[westopher]

I think realistically, chefs need to not try and replicate flavours and just taste taste taste and decide what they think is best.
When we were doing some off the cuff dinner services I was just making whatever I felt like and we’d change the menu weekly. We had a customer ask to meet me and she was like “wait you aren’t middle eastern?”
She was telling me how much she loved the food and it reminded her of her husbands moms cooking who was from Morocco, which was super cool. We had a good laugh how I’m just a regular white guy who read some books and threw some shit in a pan and hoped it turned out well. It was a really awesome experience and very validating, but I’m not trying to replicate anything traditional. Just trying to make shit taste good. It’s all a simple formula. Use good ingredients, season your food well, cook things as perfectly as you can and use flavours that work together. If you try and replicate things, ingredients vary so much so you can throw the balance way off if you aren’t cognizant of that.