Netflix’s first season of Chef’s Table showcases their exciting journey, serving one plate at a time.
Inventions are nudged from scarcity. Hardships forcing negotiations with nature, people, and ideas. Famine. War. Injustice. There is no greater unity than the sense of the common threat.
They start out by imitating the perceived best. They move to Paris. They ignore their past. Living for today and tomorrow. Eventually, they end up feeling like nothing more than an impostor. Mere copycat.
Discouraged, they quit. They pick themselves up. They reflect and finally see their core instead of their outdated versions. They return to the past – the origin. They embrace the crops they grew up with. They own what they know; things took for granted. They plant the seed, harvest and prepare what’s familiar to them, but foreign to everyone else.
They do the work. Invent. Push themselves. Embrace tension. Fingers turn to mush from working 18-hour days. 32,850 hours over the five years or 1,825 days.
One day, someone credible writes about them. Talks about them. The masses join and they form part of the top 50 restauranteurs in the world.
There is no such thing as overnight success.