#113 ROOM 4 DESSERT ACADEMY With Chef Will Goldfarb | Chef Podcast
hello everybody welcome back to ray jensen radio podcast thank you very much for tuning in to the show today one of the best restaurant indonesia room for dessert room for dessert academy pastries ice cream mooses plate desserts young standard class [Music] [Music] [Music] garden and many more so it will be very interesting fun than passing it on a personal [Music] so don't miss this program don't miss room for dessert academy please check out their social media instagram personally [Music] instagram for dessert hello they will be glad to help you out okay as usual like the video if you like it comment california critics input listeners and viewers of radiance radio podcast e2 subscribe so please do subscribe the youtube channel kita radians and radio podcast yoga follow the spotify apple podcast google podcast then thank you very much without further ado please welcome one of the best chef in indonesia chef will go far enjoy the show hi guys welcome back to the show we are back with chef we'll go far because the second time [Music] he needs no introduction award winning chef room for dessert the cookbook the the netflix chef table ada and we are now going to catch up with him hello chef will how are you today hi ray it's great to be back on your show thank you so much for having me really appreciate it it is my pleasure how's the business today compared to last year uh i don't know do you want the real answer or the public relation answer up to you listen i will say this we are really excited to be here we just launched our new menu season 12 casting spells this week i think it's the best food we've ever done uh we have a holiday this week which means uh great people a lot of our guests coming from jakarta from all over indonesia so i prefer to focus on the positive which is we expect to have a great year uh in terms of our product quality our cooking what we can do for the community uh our academy in terms of uh clientele i think we all know that we will be waiting for the island to open yeah fair last year at this time we were closed we were waiting to open on the 19th of march so and our and with the new menu last year and that season lasted about one week compared to last year where we didn't know what was coming uh we are really happy we've kept the whole team on the whole time kept everybody busy kept the spirits up so i'll be honest we are super excited to be here uh the business in the traditional sense uh you know the the island is still closed for tourism so we have a lot of loyal guests from jakarta from all over indonesia who have really kept us going uh especially christmas season was really wonderful to see the turnout from our indonesian guests we have loyal support from our regulars in bali who are still here and i think every day we're still meeting new people so that's why we're here uh and that's that's the point of our job to take care of people at the restaurant whether it's two or two hundred is the same for us uh so yeah yeah and a lot a lot i imagine you got a lot of new customers from jakarta who haven't been to room for dessert originally because my friends who never even heard of room for dessert before just like starts telling me have you tried have you tried reporting it's amazing that's great well i'm happy to hear that i think i think that one of the best things that happened from this pandemic aside from that i had some time to see my wife and daughter over a holiday break is that we have become much more accessible to our local audience and i think that one of the things you know you're not gonna make a booking three months ahead coming from jakarta you're just coming for the weekend right and and to be honest a lot of our guests from jakarta prefer just to drop in great we love we love people to come here uh and it's very hard to do that when the restaurant is so busy and there's months long waiting lists to come in so this has been a great chance for us to meet a lot of our guests fans potential fans skeptics anything you could have uh it's been a chance for us to cook for them and i think that's really great uh we're really excited about that and i don't think that we would have had that chance necessarily uh with business as usual so in that we are really lucky and you you mentioned skeptics do you still have skeptics even today yeah we we welcome skeptics anyone who's uh our for us anyone who is not sure that we can deliver something as great as everyone promises and i'm happy to to show them that we can for us that's our our biggest challenge is to make sure that everyone is uh convinced by something excellent when they come and not just because they heard about it or they read about it and because they really experience it they can feel the warmth of our service team and the passion that goes into every bite of food that we make so for us the more the more people who come from any background with any expectation the better okay so great great uh seed uh it's glad that i hear the business is going better at least and what about your other program chef not the market we're still here we're still fighting yeah and we're not gonna give up we're not gonna give up so uh and we're not gonna send our staff away so for us it doesn't matter business is good or bad we had five years waiting for the business to be great it was great now it's not great uh the most important thing is that again restaurants come and go business comes and go but a great product a great team a great uh setting you know even just to be able to sit in our garden today yeah you know those things are forever so so things things come and go we can't worry about the details of business we need to worry about doing something amazing yeah yeah it's really you are doing a really great workshop over there looking really looking forward to have some lunch or dinner there soon hopefully i hope so too and what about your other program chef the market and the dharma bands program that we discussed during the previous podcast is still going on dharma buns has been great we we managed we passed 10 000 meals distributed uh weeks ago we are looking to scale it up for that we will need to raise some some capital uh but we are really happy we cook again most of the food that we cooked last year and this year we give away so either to our staff or to the community so we're really passionate about that it's kept everybody busy kept everybody grounded uh ongoing for sure the market we are redoing all of our product offering now and we will relaunch again probably with a slightly different message uh we are working on a few things for the market we have decided to hold on the pop-up shop in chengdu we're gonna wait and see if we can do it even better so we're redoing our grocery line currently we're working on a line of products that we can do at home that you can finish yourself and i think you should expect to see more from us in this space in the coming weeks but like always the most important thing we can do is make an amazing menu for this restaurant so we're really excited about our season 12. we've built the recipes based on the traditional healing spells of bali translated from a long tar scroll and using all of the plants that we grow here in the garden wow we've introduced some amazing new products techniques traditional balinese references great artwork botanical drawings it's kind of a botanical modernism on the menu the new drinks are amazing it's a big departure for us for savory food is much stronger the desserts are sophisticated but more comforting less ornate the petty fours i think still retain our style so we've been busy with that menu we're now redoing our dinner menu in the restaurant as well and then we will go into our grocery menu we are thinking tentatively we are thinking of it going to be r4g a room for dessert groceries but we're also working on the room for dessert at home we're going to do a special package for this nippy weekend we're trying to respond to what our guests want which is not just a groceries and market but food that's ready to cook at home a lot of our dishes are i will say we are not notorious for being a delivery friendly restaurant um because everything we do is a la minute so we're trying to give people a chance to be able to do what we do in the restaurant at home okay and we had a good success with that last year with our blindsided event where chefs cooked along people cooked along with us at home so we're working on making something more accessible for that now but really our creative energy for now is going into finalizing our course program for the classes for may and so we're to be honest we are really busy we're busier than we've ever been super focused and really passionate about everything that we're doing here yeah can i ask about uh the concept of the new theme of the room for dessert uh program how how do you come up with that like okay spells from the uh medicinal balinese folklore how do you come up with that concept in the first place we've been passionate about medicinal plants for like 10 years now even before we open room for dessert from a book that we got from ibu living pharmacy and we have uh it shows some of the traditions that are common among bali indonesia and also ayurvedic tradition uh ibu robin i think you know from bhumi sehat in new conning she's one of us anyway she's amazing woman she's helped us a lot connect us with the orphanage and senior center and the birthing clinic for our dharma bonds program and we've always been a big fan of her and you know it took us maybe seven years to get the medicinal plants garden here but we did and since we did always our staff especially ones whose family are more on the religious side they have all these traditional lontar scrolls that have been passed down for generation and generation and they're really really difficult to translate yeah they're kind of old balinese not even contemporary balinese and let alone in indonesian so we've had our staff working on the translation for the past uh you know over the past year and in the spells now we want to be clear we're not practicing spells or black magic here we leave that to the professionals but what we are doing is looking at the medicinal plants that have been traditionally used in healing that are blended in different ways in these spells and then creating dishes from those ingredients and those combinations oh wow so we've been working on it since september since we launched the last menu yeah and yeah it's been really uh really exciting and is when is it available the new menu will be available right now right now until uh until september okay so uh for the for our listeners don't forget to check out the room for is that new menu and come there and try and i think it's gonna be really cool is it the now are most of your ingredients the vegetables and the plants are from your garden well always for the we have 21 dishes always and all of them are built around a vegetable or plant that we grow but i want to be clear we are gardening here we are not farmers so we have replaced our network of local farmers around the island but we have supplemented them so all of the recipe testing is done with what we grow here but for the production when we are busy we need to go to the farm so we're not really as busy as let's say the two years ago but i think that's pretty normal for everyone but we are you know we have a nice fully fully booked dining room tonight and we will look to use everything that we grow in the garden we use but on the menu we are only able to produce about ten percent of what we need okay okay so we are looking to plant another garden uh where we can do more production and more like a micro farm but for now again our garden is to be able to for our staff to learn how to take care of the plants to do our seed work to understand all of the different parts of the plant the branches the leaves the flowers the fruits and not just the little part that you get in the market so having access to all of that for the recipe testing is i think what's setting this menu apart yeah and you also have been very passionate in not only using local ingredients and you do your own gardening but also empowering local indonesian especially young cooks and you often talks because uh i look your videos on youtube you also talk about the importance of giving them access like opportunity can you elaborate more about that sure i mean we also i you know yesterday was international women's day and we were able to talk about it in you know 75 of our management team is female young indonesian females under the age of 28. uh we're very proud of that uh they're not hired because they're female they just happen to be the best people for the job so i think one of the things that is true uh in bali but not only in bali all over the world is there is a lot of talent that has been overlooked historically for different reasons we are not trying to rewrite the history books or anything we're just trying to allow talented people to express themselves so in our case we most of our staff this is their first job this is their first restaurant job their first restaurant dining experience but they have talent intelligence ability uh desire uh work ethic if they are given a chance then they will shine so for me it's been very critical a lot of places we talked about local food local ingredients sustainable uh development and zero waste management but let's be honest the most important uh the most important key to sustainability is the people yeah the most important ingredient to our restaurant is our staff so having fancy names and things around what we do is much less important to us than the people that are here developing their skills and preparing themselves to be leaders in their communities and that's not really that for us is much more important than anything yeah but i think you'll see that's why also our staff is with us now they're in their seventh year a lot of our opening team is still here uh our dining room manager is from our opening team our restaurant manager our service director our bar manager our guest relation hostess uh they are all even our one of our steward and of course our chef they're all here from opening but in that we have also added a lot of people from all over from all over indonesia from zumba hospitality foundation from every region of bali from medan from sumatra from you name the from bandung from jakarta of course but we just believe that people deserve a chance not based on how much money they have or what color they are or what what gender they are but based on their ability and desire to be part of something special and for us that's very very important and i think now more than ever all over the world you're seeing that yeah when we talk about access what we mean is that you can have a difference between equality of opportunity and equity which can provide a better outcome so you can have equal chances in a specific instance but it doesn't mean you've prepared people equally for success yeah they've been given i think the the the illustration that shows it best is uh you know there's three people trying to look over a fence to see a sporting event and everybody gets the same size stool right so they can little but actually they are not the same height so to give three different size people the right view into the game they need to have different size tools yeah so obviously the visual is easier than the the explanation but i think that says a lot about our approach which is giving people a chance to show what they can do not accepting a lower standard but giving people time to develop uh i think that's really really critical yeah what prompted you to have this philosophy chef do you are you do you always try to do this when you start doing your career did you experience this kind of nurturing during your career i mean i've been lucky to have great chances i've been given opportunities in lots of places but i also had a lot of opportunities to do what i wanted that other people didn't have and i think that maybe as somebody who had a lot of opportunities i think it was important to me not to waste them and then to ensure that they were extended to other people so i i also received a lot of opportunities in restaurants and had a lot of great people taking care of me at different parts of my career but again the most important thing is to make sure that if you have opportunities that other people don't have to make sure that you extend them to others so and i think it's always been important to me and when i when i'm here there's so much talent there are so many great people so many people interested in doing uh so many different things and then what's missing is someone willing to give them a chance so yeah i agree uh i think i think indonesia is a special place and the more uh people are given opportunity the more great things you'll see yes totally agree chef and thank you for doing that in indonesia it's a it's a it's uh absolutely i mean it's it's a pleasure for me we are lucky to be here uh and there's no like we hope that our team feels as welcome and as able to do what they want whether it's sending them abroad or bringing great chefs here both of which we've done or helping them start their own business so that they have a both a job and a business because that's something really challenging for young people yeah again at this time let's be honest right now we need to go down the street and cook lunch for hungry people it's pretty easy to see who needs an opportunity now and the people are starving so it's not about we try to focus on our menu as well but it's not hard to see people in need right now you just have to look down the street yes it's really humbling when you say you put it that way okay but yeah and not only in your current reference but you have like room for dessert graduates from uh in all over of jakarta and uh i'm pretty close to a lot of them and one of the best uh desserts i tried uh is from artica yeah one of his private dining dinners yeah and yeah he tells the story about uh how you are developing this this you has he was helping you develop this this dish with the dessert with the turmeric cylinder it's amazing yeah but the key thing is when i talk about uh i talk with people who have been work under you or with you together with you they always talk about about you not only teaching them the importance of cooking and recipes and the technique but also uh to grow better as a person which is really great i think well it's important part of the job not always part that was uh when i was growing up and for previous generation i'm chef i think it wasn't even in the conversation but we've always been close i mean i'm still close with my team from room for dessert in new york from 2012 it wasn't only two but or three but we were very close from our team here i know arctica is doing quite well uh nabila is doing quite well either team not in the room for dessert team she's still part of the family adidas is doing quite well i think even jocelyn is doing well in jakarta right now and to be honest that's just the people that are like the top line name you know that were let alone the nostalgias and different people that are doing i mean there is people like army doing small baking in bali with xena and all these great statures from all over indonesia octa who is back to bandung to start her own bakery our own staff here in bali who have moved on huayan is the running potato head and calm are opening here so for us we we are proud of our family uh being able to do things here well uh for the right reason and we hope uh to be able to do more and more i mean for me that's the most satisfying part of the job and with that being said like uh room for dessert is already an uh academy of its own in its own way yeah i think yeah and now uh you're planning to open it for public the room for this academy that's right yeah can you talk to us through that sure we you know as you said i mean in our own way we are we are an academy in our own way we are a collective of people who want to learn about food so and and we are a community of people who are passionate about ingredients process hospitality service flavor and i i've always enjoyed teaching and and one of the things that's come up this last year is we simply aren't able to share as much with as many people because there's no people are not allowed to travel here so the first thing and we want to do long-term like streaming platform and all these things but for me i'm still old-fashioned i like to do things in person so the first classes i wanted to do here we're gonna do a very very small class maybe we'll be two maybe we'll be four it's going to depend on the skill level of the people that are interested uh we have one i guess we are announcing it now uh we haven't really announced it publicly yet uh so you're you're getting the sneak preview of everything but we wanted to do take a look at the recipes that we use to build our desserts and really offer a month-long intensive deep dive into our base recipes because for think that's the most important part of what we do now we will also each week we'll have a different subject you know we'll do ice creams and then screams and then sauces and fruits doughs and cakes and then garnishes and finishing desserts so we want to take people through what it's like to spend a day here but we're going to do it over a month so there'll be 20 days of classes each each week is broken up into 5 days 9 to 12 and 1 to four we'll be doing lunch here and we'll be doing excursions on the weekend to see our chocolate sugar ceramics uh probably a farm visit as well just to show people the kind of things that go into our desserts and each week we'll finish with a signature dessert as well so our plan is to do the whole we have broken it up into weeks so if we see that the interest is heavily doing a portion we'll be able to do that as well but the most important thing for us is incredibly small class very personal attention so that it's uh so that it's for any skill level from professional temperature uh and i feel like now especially there are there are so many kids here and all over the world that cannot go and continue their studies in the way that they would like yes and it's and so we're hoping that this will be a good way for us to help them to get an international standard without leaving home yes a lot a lot of my listeners contacted me like they are supposed to be in culinary school or supposed to be continuing starting but uh this pandemic happened this will be a really great way sure so is it if you are a beginner if you are a beginner how how how how will that uh academy go for it for like real beginners at any level here the most important thing is willing to learn patient uh having a big smile when you walk in the door every day remember most of the team that started working here had never cooked before when they started here and now they are cooking for tens of thousands of people a year so i'm not worried about that that's also why we are keeping the class tiny uh so that we can really walk people through everything every recipe will be demonstrated by me and every dish will be created hands on by that so i'm not i think that you know you'll come in the morning have a little snack with us uh and jump into a few demos in the morning we'll cook a nice lunch for you and then we'll do an afternoon where you are able to do all the recipes by yourself we'll have a little time for a wrap up and evenings will be free and we will cover let's say three to six recipes a day depending on how involved they are each one will be very very clear on subjects so a couple of different sorbets and ice creams so that you can get comfortable with them they won't require fancy tools but of course there are certain pastry things that are different with an ice cream machine or not but we cannot we cannot help that we can just show the basis of what we do which i would say is really fundamentals of restaurant pastry yeah okay and how about the can you talk through about the excursions at the end of the academy like visiting the farm and everything well we just want to show people how important it is especially for pastry which notoriously lags a bit behind the savory kitchen in terms of uh working with fresh products we want people to understand where these products come from salt sugar chocolate herbs vegetables obviously we have our garden around us to show them what we are growing and the gardening methods but we also want to show them all these amazing world-class products that are made right here in bali that we think are among the best in the world and maybe are not getting the attention they necessarily deserve we want people to be proud of their local farms and products yeah what an amazing opportunity i'm sure it will be full chef let's see as soon as you market it where can people go to uh if you to find out more about the program right now they can stay tuned to the room for dessert instagram but if they have any questions about it just message are for the instagram or me also add room for dessert or my personal instagram which is will goldfarb we'll see gold part i'm not sure maybe you can put the links up of course these days these days instagram seems to be the easiest way yeah you can you can let us know just reach out to us now uh we haven't shared anything you're the first your listeners are the first to give this information uh so because we know how passionate you are and your listeners are for this kind of opportunity so we wanted to share it with you first and just have them reach out to me or at room for dessert and we'll get them taken care of okay uh so yeah guys uh for our listeners please check out for further updates and i personally think it's a really great opportunity and you can have fun and relax also that's right you can be you can be walking through this amazing garden yeah look at that yeah exactly and so chef i have a question for you like a lot of chefs from bali are bringing their businesses uh to jakarta and other cities in indonesia uh like to do pop-ups and events like that are you the room for dessert uh planning to do the same thing i don't know the answer to that we're gonna decide we're gonna take a look in june and see how we're doing we're gonna take a look in august and see how the year is going we want to bring our food to the most people possible we are looking at something right now as well in jakarta but we also want to make sure we do it really well so first we're going to take care of our menu here then our dinner menu our delivery menu then our and we're going to even redo all of the meals that we give away all of the staff is we're redoing all of them and then we're rolling into the classes so for us right now we really really want to focus on doing something amazing and when we're confident that we are doing something even better than we've ever done before we will start to think about how best to bring it around so i think it's important to have uh it's important to be visible but it's also important to be amazing and to be stable so we're going to work on sharing what we do with as many people as possible um yeah i'd say stay tuned i wouldn't be surprised to see us floating around at some point in this year but uh yeah we want to do the right thing we want to do something special we don't just want to do it for the sake of doing it for marketing for money we want to do something really great yeah just like all the things you do it doesn't always work but whenever i've worried about marketing and this kind of things you know is always the worst times in my career and whenever we just doing great food working with the team developing the staff working on the service these are the times that really make us the that's the reason we are still here is because of the time we spend on doing something really wonderful and i think that's really important for us to remember uh and to stay here you know again we need to support bali we need to support ubud we need to support the people who work here the people who eat here the people who live here i i'm always skeptical i like when there's a problem to stick and fight through it yeah well i i wish you we here in radius radio wish you all the success for all your programs chefs i bet uh especially the room for this at academy uh i think there's no question it will be decreed because a lot a lot of people are so at least here in jakarta they want to uh go somewhere and relax but for this a chance to work and to study to learn in your environment i think it will be really really great i think i hope so we take it really serious and we want to do it right we want to make sure that if people come here and put their faith in us to show them something we can do it properly so thanks for the chance to talk about it with you today we really appreciate it yeah chef better uh same here we're really appreciative uh we're going to play a little game chef it's a new segment for our podcast all right uh it's called you better know it so i'm gonna throw a quick rapid fire question okay great you can pass if you don't want to answer but we will appreciate your answer okay let's try so secret talent wow secret talent yeah that's a tough one i don't need to pass i'm just not sure that i'm good at anything outside i'm very very good at uh i'm very good at recognizing actors in movies early on in their career before they are famous [Laughter] that's one of my specialties okay good so uh what characteristics you value most in others uh patients okay what kindness is good kindness and patience characteristic you value most in yourself i'm working on it [Laughter] ability to interest in continuing to improve yes best advice you ever got uh don't go home don't go home don't quit yeah don't quit okay and then how about the worst advice you ever got uh i cannot give you the specific well no i probably can uh i got very very bad uh legal advice when i was in the original room for dessert in new york no okay well it was uh let's say the best thing to say is free legal advice can be very expensive really good nice so best meal of your life do you have one wow that's so tough only one if i have to pick sorry the connection is still okay yeah it's fine it's fine okay if i have to pick only one and i mean i've had a lot of really really great memorable meal in my life really amazing i could make a book of meals that i've had i would say the most memorable if i had to pick one was a small seafood bistro in concert uh called uh it was when jacques maximan was cooking bistro de la marine he was there for one or two years i think he even got one michelin star it was after he'd been in the wilderness for years and cooking at home and i think now he's running the island cusco he's one of our heroes from the 80s and he was still cooking there alone his wife and daughter and i went with my daughter there in some air and i think we went back every day and the food was so simple so clean so memorable just in this little like a normal boardwalk bistro nothing fancy at all not too expensive it's from the market perfectly cooked perfectly seasoned incredibly imaginative and it was really like you know you never want to meet your heroes but it's always good yeah i i don't know if i had to pick one i will save that one because it brought the most things together yeah but i've had some great meals i've had great meals at burn ends in singapore at bolan in bangkok at hamas in copenhagen at 108 relay i've had amazing meals cleo in the states the french laundry uh i've had so many presidents in new york uh has been some of the best meals i've been at michelle brown muga reads el bulli twice uh i mean uh genyer in paris twice uh i don't know so many there's been so many amazing places over the years i'm super lucky uh i'm just very lucky i keep trying to eat and yeah i've been lucky to i've been lucky to fi had great meals in my last trip to barcelona at haddad get fresh at pinocchio in the market uh yeah i i could uh make my own 50 best or probably uh top hundred for and sure all special in their own way but if i had one it was my daughter seven years old and we went back every day there she's about to turn 17 so yeah almost 10 years ago okay okay so chef most embarrassing moment in the kitchen maybe when you're coming up through the rice uh most embarrassing moments i remember i lost some of the they make these silver pieces uh for the petty fortress at el bulli and i lost uh some of them or i didn't count them correct and one of them were thrown in the garbage and it was like the whole restaurant uh gathered around to see what i did wrong but i think it was more embarrassing to be i left too much honey in the jar maybe you know because it's really like yeah i mean it takes a while so instead i didn't take long enough to empty the honey out of the jar so everyone said was because i was the rich guy coming oh my god how much the honey cost and yeah i don't know that was pretty embarrassing but okay i've had plenty of embarrassing moments yeah that's why you become good you make plenty of mistakes first right well here yeah you're still here the last one chef if you weren't a chef what would you be uh tennis coach tennis coach that's interesting in mali i don't know anywhere i could get anywhere i could get a job man oh okay chef um very very last one can you speak to our listeners and our viewers and maybe give them some kind of motivation to get to uh this new normal that we're experiencing well i will say that we've all been through it now for one year and we're still here fighting for it so it's really important especially now not to give up the end is inside even though i don't think it will be this year i think things will not really start happening for another year but we know what to expect we know how bad it's going to be we can do it where it's really important right now is to take care of your staff your place and the people in your community that's who needs you now no matter where you are no matter big fancy restaurant small warong on the street radio show dessert bar doesn't matter right now the people that need you are your team their families and the community around you and those are the people that need you and and that's what's important right now is to fight through this in years all the people that have dealt with this will look back in their career and say nothing can stop me because i've already dealt with the worst yeah so i think that if you can remember that now that this when you look back in 20 years this will be the part of your career that made you strong enough to deal with adversity that's the most important thing you can take from this yes thank you for saying that chef and thank you for coming to the show i really appreciate it uh we wish you all much success i'll be coming to bali in may chef i'll make sure to visit you i'll be ready for you well thank you very much again sir then drop in on one of the classes yeah yeah for sure for sure thank you chef and we'll see you next time guys thank you for listening to our podcast today uh don't forget to like the video it will really help us a lot and subscribe to radiance radio podcast at youtube spotify apple podcast google podcast and follow our instagram at radiance radio follow chef wales instagram uh we will give you the description so you wouldn't miss any of our updates so thank you very much we'll see you next time take care bye [Music] um
2021-03-26 13:41
