I mean knowing all this researching all of this
was at some point of, of cardio that you had time for this or
how did you get a time out for this?
Was it just curiosity? Like how do you become an expert
on this topic? Yeah, I mean, it started slowly.
You know, I became a founding member of Ocean Wise in 2005,
founding chef member and then over the next sort of, you know,
(19:44):
bunch of years, kind of became deeply involved in the work.
I was born on a farm in the Okanogan Valley, which is kind
of where our where our like wineregion is here in British
Columbia. And then I was raised on the
ocean over on Vancouver Island. And so, you know, grew up
fishing for salmon with my dad. So I think I was just like
(20:07):
committed to farmers and fishersfrom a young age.
That's one of the reasons maybe why I.
Sort of fell into culinary arts because I've just been
surrounded by food my whole life.
And then I don't know, like we British Columbia is a is we live
in a rainforest. So we live on the ocean
(20:28):
surrounded by mountains and the rainforest.
So like the environment is everyday of our life.
And so when the like today we have these massive forest fires
that are burning in the United States and coming up here and
forest fire season is now a thing every year.
And like it's like literally theskies are blanketed in forest
(20:51):
fire smoke right now in Vancouver.
And so I don't know that there'sa more important conversation
then, you know, the health of our food system, our fishers,
our farmers, our makers, our artisans, our processors, and of
course, the species that we, youknow, are fortunate enough to
either raise right, like animalson land or animals in the ocean
or harvest the the fish that we catch.
(21:12):
You know, and chefs have this unique sort of opportunity to be
a conduit to those conversations.
Yeah, but just just the just thesentence you finished on right,
Ned. So I have this two faceted
question for you. First of all, I believe with
these initiatives, with these movements, you do end up working
with governmental organization, research institutes, which are
also, you know, tracking water temperatures and migration of
(21:35):
fishers, the the, the climate change within their, the
microclimate they have within the oceans.
So first question is how much dothese people who are into these
more scientific technical thingsof the world believe chefs can
contribute to this improvement, change, movement, whatever you
call it? And how many chefs do you speak
to? I think that the world counts
(21:56):
with their help to to fix these changes.
Is there an understandable, is it an understood thing that
chefs do have a role to play in this or do you?
A lot of work of yours is also to convince people that chefs do
have to take up on these these challenges.
Yeah, it's a, it's a really goodquestion.
I mean, I've been fortunate to be surrounded by really
passionate and committed chefs for quite a long time.
(22:17):
Because I think when you grow upin the environment the way we do
here, you know, it's it's all ofus are sort of in that
conversation. We're constantly talking about
the environment, forestry, fisheries, fisheries.
You know, we have a lot of like pretty strong activist movement
here. You know, one of the world's
most famous scientists, David Suzuki is based in in British
(22:40):
Columbia and he's a huge voice for for the last couple of
generations here in this country.
You know, a friend of mine who Co founded ocean wise just got
the order of Canada, which is like the highest order in our
country for like work in sustainability.
I actually this this label on myarm.
So I'm the chef for the, I'm thechef for our province.
(23:01):
So I do all kinds of work in, inand around, you know, as I said,
farmers and fishers and makers and artisans and processors.
So like basically promoting British Columbia food and
Canadian food to Canadians because we import a ton, of
course, because that's what's delicious about our, our world.
But we also have tons of of those people, you know, in our
(23:21):
own backyards. I think food specifically and as
and then maybe a dotted line to chefs is like a safe place to
have a conversation about a healthy environment.
Like whether it's a family meal,whether it's a shared meal with
a bunch of CE OS, whether it's ashared meal with a bunch of
(23:42):
politicians, you know, usually you a lot gets done around the
dinner table or the quote UN quote dinner table.
And I've worked with politiciansacross the country.
I've worked with politicians in the United States.
I've travelled the world on the backs of sustainable seafood,
whether it be to Portugal or Ireland or Spain or Tokyo or
(24:02):
Vietnam or, you know, like all over the place learning about
seafood, mostly because we bringthat stuff here, like we import
it. And so we want to go back to the
source and sort of understand, like, how do they farm shrimp
and shrimp in Bangladesh? How do they farm shrimp in
Vietnam? Where's the tuna fishery in the
(24:22):
Philippines? Do you know what I mean?
Like, we like, obviously Japanese culture is huge right
now globally, and we import a ton of seafood from Japan.
We also have a huge Japanese diaspora here.
So I think that chefs just have almost like a disarming ability
to give you something delicious,delicious to eat.
(24:44):
And if I put something tasty in your belly, you're going to like
me. And if you like me, you're going
to listen to my message. Right.
And, and how much of this is reverse engineer?
Because I work with around the companies over here through my
work, which is basically they have a fish farm for, for sea
bass in the Canary Islands. It's called Aquanaria.
And now this brand works a lot. I mean, they used to work first
(25:05):
only with this sea bass. They're they're growing.
It's not a wild sea bass. It's one that they're culturing.
And they used to work primarily on improving the the yield from
it and kind of making recipes onand off working with chefs, but
not really like not very much focusing on chefs as their
representatives. And now they have taken this new
kind of curve where they have realized when the chef asks the
(25:27):
wholesaler or the produce or the, OR the supplier for this
specific chef, they have this kind of power to kind of get
onto this country's map of, of being being on their, on their
markets. You know, So how much of that
effect do you see in kinds of convincing that you're doing?
Because I guess you'd also kind of rating which season, what
fish is better or which produceris kind of when you're going and
visiting all these farms who areusing better methods.
(25:48):
How much of A say does a chef have when they ask for these?
This produce does do the choicesthat a chef makes on a menu.
How much does it affect even though I I believe the chef
can't see it, which is why, which is what makes it difficult
to convince them that the choices you make every day in
ordering for a restaurant do make a difference on the the
global environment. I How?
What would you like to say aboutthat?
I think that chefs are part of the team.
(26:10):
Like for me, I use marine biologists, I use science, I use
ratings systems like what I would call like as I mentioned
to you earlier, the arms of the octopus, like I call it the
ocean guardians, right? So like it's not just chefs,
it's all these other people has to be based in data and science.
(26:31):
So I like, I was literally talking to a doctor this morning
on my walk with my dog on the East Coast of Canada about tuna
fisheries because I have a question, you know, like I have
these guys on speed dial and they're like doctors in science
for marine biology, right? I never thought that that would
be a conversation that I'd be having on the regular.
(26:51):
But it's incredibly important because I want to be confident
that when I put something on my menu, I have done the work I
have done, put in the research or, you know, found the research
and done the work. And and so, yeah, I call it the
Ocean Guardians. You know, it's a collection of
people that I need to be able tomake the best decision and then
I can be a leader for my peer group and go and teach and share
(27:15):
and tell them through traditional and social media,
etcetera. I mean, it's complicated, right?
Seafood at the end of the day isa marketed commodity, whether
it's fished or farmed, right? Whether it's, you know, the what
I forget what it's called. Oh yeah.
Or a king, this famous salmon that's farmed in New Zealand,
that it has a huge footprint here in or huge presence here in
(27:37):
North America. Like that's a, that's a, you
know, a marketing, a brilliant marketing ploy, right?
Like the here's a fish. It has, you know, they put a
name on it. It's high quality and they can
ship it all over the world. Maybe like your sea bass.
You know, I, I would say the foundation of the work that I do
actually came from early, late 1990s.
(27:57):
I was running a kitchen in Toronto and our #1 fish was
Chilean sea bass. We sold it so much, we sold it
to basically, you know, destruction, depletion, right?
And it became the, it became theposter child for sustainability.
Like you take it off your menus right now because we are, we are
(28:19):
fishing this Patagonian tooth fish to extinction.
And then basically we did stop and they've recovered the
fishery a little bit, but we just shifted our focus to other
fish, right? I mean, now we have like wild
Alaskan black cod is called sablefish here in British
Columbia. It's basically a very similar
fish. Again, it's because N Americans
(28:39):
want square chunks of whitefish,pinkfish, red fish, or by far
the most consumed seafood. As I said, is, is shrimp, right?
Often farmed. So yeah, it's, I think chefs
are, you know, on my hands, one of the five guardians that I
sort of rely on for, for knowledge.
(29:01):
Yeah. And how do you see the role of
education there? Because one thing is you walk up
to a chef who's already running a restaurant, has already a lot
to care about and then has to kind of listen to you.
And they have to have, I think they have to have a personal
drive and a commitment to the values.
They have to align their values to be wanting to do this.
I would say it's I don't think it can be an extra work, but it
does require kind of any choice you make is requires of time
(29:23):
from your schedule, right. And how do you see the job of
culinary schools or places whichcould put this kind of an
education early on? Have you tried like tapping onto
these sources of education? Yeah, I mean, gosh, it's a bit
of a disappointing question slash answer because I don't
think culinary schools have doneenough.
And I actually don't think, you know, it's an interesting
(29:47):
dynamic. Often culinary schools have a
lot of older guard chefs runningtheir programs.
Maybe they haven't been they, you know, they've, they've been
out of the game for quite a longtimes.
They're not their, their fingersaren't on the pulse today.
And so, you know, how important is sustainable seafood, you
know, and then they're running abusiness, right?
(30:08):
And so they need to truthfully choose the cheapest fish for
their students to use because they're trying to make money,
right? Like that's what it kind of
comes down to. I definitely see culinary
schools as a huge opportunity for education.
I don't see it happening very much, unfortunately, not the
ones that I'm close to. I wish they did a better job.
I mean, education is key. It's, you know, for me, why do I
(30:33):
do this work? No one pays me to, to, to care
about the oceans. I care about the oceans because
I care about the oceans, right. And, and as a, you know, as a
result of that, I, I have knowledge.
I get to choose the best qualityand best the quote UN quote,
most sustainable fish for my menus.
Like to me that's value. And I think I know that my
(30:54):
guests find it valuable. When I was running The Four
Seasons Kitchen, you know, we, we had a sustainable seafood
restaurant and when I took it over, it was doing about
$5,000,000 a year in revenue. When I left five years later, it
was doing $11 million in revenue.
Why? Because we were by default only
serving sustainable seafood. So our customers knew the
(31:17):
quality was high. Our customers knew that they
were making the best choice whenthey walked in the front door.
That's that's why we grew the business.
People care. They don't necessarily want to
like see you preaching it to their faces all the time.
They want to just be able to make the right decision, you
know, and like if you make it easy for them to make the right
(31:38):
decision, most of the time they'll be able to do that as
long as it's not not crazy expensive.
I mean, seafood, like the price in seafood is like this, right?
You can get dirt cheap seafood and you can get, you know, super
high-priced seafood. Unfortunately, in North America,
we're addicted to cheap, right? And there's no such thing as
cheap food. Like something somewhere,
(31:59):
someone has paid the price for that thing to be cheap.
Whether it's from another country, you know, whether it's,
you know, poorly regulated, whether there's no science, like
the ocean is big man covers 2/3 of the planet.
Like half the stuff that goes onout there.
We have no idea. Definitely.
And and how do you see your liferight now net?
Because I think as you mentionedright this morning, going for a
(32:20):
walk and then having this, this,this doubt about the whole tuna
thing that you mentioned. How is life right now?
Do you feel still consider yourself a chef?
I know you mentioned the chef are a core of these, these this
kind of a system that you're building, But how far is it from
the life that you had of just say, say, working in the hotel
as you as you were like running operations over there, seeing
diners? A lot of chefs on the podcast
have also mentioned that they miss this kind of instant
(32:42):
gratification, which you get while you're serving guests and
you get their feedback and this job that you're doing right now,
which I think can be a lot of time disappointing.
A lot of time you could feel like you're not, you're not
getting to to reach what you wanted to.
How is this dynamic in your personal professional life?
Well then firstly, there's no perfect.
I mean, you know, do I miss, do I miss the kitchen?
Absolutely. Do I want to be back in the
(33:04):
kitchen 70 hours a week? Definitely not.
You know what I mean? Like I'm wearing a chef's
jacket. I love being a chef.
I am in the kitchen at least three days a week somewhere,
right? Working on some project doing,
you know, I do a bunch of different things.
And so I could have only done this now or for the last 10
(33:24):
years, for the 1st 10 years, I was becoming a chef of finding
my way, finding my voice. I still know that when I walk
into the kitchen, I'm one of thebest cooks in that kitchen.
That's important to me. And I also know that I want to
still be able to be relevant in my profession, my craft, right?
Because if I'm not relevant in my craft, then why would the
(33:46):
next generation, the Vishes or the two Shahs or the Imran's,
why would they listen to me, right?
Like they'll be like, Oh yeah, he's just, he's a, you know, he
hasn't been in the kitchen forever.
Like no respect. You know, whatever, right?
Like I think it's important. I feel like I'm sort of a in two
worlds, right? I'm in the sustainability
advocacy world, education, and I'm also in the culinary world.
(34:09):
And I don't want to give either of them up because I love
working in restaurants. I love pre shift, I love teams,
I love front of house. I love, you know, getting in the
dish area of every once in a while.
I love expediting. I, you know, I love talking to
my suppliers. I don't want to do it 70 hours a
week. So I've kind of feel really
(34:29):
fortunate that I can do a littlebit of both.
And, and impact wise, what do you think that because that was
the one topic that comes a lot on the podcast.
Because a lot of people I, I interview on the podcast are
people who were say working in restaurant or working in hotel.
And then they are now kind of they feel this plunge of being
able to impact. Maybe a lot of it is not even
visible. You know, like today, maybe
there are people making choices right now on ordering something
(34:51):
which you have no idea about, but they are making this
improved choice because of goingthrough a session with you or a
workshop with you or going through a produce that has been,
but you have seen the, the back end of it.
How does that? Is that some sort of
gratification that also compensates for this missing the
kitchen drive or the heat or this working in restaurants?
Yeah, I don't know if you can see behind me there over there.
That's my cookbook. And now we can.
(35:12):
In the corner, yeah, I wrote that right.
I wrote that book in 2017. It's called Lure.
I want to lure. I want to lure people.
Like fishing lure, right? I want to lure people into the
conversation of sustainable seafood impact.
Have we made an impact? Absolutely.
At scale? I'm not sure.
(35:34):
But I know that if I have impacted only a couple dozen
people in my profession, they can then impact a couple dozen
and a couple dozen and a couple dozen.
No one, I mean, very few people are going to be able to have
global impact. You know, like you'd mentioned
Noma before, like maybe Renee, Renee has global impact.
(35:56):
There's a few other chefs that might have global impact pact,
right? But most of us are doing work in
our small communities in our small country or our small
province or our small territory.And we're just trying to have
impact in our own universe. And for me, I'm pretty proud of
that because we have a huge country.
It's a, you know, it's a thoughtful country that's trying
(36:19):
to find its way and in how we treated our Indigenous and First
Nations peoples. We're going through sort of
reconciliation right now, you know, nationally and that's
going to take generations because of the terrible things
that we did to to our Indigenousand First Nations peoples.
You know, we have so much to learn from them.
We have so much to learn from our peers around the world.
(36:40):
And I think that like, I feel value in the work that I do.
I, it makes me, keeps me engagedand makes me feel like I want to
go forward. I don't need, I mean, it's nice
to be recognized, but like most of the work we do is like
unrecognized, right? It's just you're championing
something that matters to you. And to me, that is like, that's
(37:04):
a core value as a human, you know, like, like doing good
things for the environment and for the ecosystem and for the
community that you love. There's value in there.
Doesn't pay the bills always, but it certainly fills my
bucket. And, you know, I just, I feel
fortunate. I'm, you know, I, I love
speaking on it. I love educating on it.
(37:25):
I love, you know, I love like putting my boots on the ground
of, you know, fish farms or fisheries, you know, just trying
to gain knowledge and, and, and then share that knowledge.
You know, I've spoken at the UN before.
I've spoken at all kinds of conferences and symposiums all
over the world on this work. Like it takes hundreds,
(37:47):
thousands of us to continue to do this work for us to have
impact. You know, are the fisheries that
I'm championing improving? Do I have much impact over that?
Not really. I mean, of course not, right.
But the people that are going toa restaurant and looking for,
you know, wild BC salmon insteadof wild Russian salmon or, you
(38:09):
know, not that it matters necessarily, but like it's not
either or. But like the conversation
around, you know, borders and the conversation around farmed
and wild, fresh and frozen, sustainable like these.
It's a big conversation and I think someone goes to a grocery
store or a restaurant and they make a better choice because of
(38:29):
something they heard me say. That's a win for me.
Yeah, it's a beautiful feeling, right?
I think, I think all that you'veexplained is only possible
because you have to believe, as you said, you have to believe in
the you have to believe in the vision and the value and the
purpose. And I think, yeah, it's
beautiful listening to you and how much how much it's For me,
it's always really inspiring to listen to all the chefs on this
podcast and how people who a lotof the industry, a lot of these
(38:53):
research centers and governmentsdo not count on them a lot.
For a long time, chefs were seenas creative, but only within
their boundary of putting thingsin a plate and seen as seen as a
blue collar job. As you said in the beginning of
the career, it is a lot of replicating and multiplying.
That was what their scope was limited to.
But it's always nice to hear people like you and how how
impactful and how scalable this kind of a vision can be.
(39:16):
And, and just on that, I would like to get your closing
thoughts on what kind of advice would you give to other chefs
who are listening to this? Because as I said, we've had
people like Nick from Canada himself who's doing things with
foraging. We had Max few years ago, few
weeks ago, who's doing creating a chocolate replacement through
brewery vases. A lot of these ideas coming from
people who were not expected to do these kind of jobs.
They were expected to stay in kitchens and still be feeding
(39:39):
diners. What kind of an advice would you
give to somebody who's listening, who maybe has a
vision like yours, but they don't really have the courage to
be able to dedicate time to it as you said you could.
Only you can only do this right now because you gave up on
working 70 hours, 70 hours a week.
What kind of advice would you give to such people?
Yeah, well, first of all, I loveNick.
I've known Nick for years. And one of my most valued
(40:02):
memories from my ride across Canada was at his kitchen with
Michael, with Michael Smith at the end of the fortune.
You know it's a small community in Canada, right?
I mean, yeah, I would say like it's important to recognize my
privilege again because. I can afford through decades of
hard work to now be in this position where I can invest in
(40:27):
myself to continue to do this work.
Like if I want to fly to, you know, Toronto or Halifax or
Spain or Boston or, you know, Shenzhen to the seafood show, I
can do that without having to worry that my rent's not going
to get paid right. So that that privilege is
(40:47):
important to recognize. I have always done that, even
when I couldn't afford it because I just have this foolish
belief that more for than foolish belief, I have this like
this desire and this like pull to be a part of it because I I
want to rub shoulders with thosepeople, learn from them and then
(41:10):
be able to to share it. I don't know where the return on
investments going to be, but I know that by doing it, it will
have a return on investment at some point.
You know, my advice to chefs is,well, firstly, invest in your
career for at least a decade in the thing that you want to be
good at first. I mean, my careers had multiple
(41:32):
like layers from super fine dining to hotels to premium
casual and now advocacy. And I'm working in healthcare
and I'm doing some other things.Like none of us are going to
have one career doing the same thing for 40 years like that.
Just, you know, that that doesn't exist in in in the same
way that maybe it did, you know,after World War 2 for a lot of
our, you know, grandparents, youknow, doing the same thing,
(41:53):
working for the same company, that kind of idea.
You know, I think that's what's so great about food is that you
could work in hundreds of different jobs.
Try and you know my advice, try and find your passion and just
dive as deep into it as you possibly can and take risks,
invest in yourself, bet on yourself, continue to like put
yourself in the mix in the middle of the conversations with
(42:15):
the biggest people you can find,like the biggest players, you
know, like my I'm fascinated by marine biologists because they
have so much to share with me about what happens under the
ocean that no humans even think about.
You know, when you look at it ocean, you just think that looks
like a beautiful ocean and there's a sunset or a sunrise.
You don't think about, you know,the thousands of things that are
(42:37):
happening underneath, you know, right now and the fact that
boats are pillaging the ocean all over the planet.
You know, like it's, as I said, overfishing and climate change,
the two largest threats that face our world's oceans.
I think that chefs can have something to do with those
conversations. And we can impact how people
choose seafood into the future. And I hope that people follow us
(42:59):
because I don't want to wear this hat forever.
I want a bunch of great young chefs to, to, you know, take the
torch for me when I, when I, when I hand it off to them,
whenever that may be. Yeah, I know for sure.
I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm definitelygoing to link your work into
the, into the show notes. And I, I hope and I, I don't
know, I know for the fact that the listeners will be inspired
to listen to what you've shared right now.
And hopefully we can see them aspeople who lead this kind of the
(43:21):
moment that you're creating overhere.
And finally, I would like to thank you, Ned.
I think you've shown us that a chef's role can go much beyond
just the past and expediting andbuilding restaurants.
Also, I will take very take noteon the fact that you said, which
is very important. I think calculating your risks
and taking a risk that is calculated and also building
yourself into into the carrier and not just jumping things
(43:44):
because you wish or you have passion for, but kind of
building that belief slowly and gradually.
So thank you so much and I hope to see a lot of work coming out
of you and to share it with the platform.
Thank you for calling. Thanks.
Have an awesome day and look forward to collaborating with
you again.
So hello, everyone, and welcome back to Fugitive Chefs, this
show about chefs and people in food, basically who have stepped
outside traditional kitchens to create something more
meaningful, more personal, more sustainable in many cases.
And today's guest is Chef Ned Bells.
Thanks and thanks for accepting the invitation and welcome to
the podcast. Good day.
How are you for con? Nice to nice to be here and
thanks very much for for having me on.
(00:22):
Now it's a pleasure. So just to tell you a little
more about about you Ned to the people.
But what I know about you already is I mean, that is based
in Canada. He's a Canadian chef to cater
and also a passionate advocate for sustainable seafood.
I think that's the biggest message that I've seen from all
your all your posts be social media or the reports that I've
seen about you. What I've seen is that your
journey has taken you from say top restaurants to finding
(00:45):
something called chefs for Oceans.
And I want to know more about it.
During this conversation, you'vealso worked with leading
culinary programs and working a lot with protecting these
oceans, but through food. So basically in this episode,
we'll talk a little about what can a chef's purpose be to go
beyond the kitchen and do do activism like this?
And how does activism actually welcome profiles, profiles like
(01:05):
yours, How education welcomes profiles like yours?
And how can we actually build A food system that sustains both
people and the planet and the person connecting these is
somebody like your your profile.But before we dive into all of
that, Ned, can you tell us like little more about how did you
end up into cooking as a career?Like why was cooking your choice
of career? Absolutely.
Well, yeah, there's so much to talk about.
(01:27):
I mean, I my path was probably pretty similar to very many
chefs. You know, I started my very
first job at the age of 14, was washing dishes in the local
restaurant. You know, kind of, I don't know,
I felt, I felt at home in in therestaurant community, the family
of restaurants. You know, my I came from a
(01:48):
divorced parents and a broken home.
So, you know, the fact that I had these, this group of, of
great people to work with and kind of, you know, lean on in
my, in my teenage years became quite valuable to me.
And I really just fell in love with hospitality, to be honest.
You know, I, I, I love, I mean, you know, washing dishes,
(02:08):
probably the most important job in the kitchen.
But like from there, you know, then you, you recognize that
food, putting food on a plate is, you know, it has value to it
and you're feeding people and you get, get feedback every
single meal you serve, get some feedback, both positive and
constructive from your patients and, or sorry from your guests.
And, you know, then, I don't know, after graduating high
(02:30):
school, I just, I just knew I wanted to go into the culinary
arts. I, I went to culinary school.
You know, this was a long time ago, before Food Network even
existed here in North America. And so I really went to school
to be a chef, not to be, you know, a, you know, a celebrity
chef or something on television.Like I wanted to cook.
And, you know, kind of in North America, like a very, you know,
(02:54):
Western European sort of hierarchical kitchen where you
have, you know, one chef at the top wearing a big tall hat.
And, you know, you kind of work under him because truthfully, a
lot of them chefs back then werewere men.
And it was very kind of rooted in the sort of structure of the
(03:15):
military. You know, you had the big chief
and then you had everybody else that sort of fell underneath
them. But I, you know, I, I, I felt at
home in that environment becauseI, I enjoyed the structure, I
enjoyed the direction. I probably even thrived on some
of the sort of like, I don't want to say abuse, but like, you
(03:39):
know, the kind of the high expectation and the kind of, you
know, the pressure to perform. I really, I really thrived on
that. And so, you know, that was, I
mean, I'm 52 years old. So I've been in the kitchen, you
know, well over 30 years now. And I just, I just love what I
do. I feel very fortunate to to be a
(04:00):
cook. Yeah, that's, I mean, that
sounds quite, quite a journey, right.
And I mean, before we get into like what got you out of the
kitchen, I would really like to hear more about like what the
people, what the people or I don't know, people you were
inspiring, people who were inspiring for you or kind of
people who you got to work with,which you would like to kind of
share with us. What did you learn in those
years? When you see those first few
years in the kitchens? How was?
(04:20):
How was it for you? Yeah, I was really lucky.
I I did my apprenticeship at theat the best French restaurant in
Vancouver, a restaurant that's still around 40 years later.
The, the chef there is my mentor, Chef Michelle Jacob.
He's from Alsace in France. And he's, you know, that classic
sort of French chef, you know, very strict, very high
(04:41):
expectations. He's the only man I still call
chef because he will always be my chef because you know, you do
an apprenticeship for three years underneath somebody and
you know, you kind of, you go to, you go to battle, you go to
war for them. And you know, he's still a big,
big part of my life today. He's my mentor and has been my
whole career. And I was really lucky.
(05:02):
I, you know, I getting an apprenticeship like I did at
this restaurant in Vancouver wasI sort of liken it to going to
Harvard. It's sort of like it's the best
of the best, you know, like you,you know, when you work for,
for, for someone like that and you and you put in the time, you
put in the years, no one can ever take that foundation away
(05:23):
from you. So my early education and my
early sort of, I guess, setting of my culinary journey was
really, really important to me Doesn't exist the same anymore.
You know, the culinary field haschanged immensely.
You don't need to do a traditional apprenticeship to be
an incredible chef. But back then, it was really the
(05:43):
only path you could take. You know, if you want to be a
chef wearing a white jacket likethis, you know, you have to work
for, you know, a great chef and,you know, put your head down,
shut up and do the job. You know, and I you know, there
was some good and some bad, but for me there was far more good
than than anything else. Yeah.
(06:04):
And how do you process that? Because while you were talking
about it before, you said like it's, it's not like this
anymore. I was curious myself because
when you speak about the way youlook up to your mentor, for
example, and the way you also mentioned how I know and it's,
it's normal to accept that a lotof us function really good under
under pressure. And we kind of wanted that
pressure. We'd like that pressure,
especially when it's with peoplearound you who are also going
through the same. So there's empathy and that is
(06:25):
kind of diving in that. But how do you see that when I
think later on in your career you also become somebody who
people are other, others are looking up to people who are
depending on you or you're training them or you are setting
the rules of the kitchen. How does that transition work
for you? Seeing today's scenario where
kitchens maybe do not accept that much, Maybe people speak up
before this kind of pressure breaks down.
(06:46):
How do you see this transformation?
Because a lot of chefs have spoken to who are who are
younger, say that the the older generation of the ones who have
been longer years in the kitchenwant us to just go through it
because it was difficult for them.
It should be difficult for everybody else.
How do you see that transition within your span of kitchen
cardio? Yes, certainly.
You know, I I really looked at my career like the first ten
(07:08):
years were me becoming a chef. After that I then was able to
become my version of a chef. So early days, you just repeat
what you saw. So you do similar things to what
you sort of you know, were taught or trained or you know,
maybe how you were spoken to or you know, maybe how how you were
(07:31):
treated, maybe in the back of your mind knowing that some of
it was inappropriate and some ofit what you know wasn't cool
even back then. But then when you start running
your own kitchens in your sort of late, you know, mid to late
20s and into your 30s, you realize I don't want to run my
kitchens like that because that's just not who I am as a
(07:52):
person. I bring kindness.
I bring thoughtfulness. I, I know that I get, you know,
I get more, you know, bees with honey than I do, you know, with,
with anything else. I think I've seen like the bad,
so to speak, and now I've seen the transition to the slightly
better. You know, I wouldn't say we're
(08:14):
where we need to be in North America when it comes to how
certain kitchens are run. It's a very toxic environment.
Or it can be, you know, I'm, I'ma white middle-aged man and I
was trained by a white middle-aged man.
So there's an incredible amount of privilege that that I
recognize. And so how can I create an
(08:35):
environment in my kitchens whereI have diversity, where I have
cultural influence, whether, youknow, indigenous cuisine and
culture. And an impact is huge here in
British Columbia on the western side of Canada where I live, you
know, the indigenous peoples have been here for 12,000 years,
a heck of a lot longer than we as Canadians have been in this
(08:55):
country of only 150 years. the US is only 250 years.
So like we have a ton to learn and atone for and immigration
has been the birth of our country.
I mean, everybody from Western Europe that came here and then
everybody from all over the place that came here, whether it
be the Chinese, whether it be the South Asians, whether it be
(09:17):
people from, you know, all over the planet that sort of migrated
to North America over the last couple 100 years.
Really that, you know, that's sort of like why my food is what
I call globally inspired and locally created because it's
inspired by all these great flavors and these great people
bringing their flavors here. Then it's using local
(09:37):
ingredients from this place to sort of make it unique to this
place. And so I try really hard and,
and I think I've been relativelysuccessful at creating
environments in my restaurants and in my kitchens where
kindness, joy, you know, high expectation, you know, we, we
(09:58):
don't, we don't allow sort of mistakes to be made, but we
don't like scream and yell at people when they make those
mistakes like those days should have never been, but they did
for decades. We have to and are slowly moving
past to that. And I think you're seeing that
in Michelin restaurants. You're seeing that in premium
(10:19):
casual restaurants, certainly independent restaurants, that if
you want to keep good people, you got to treat them properly.
No, definitely. And I think, I think what makes
it easier is, is the points you mentioned.
I feel the ones I really liked are the recognition, I mean
recognition of privilege as you said, or recognition of when is
it your place to have an opinion, When is it not your
place to have an opinion. So whence you can't have an
opinion. And then you still know that,
(10:40):
you know, at that point, my, as you said, I was becoming a chef
and that was a process you had to go through.
But then again, you there is there's a point in life, in
kitchen career where you come toa certain point where you can
make these choices and when you're the one who's setting the
rules of the game. And I think, yeah, it's very
inspiring to to hear all of this, this whole context of how
you have personally taken this upon because I think a lot of
chefs in the industry, I mean, firstly, I think the mission
(11:01):
didn't once because the eyes area bigger eyes on them, I guess.
And there's a more amount of younger people inter interning
over there or starting over there.
So they have the special, but not everybody does this job
well, I feel. So it's it's very inspiring to
hear how you've what's your takeon it?
It's really interesting, you know, Michelin only came to
Vancouver three or four years ago.
I think we have, I think 8, only8 Michelin one star restaurants
(11:26):
in Vancouver and it's a world class city.
You know, we've had restaurants over the last couple of decades
that could and should have been Michelin recommended or Michelin
starred. But we didn't have Michelin here
because as you know, Michelin isa bit of a pay to play model
where you, you know, usually have to like invite them here
and write them a big check. Anyway, a lot of the first
(11:48):
generation of Michelin chefs were all white.
And so in Vancouver and now Steam chefs like, you know, I
know that you just interviewed Imran in Toronto and you have
this fantastic chef here named Tushar and this other fantastic
chef named Vish, like Michelin level guys, you know, from other
places, born in other places, but now sort of live here and
(12:11):
are putting incredible food on the plate.
And so it's no longer a Western lens that that dictates.
It's no longer only a Western European lens that dictates what
Michelin is. And Michelin's been progressive
for a long time. I mean, you could go to Hong
Kong and have a Michelin one star bowl of wanton soup or you
(12:31):
know, Michelin bowl of ramen in in Tokyo, but it in Vancouver,
it's still very kind of super fine dining, super small
restaurant, 4050 seats maximum. You know, like I think we we're
going to see that will continue to broaden.
And I think, I mean, that's a whole other conversation.
Is Michelin still relevant? Who knows?
(12:52):
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. No, exactly.
Yeah. I mean, I couldn't agree more
with what all you're saying, butjust to just to get back on
this, this idea of the podcast, because now we have kind of
established where where your beginnings of your career was
and what your career looked like.
And then what is today like? Tell us a little about what is
what is it that you do everyday?How do you define the job that
you do today? Yeah, so it's, it's a bit of a
(13:14):
journey as to how I, how I got to where I am.
So I, I was the executive chef for The Four Seasons Hotel for,
for five plus years back from 2011 to 2017.
And during that time we became the first luxury hotel in the
country. So in Canada to become 100%
(13:34):
ocean wise, which means all of the seafood that we serve on our
menu. We were a seafood restaurant was
ocean wise recommended, which was very rare.
And you know, hence the first, first one ever.
Back in 1999, Monterey, CA, the Seafood Watch program was
started by the Monterey Bay Aquarium and it was basically
(13:56):
the first a sustainability ratings system in North America.
MSC, the Marine Stewardship Council started in London years
ago before, but in North America, 1999 was basically the
birth of the sustainable seafoodmovement.
But that was just in the US in had to wait another six years.
(14:20):
2005 we started a program calledOcean Wise and it was a
sustainable seafood program witha clear focus on chefs, our
restaurants and then our suppliers.
So our suppliers could be our fishers, our fishmongers or our
big suppliers that drive, drive the seafood from, you know, from
(14:41):
the Wharf to, to our restaurants.
And so I, we have a very big country, you know, 13 provinces,
provinces and territories. You know, it's 4000 kilometers
tall, 9000 kilometers wide. Like it's a huge place.
We have, you know, seafood on the East Coast, seafood on the
West Coast, seafood north of us.So we have the Atlantic Ocean,
(15:02):
the Arctic Ocean and the PacificOcean surround our country.
And then we have these huge bodies of water in the middle of
it, the Great Lakes, where we have all these inland fisheries.
So, you know, we're one of the only places in the world that
has all these oceans that collide on the same country.
So, you know, chefs are pulling seafood from the East Coast,
(15:23):
from the West Coast, not so muchfrom the north, but slowly from
the north. So I started to recognize that
it was, you know, we as chefs had this unique opportunity to
engage with each other and then the people that we feed on the
importance of choosing sustainable seafood, healthy
lakes, oceans and rivers. You know, every second breath we
take comes from the ocean. And arguably the birth of our
(15:46):
nation, the birth of Canada, wason the backs of the fishing
industry on the East Coast. So Newfoundland and the coastal
shores of the East Coast. A couple of 100 years ago,
people came here from Spain, from Europe, from Portugal to
fish for a cod and then they would take it back to Europe.
I mean, you've heard of salt codbacalao before.
(16:06):
That's Canadian fish, right? So, but of course, it wasn't
Canada back then. It was just a place to fish.
And so, you know, Canada is an extractive country.
Mine minerals. We cut down trees for forestry.
You know, furs and fish and forests were the birth of our
nation. And so, you know, as we spread
(16:29):
West across Canada over, you know, the last couple of
hundreds of years, we landed on the West Coast.
And we're the only place on the planet that has five unique
species of wild Pacific salmon. Wild Pacific wild Pacific salmon
is a keystone species. It is so incredibly important to
the entire health of our ecosystem.
(16:50):
Trees, whales, bears, eagles, and humans need wild salmon to
thrive because it's a circular ecosystem.
And so if you take too much of one of those things, the entire
ecosystem will collapse. And so overfishing and climate
change are the two largest threats that face our world's
oceans. The fishery on the East Coast
(17:10):
collapsed in the 1990s, and we're kind of facing the same
sort of thing on the West Coast with wild Pacific salmon right
now. Now, it's a very complex
conversation. It's difficult to really dive
into all the nuance, but I recognize that chefs could
potentially raise awareness and educate each other and at the
same time serve the highest quality and best seafood, Not
(17:34):
always the most expensive, but the highest quality and best
seafood. In fact, challenge our fishers
and our farmers to do to continue to do better or to do
better, etcetera. The one thing is, is that
because our country is so big, chefs on the West Coast don't
talk to the chefs on the East Coast.
And Toronto's the biggest city in Canada, followed by sort Of
(17:54):
Montreal, Vancouver, you know, and then there's sort of medium
sized cities, you know, around. So I thought, well, I can, I'm
going to ride my bike across Canada in the summer of 2014.
So I started in St. John's, NL on Canada Day, which
is July 1st. And I rode all the way back to
Vancouver, so 8700 kilometers doing 24 events with the best
(18:16):
chefs in the country. And we founded Chefs for Oceans,
basically a collective of chefs that are having deep
conversations around healthy lakes, oceans and rivers,
sustainable seafood, and the future of our oceans and what
our menus will and might look like and truthfully need to look
(18:37):
like in the future. We only eat 4 species of fish in
North America, something white, something pink, something red.
And by far the most consumed seafood in North America is
shrimp, often farmed often somewhere else, whether it's
Bangladesh or Vietnam or whatever.
So you know, whitefish, cod or halibuts, you know, you know,
orange fish or you know, pink fish, salmon and red fish, tuna,
(19:00):
right? So we only eat 4 things.
And you know, there's, I mean, there's 10,000 edible plants in
the ocean. Like we should be eating more
seaweed and more sea vegetables.But unfortunately in North
America, because we don't have aton of historical culture, we
like square chunks of flavorlessprotein in the middle of our
plate. And we need to, we need to
diversify that. Yeah.
(19:21):
And, and how was this, I mean that how was this interest bond?
Because I mean, I mean knowing all this researching all of this
was at some point of, of cardio that you had time for this or
how did you get a time out for this?
Was it just curiosity? Like how do you become an expert
on this topic? Yeah, I mean, it started slowly.
You know, I became a founding member of Ocean Wise in 2005,
founding chef member and then over the next sort of, you know,
(19:44):
bunch of years, kind of became deeply involved in the work.
I was born on a farm in the Okanogan Valley, which is kind
of where our where our like wineregion is here in British
Columbia. And then I was raised on the
ocean over on Vancouver Island. And so, you know, grew up
fishing for salmon with my dad. So I think I was just like
(20:07):
committed to farmers and fishersfrom a young age.
That's one of the reasons maybe why I.
Sort of fell into culinary arts because I've just been
surrounded by food my whole life.
And then I don't know, like we British Columbia is a is we live
in a rainforest. So we live on the ocean
(20:28):
surrounded by mountains and the rainforest.
So like the environment is everyday of our life.
And so when the like today we have these massive forest fires
that are burning in the United States and coming up here and
forest fire season is now a thing every year.
And like it's like literally theskies are blanketed in forest
(20:51):
fire smoke right now in Vancouver.
And so I don't know that there'sa more important conversation
then, you know, the health of our food system, our fishers,
our farmers, our makers, our artisans, our processors, and of
course, the species that we, youknow, are fortunate enough to
either raise right, like animalson land or animals in the ocean
or harvest the the fish that we catch.
(21:12):
You know, and chefs have this unique sort of opportunity to be
a conduit to those conversations.
Yeah, but just just the just thesentence you finished on right,
Ned. So I have this two faceted
question for you. First of all, I believe with
these initiatives, with these movements, you do end up working
with governmental organization, research institutes, which are
also, you know, tracking water temperatures and migration of
(21:35):
fishers, the the, the climate change within their, the
microclimate they have within the oceans.
So first question is how much dothese people who are into these
more scientific technical thingsof the world believe chefs can
contribute to this improvement, change, movement, whatever you
call it? And how many chefs do you speak
to? I think that the world counts
(21:56):
with their help to to fix these changes.
Is there an understandable, is it an understood thing that
chefs do have a role to play in this or do you?
A lot of work of yours is also to convince people that chefs do
have to take up on these these challenges.
Yeah, it's a, it's a really goodquestion.
I mean, I've been fortunate to be surrounded by really
passionate and committed chefs for quite a long time.
(22:17):
Because I think when you grow upin the environment the way we do
here, you know, it's it's all ofus are sort of in that
conversation. We're constantly talking about
the environment, forestry, fisheries, fisheries.
You know, we have a lot of like pretty strong activist movement
here. You know, one of the world's
most famous scientists, David Suzuki is based in in British
(22:40):
Columbia and he's a huge voice for for the last couple of
generations here in this country.
You know, a friend of mine who Co founded ocean wise just got
the order of Canada, which is like the highest order in our
country for like work in sustainability.
I actually this this label on myarm.
So I'm the chef for the, I'm thechef for our province.
(23:01):
So I do all kinds of work in, inand around, you know, as I said,
farmers and fishers and makers and artisans and processors.
So like basically promoting British Columbia food and
Canadian food to Canadians because we import a ton, of
course, because that's what's delicious about our, our world.
But we also have tons of of those people, you know, in our
(23:21):
own backyards. I think food specifically and as
and then maybe a dotted line to chefs is like a safe place to
have a conversation about a healthy environment.
Like whether it's a family meal,whether it's a shared meal with
a bunch of CE OS, whether it's ashared meal with a bunch of
(23:42):
politicians, you know, usually you a lot gets done around the
dinner table or the quote UN quote dinner table.
And I've worked with politiciansacross the country.
I've worked with politicians in the United States.
I've travelled the world on the backs of sustainable seafood,
whether it be to Portugal or Ireland or Spain or Tokyo or
(24:02):
Vietnam or, you know, like all over the place learning about
seafood, mostly because we bringthat stuff here, like we import
it. And so we want to go back to the
source and sort of understand, like, how do they farm shrimp
and shrimp in Bangladesh? How do they farm shrimp in
Vietnam? Where's the tuna fishery in the
(24:22):
Philippines? Do you know what I mean?
Like, we like, obviously Japanese culture is huge right
now globally, and we import a ton of seafood from Japan.
We also have a huge Japanese diaspora here.
So I think that chefs just have almost like a disarming ability
to give you something delicious,delicious to eat.
(24:44):
And if I put something tasty in your belly, you're going to like
me. And if you like me, you're going
to listen to my message. Right.
And, and how much of this is reverse engineer?
Because I work with around the companies over here through my
work, which is basically they have a fish farm for, for sea
bass in the Canary Islands. It's called Aquanaria.
And now this brand works a lot. I mean, they used to work first
(25:05):
only with this sea bass. They're they're growing.
It's not a wild sea bass. It's one that they're culturing.
And they used to work primarily on improving the the yield from
it and kind of making recipes onand off working with chefs, but
not really like not very much focusing on chefs as their
representatives. And now they have taken this new
kind of curve where they have realized when the chef asks the
(25:27):
wholesaler or the produce or the, OR the supplier for this
specific chef, they have this kind of power to kind of get
onto this country's map of, of being being on their, on their
markets. You know, So how much of that
effect do you see in kinds of convincing that you're doing?
Because I guess you'd also kind of rating which season, what
fish is better or which produceris kind of when you're going and
visiting all these farms who areusing better methods.
(25:48):
How much of A say does a chef have when they ask for these?
This produce does do the choicesthat a chef makes on a menu.
How much does it affect even though I I believe the chef
can't see it, which is why, which is what makes it difficult
to convince them that the choices you make every day in
ordering for a restaurant do make a difference on the the
global environment. I How?
What would you like to say aboutthat?
I think that chefs are part of the team.
(26:10):
Like for me, I use marine biologists, I use science, I use
ratings systems like what I would call like as I mentioned
to you earlier, the arms of the octopus, like I call it the
ocean guardians, right? So like it's not just chefs,
it's all these other people has to be based in data and science.
(26:31):
So I like, I was literally talking to a doctor this morning
on my walk with my dog on the East Coast of Canada about tuna
fisheries because I have a question, you know, like I have
these guys on speed dial and they're like doctors in science
for marine biology, right? I never thought that that would
be a conversation that I'd be having on the regular.
(26:51):
But it's incredibly important because I want to be confident
that when I put something on my menu, I have done the work I
have done, put in the research or, you know, found the research
and done the work. And and so, yeah, I call it the
Ocean Guardians. You know, it's a collection of
people that I need to be able tomake the best decision and then
I can be a leader for my peer group and go and teach and share
(27:15):
and tell them through traditional and social media,
etcetera. I mean, it's complicated, right?
Seafood at the end of the day isa marketed commodity, whether
it's fished or farmed, right? Whether it's, you know, the what
I forget what it's called. Oh yeah.
Or a king, this famous salmon that's farmed in New Zealand,
that it has a huge footprint here in or huge presence here in
(27:37):
North America. Like that's a, that's a, you
know, a marketing, a brilliant marketing ploy, right?
Like the here's a fish. It has, you know, they put a
name on it. It's high quality and they can
ship it all over the world. Maybe like your sea bass.
You know, I, I would say the foundation of the work that I do
actually came from early, late 1990s.
(27:57):
I was running a kitchen in Toronto and our #1 fish was
Chilean sea bass. We sold it so much, we sold it
to basically, you know, destruction, depletion, right?
And it became the, it became theposter child for sustainability.
Like you take it off your menus right now because we are, we are
(28:19):
fishing this Patagonian tooth fish to extinction.
And then basically we did stop and they've recovered the
fishery a little bit, but we just shifted our focus to other
fish, right? I mean, now we have like wild
Alaskan black cod is called sablefish here in British
Columbia. It's basically a very similar
fish. Again, it's because N Americans
(28:39):
want square chunks of whitefish,pinkfish, red fish, or by far
the most consumed seafood. As I said, is, is shrimp, right?
Often farmed. So yeah, it's, I think chefs
are, you know, on my hands, one of the five guardians that I
sort of rely on for, for knowledge.
(29:01):
Yeah. And how do you see the role of
education there? Because one thing is you walk up
to a chef who's already running a restaurant, has already a lot
to care about and then has to kind of listen to you.
And they have to have, I think they have to have a personal
drive and a commitment to the values.
They have to align their values to be wanting to do this.
I would say it's I don't think it can be an extra work, but it
does require kind of any choice you make is requires of time
(29:23):
from your schedule, right. And how do you see the job of
culinary schools or places whichcould put this kind of an
education early on? Have you tried like tapping onto
these sources of education? Yeah, I mean, gosh, it's a bit
of a disappointing question slash answer because I don't
think culinary schools have doneenough.
And I actually don't think, you know, it's an interesting
(29:47):
dynamic. Often culinary schools have a
lot of older guard chefs runningtheir programs.
Maybe they haven't been they, you know, they've, they've been
out of the game for quite a longtimes.
They're not their, their fingersaren't on the pulse today.
And so, you know, how important is sustainable seafood, you
know, and then they're running abusiness, right?
(30:08):
And so they need to truthfully choose the cheapest fish for
their students to use because they're trying to make money,
right? Like that's what it kind of
comes down to. I definitely see culinary
schools as a huge opportunity for education.
I don't see it happening very much, unfortunately, not the
ones that I'm close to. I wish they did a better job.
I mean, education is key. It's, you know, for me, why do I
(30:33):
do this work? No one pays me to, to, to care
about the oceans. I care about the oceans because
I care about the oceans, right. And, and as a, you know, as a
result of that, I, I have knowledge.
I get to choose the best qualityand best the quote UN quote,
most sustainable fish for my menus.
Like to me that's value. And I think I know that my
(30:54):
guests find it valuable. When I was running The Four
Seasons Kitchen, you know, we, we had a sustainable seafood
restaurant and when I took it over, it was doing about
$5,000,000 a year in revenue. When I left five years later, it
was doing $11 million in revenue.
Why? Because we were by default only
serving sustainable seafood. So our customers knew the
(31:17):
quality was high. Our customers knew that they
were making the best choice whenthey walked in the front door.
That's that's why we grew the business.
People care. They don't necessarily want to
like see you preaching it to their faces all the time.
They want to just be able to make the right decision, you
know, and like if you make it easy for them to make the right
(31:38):
decision, most of the time they'll be able to do that as
long as it's not not crazy expensive.
I mean, seafood, like the price in seafood is like this, right?
You can get dirt cheap seafood and you can get, you know, super
high-priced seafood. Unfortunately, in North America,
we're addicted to cheap, right? And there's no such thing as
cheap food. Like something somewhere,
(31:59):
someone has paid the price for that thing to be cheap.
Whether it's from another country, you know, whether it's,
you know, poorly regulated, whether there's no science, like
the ocean is big man covers 2/3 of the planet.
Like half the stuff that goes onout there.
We have no idea. Definitely.
And and how do you see your liferight now net?
Because I think as you mentionedright this morning, going for a
(32:20):
walk and then having this, this,this doubt about the whole tuna
thing that you mentioned. How is life right now?
Do you feel still consider yourself a chef?
I know you mentioned the chef are a core of these, these this
kind of a system that you're building, But how far is it from
the life that you had of just say, say, working in the hotel
as you as you were like running operations over there, seeing
diners? A lot of chefs on the podcast
have also mentioned that they miss this kind of instant
(32:42):
gratification, which you get while you're serving guests and
you get their feedback and this job that you're doing right now,
which I think can be a lot of time disappointing.
A lot of time you could feel like you're not, you're not
getting to to reach what you wanted to.
How is this dynamic in your personal professional life?
Well then firstly, there's no perfect.
I mean, you know, do I miss, do I miss the kitchen?
Absolutely. Do I want to be back in the
(33:04):
kitchen 70 hours a week? Definitely not.
You know what I mean? Like I'm wearing a chef's
jacket. I love being a chef.
I am in the kitchen at least three days a week somewhere,
right? Working on some project doing,
you know, I do a bunch of different things.
And so I could have only done this now or for the last 10
(33:24):
years, for the 1st 10 years, I was becoming a chef of finding
my way, finding my voice. I still know that when I walk
into the kitchen, I'm one of thebest cooks in that kitchen.
That's important to me. And I also know that I want to
still be able to be relevant in my profession, my craft, right?
Because if I'm not relevant in my craft, then why would the
(33:46):
next generation, the Vishes or the two Shahs or the Imran's,
why would they listen to me, right?
Like they'll be like, Oh yeah, he's just, he's a, you know, he
hasn't been in the kitchen forever.
Like no respect. You know, whatever, right?
Like I think it's important. I feel like I'm sort of a in two
worlds, right? I'm in the sustainability
advocacy world, education, and I'm also in the culinary world.
(34:09):
And I don't want to give either of them up because I love
working in restaurants. I love pre shift, I love teams,
I love front of house. I love, you know, getting in the
dish area of every once in a while.
I love expediting. I, you know, I love talking to
my suppliers. I don't want to do it 70 hours a
week. So I've kind of feel really
(34:29):
fortunate that I can do a littlebit of both.
And, and impact wise, what do you think that because that was
the one topic that comes a lot on the podcast.
Because a lot of people I, I interview on the podcast are
people who were say working in restaurant or working in hotel.
And then they are now kind of they feel this plunge of being
able to impact. Maybe a lot of it is not even
visible. You know, like today, maybe
there are people making choices right now on ordering something
(34:51):
which you have no idea about, but they are making this
improved choice because of goingthrough a session with you or a
workshop with you or going through a produce that has been,
but you have seen the, the back end of it.
How does that? Is that some sort of
gratification that also compensates for this missing the
kitchen drive or the heat or this working in restaurants?
Yeah, I don't know if you can see behind me there over there.
That's my cookbook. And now we can.
(35:12):
In the corner, yeah, I wrote that right.
I wrote that book in 2017. It's called Lure.
I want to lure. I want to lure people.
Like fishing lure, right? I want to lure people into the
conversation of sustainable seafood impact.
Have we made an impact? Absolutely.
At scale? I'm not sure.
(35:34):
But I know that if I have impacted only a couple dozen
people in my profession, they can then impact a couple dozen
and a couple dozen and a couple dozen.
No one, I mean, very few people are going to be able to have
global impact. You know, like you'd mentioned
Noma before, like maybe Renee, Renee has global impact.
(35:56):
There's a few other chefs that might have global impact pact,
right? But most of us are doing work in
our small communities in our small country or our small
province or our small territory.And we're just trying to have
impact in our own universe. And for me, I'm pretty proud of
that because we have a huge country.
It's a, you know, it's a thoughtful country that's trying
(36:19):
to find its way and in how we treated our Indigenous and First
Nations peoples. We're going through sort of
reconciliation right now, you know, nationally and that's
going to take generations because of the terrible things
that we did to to our Indigenousand First Nations peoples.
You know, we have so much to learn from them.
We have so much to learn from our peers around the world.
(36:40):
And I think that like, I feel value in the work that I do.
I, it makes me, keeps me engagedand makes me feel like I want to
go forward. I don't need, I mean, it's nice
to be recognized, but like most of the work we do is like
unrecognized, right? It's just you're championing
something that matters to you. And to me, that is like, that's
(37:04):
a core value as a human, you know, like, like doing good
things for the environment and for the ecosystem and for the
community that you love. There's value in there.
Doesn't pay the bills always, but it certainly fills my
bucket. And, you know, I just, I feel
fortunate. I'm, you know, I, I love
speaking on it. I love educating on it.
(37:25):
I love, you know, I love like putting my boots on the ground
of, you know, fish farms or fisheries, you know, just trying
to gain knowledge and, and, and then share that knowledge.
You know, I've spoken at the UN before.
I've spoken at all kinds of conferences and symposiums all
over the world on this work. Like it takes hundreds,
(37:47):
thousands of us to continue to do this work for us to have
impact. You know, are the fisheries that
I'm championing improving? Do I have much impact over that?
Not really. I mean, of course not, right.
But the people that are going toa restaurant and looking for,
you know, wild BC salmon insteadof wild Russian salmon or, you
(38:09):
know, not that it matters necessarily, but like it's not
either or. But like the conversation
around, you know, borders and the conversation around farmed
and wild, fresh and frozen, sustainable like these.
It's a big conversation and I think someone goes to a grocery
store or a restaurant and they make a better choice because of
(38:29):
something they heard me say. That's a win for me.
Yeah, it's a beautiful feeling, right?
I think, I think all that you'veexplained is only possible
because you have to believe, as you said, you have to believe in
the you have to believe in the vision and the value and the
purpose. And I think, yeah, it's
beautiful listening to you and how much how much it's For me,
it's always really inspiring to listen to all the chefs on this
podcast and how people who a lotof the industry, a lot of these
(38:53):
research centers and governmentsdo not count on them a lot.
For a long time, chefs were seenas creative, but only within
their boundary of putting thingsin a plate and seen as seen as a
blue collar job. As you said in the beginning of
the career, it is a lot of replicating and multiplying.
That was what their scope was limited to.
But it's always nice to hear people like you and how how
impactful and how scalable this kind of a vision can be.
(39:16):
And, and just on that, I would like to get your closing
thoughts on what kind of advice would you give to other chefs
who are listening to this? Because as I said, we've had
people like Nick from Canada himself who's doing things with
foraging. We had Max few years ago, few
weeks ago, who's doing creating a chocolate replacement through
brewery vases. A lot of these ideas coming from
people who were not expected to do these kind of jobs.
They were expected to stay in kitchens and still be feeding
(39:39):
diners. What kind of an advice would you
give to somebody who's listening, who maybe has a
vision like yours, but they don't really have the courage to
be able to dedicate time to it as you said you could.
Only you can only do this right now because you gave up on
working 70 hours, 70 hours a week.
What kind of advice would you give to such people?
Yeah, well, first of all, I loveNick.
I've known Nick for years. And one of my most valued
(40:02):
memories from my ride across Canada was at his kitchen with
Michael, with Michael Smith at the end of the fortune.
You know it's a small community in Canada, right?
I mean, yeah, I would say like it's important to recognize my
privilege again because. I can afford through decades of
hard work to now be in this position where I can invest in
(40:27):
myself to continue to do this work.
Like if I want to fly to, you know, Toronto or Halifax or
Spain or Boston or, you know, Shenzhen to the seafood show, I
can do that without having to worry that my rent's not going
to get paid right. So that that privilege is
(40:47):
important to recognize. I have always done that, even
when I couldn't afford it because I just have this foolish
belief that more for than foolish belief, I have this like
this desire and this like pull to be a part of it because I I
want to rub shoulders with thosepeople, learn from them and then
(41:10):
be able to to share it. I don't know where the return on
investments going to be, but I know that by doing it, it will
have a return on investment at some point.
You know, my advice to chefs is,well, firstly, invest in your
career for at least a decade in the thing that you want to be
good at first. I mean, my careers had multiple
(41:32):
like layers from super fine dining to hotels to premium
casual and now advocacy. And I'm working in healthcare
and I'm doing some other things.Like none of us are going to
have one career doing the same thing for 40 years like that.
Just, you know, that that doesn't exist in in in the same
way that maybe it did, you know,after World War 2 for a lot of
our, you know, grandparents, youknow, doing the same thing,
(41:53):
working for the same company, that kind of idea.
You know, I think that's what's so great about food is that you
could work in hundreds of different jobs.
Try and you know my advice, try and find your passion and just
dive as deep into it as you possibly can and take risks,
invest in yourself, bet on yourself, continue to like put
yourself in the mix in the middle of the conversations with
(42:15):
the biggest people you can find,like the biggest players, you
know, like my I'm fascinated by marine biologists because they
have so much to share with me about what happens under the
ocean that no humans even think about.
You know, when you look at it ocean, you just think that looks
like a beautiful ocean and there's a sunset or a sunrise.
You don't think about, you know,the thousands of things that are
(42:37):
happening underneath, you know, right now and the fact that
boats are pillaging the ocean all over the planet.
You know, like it's, as I said, overfishing and climate change,
the two largest threats that face our world's oceans.
I think that chefs can have something to do with those
conversations. And we can impact how people
choose seafood into the future. And I hope that people follow us
(42:59):
because I don't want to wear this hat forever.
I want a bunch of great young chefs to, to, you know, take the
torch for me when I, when I, when I hand it off to them,
whenever that may be. Yeah, I know for sure.
I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm definitelygoing to link your work into
the, into the show notes. And I, I hope and I, I don't
know, I know for the fact that the listeners will be inspired
to listen to what you've shared right now.
And hopefully we can see them aspeople who lead this kind of the
(43:21):
moment that you're creating overhere.
And finally, I would like to thank you, Ned.
I think you've shown us that a chef's role can go much beyond
just the past and expediting andbuilding restaurants.
Also, I will take very take noteon the fact that you said, which
is very important. I think calculating your risks
and taking a risk that is calculated and also building
yourself into into the carrier and not just jumping things
(43:44):
because you wish or you have passion for, but kind of
building that belief slowly and gradually.
So thank you so much and I hope to see a lot of work coming out
of you and to share it with the platform.
Thank you for calling. Thanks.
Have an awesome day and look forward to collaborating with
you again.
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