 All right, you guys like lunch? So we do a little something then. When I say Kogi, you say Por Vida. Kogi! Kogi! That's what's up, man. Thank you for being here. Yeah. Thank you for being here. That was my heart. That was my life. Big love to my team. That's what we do on the streets. But I'm here to talk about something else. Forgive me. My mind is still in cook mode, so I'm going to use my phone a little bit. But I'm here to talk about local. And what local is, is really, let me first get into this. I stood on the stage last year and I poured out my guts to everyone here. And really there was no plan. I just wanted to put up a mirror so that we as chefs could all look at it and just kind of like take a litmus test and see what's up. And then this guy called me, Daniel Patterson, DP. We chopped it up a little bit and then things really just clicked. And then we just went to work, like us cooks do. And so I'll say it, what we're going to do is we're going to tackle the fast food industry. And we're going to start in America. We're going to build a concept that really has, that will have the ideology and the heart and the ideology and the science of a chef, but it'll have the relevance of McDonald's or Burger King out there in the neighborhoods in the streets. We're going to go toe to toe. And not really in a confrontational way, but we're going to go toe to toe to try to see how we can challenge the status quo of fast food. So in a way it kind of feels too big, right? It's like it's this huge cloud and it's like, how do you tackle it? In many ways we, as a community, we raise the white flag and we think that this is how food is going to be forever. Fast food, junk food, institutional food, commodities, corporations, GMO, school food, cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap, nasty food, but addicting. So really like where do you start? That was the big question. How do you start? How do you start? And does the world even need us to start? Then I was like, fuck it, man. You just start. So this is how we're going to start. This is the concept a little bit in its mood board form and kind of in its feel. So I'm going to click through some images. You can see these beautiful, especially here in Europe you guys have the piazzas and the plazas and the big centers in town where everyone in the summertime go out. There's something about in America we have curbs, we have curbs in street corners, but there's something beautiful about eating outside and what that does and how that evokes your appetite. So really these images of the asphalt, of colors, of fruits, bringing the outdoor and the indoor in. Coming here for the first time last year I was really inspired by Danish design and ergonomics and furniture design and just the way this country approaches design but for the everyday life, but also thinking high minded. So why can't a fast food place be that way as well was our thinking. So incorporating woods and concrete, incorporating creative seating areas, looking at things like this where a big part of fast food in America is really trapping the young kid. And so using all the tricks of the trade, creating an area where instead of fluorescent lighting and boxed in seating everything is a flow and everything is a playground. So you can sit anywhere you want, you can climb anywhere you want, the whole place flows in a rhythm and we treat it just like a restaurant with an open kitchen, there's no barrier between what's being cooked and who's ordering the food. Water parks, especially in Los Angeles, it's a huge culture and for me just the rhythm and again the flow of it, the smoothness, being able to sit anywhere, maybe creatively create something out of whatever is there and create something that wasn't supposed to be but then it becomes something else. You had something along with the Kogitaka which is the first beta prototype of our smash, so the biggest thing though is there are gourmet burger stands out there and gourmet fast food but still the price point is anywhere from five to nine dollars, that doesn't seem like a huge deal but that is there's a huge valley between two dollars, 99 cents and six dollars even and so the idea, really the core of the idea is how do we get the food to be 99 cents and sit right next to a Popeye, sit right next to a church or a KFC, be in the neighborhood. We can't do it by providing just all meat and protein so that's where the chef mind comes in and that's where Daniel really, where he really inspired me is we cut the meat with grains but you never get the feel of the fact that the burger is not 100% meat because we're not big enough yet to buy futures in meat and buy futures in the commodity so the only way we can go about it is by using science and then you have just the feeling right there, that's just the feeling of what we want to evoke in local. We didn't eat like you see now in the world right, like just two generations ago probably many of your parents or even grandparents but now this is who we've become. We've been brainwashed and our whole diet has been washed and polluted but I feel like we could change it, I mean I said it last year but I didn't know I was going to be standing on this stage this year, I told you five years, I was going to come back mad eight but like I'm here mad four but like you know we can change it, it took like two generations ago we weren't there and then now we're here but I feel like we can change it in two generations from now you know really just took this one generation to change our whole eating habit and you know so while we're physically here all of us while we're physically in this form in the skin in this body we can make a change for generations that aren't here physically yet so then that way everything shifts you know and we can eat more like like animals you know like not the animals we become but like how animals really eat and so one of my metaphors is like you wouldn't have record execs making the music right like you that's what musicians do so right now we're in a situation where we have we don't have the cooks designing the food for the masses in what in which most people are eating so you know this this really this presentation is about let's get the chefs us to make the food and the moral choices for the people and let the suits do what they're good at you know and it'll become a symbiosis just like front of the house and back of the house you know I mean so it's time to shift and we do it like we know how chefs we just get in and cook and this is DP right here first of all team Kogi come on and and a huge thank you to team Noma and team Momofuko please if just in case you're curious if team Noma can throw down on burgers yes yes they did so I guess I guess the idea for local started a few years ago started a charity foundation called the cooking project and and it was about teaching young kids how to cook but but but not cook for a restaurant how they could make nutritious food at home instead of going to a fast food place and it was really interesting I learned two things one is that there's this kind of myth that there's a certain sector of American society that really wants garbage but but it's actually not true you know no matter how people grew up if you give them delicious food they choose delicious food and I think there's a there's there's a myth about the choice that's given you know we're actually not giving that choice to everyone and then the other thing is we don't have a cooking problem in America we have an eating problem you know we have no taste memory of real food anymore but it took one generation to lose it like Roy said and I think we take one generation to get it back so MK Fisher once said or she wrote one cannot think well love well or sleep well unless one is dined well you know I think you can survive on bad food but it's not much of a life you know access to nutritious food is a fundamental right you know it's one that a lot of Americans don't enjoy so so part of the problem is so Roy was up here last year he talked about hunger how too many people in America fall out or below the poverty line and they can't afford enough to eat but but there's this other problem which is that most of the country which can afford enough to eat or choosing a processed food you know like Roy is saying you know most of our country is fed by corporations not chefs you know so so the question is like what can a chef do about it you know how can a chef create change well you know Roy and I are gonna like he said we're gonna open a fast food restaurant you know and and a lot of them so we're open to one in San Francisco next spring and then a few months later in LA and then you're after that like like a million yeah I mean you know you think about it like as a chef right no one has actually gone into the fast food sector and I'm saying fast food and I'm not saying like like it fast food plus you know there's a lot of those kind of places that like Roy said they're they're cheap to most people but to a lot of the country they're not cheap they're expensive you know so how how do we do that well we're cooks you know there's not only grains in the in the in the burger there's also tofu seaweed garum beef garum too thank you very much Lars from Noma for that was a great idea you know we think and this is this is not a charity this is a for-profit business so we think that if we can create something that can make money serving real food at a low price point you know we can do this other thing where people say you know the fast food places it's all we can do for that price all we can do I don't think so I think we can start from the ground up and reinvent it but if you think about it it's only it's only one part of institutional eating in America there's also schools hospitals prisons I think about prisons like we're trying to rehabilitate people and we're feeding them food that most people wouldn't feed a dog you know hospitals you think about cooking with love for someone who's who's sick you know and then you think about hospital food I mean hospital food is like a benchmark of discussing this you know someone puts up a plate of food and the chef says oh it looks like hospital food you know that is not a compliment you know and then and then kids are like you know everyone's concerned because because the kids in America are falling behind other industrial nations they don't know why it's like I don't know take your car and put put garbage in it and see how well it runs you know I mean we're feeding them crap and then we're expecting them their brains to move at the highest level it just doesn't work that makes no sense you know so this is this is exactly the moment where I lose my train of thought so so anyway we we have this idea and and if I was really smart I'll talk about local the name local and it's two concepts together local like we're fucking crazy to be doing this you know everyone's gonna be like what is this like you're crazy and then local you know we're local and so that became local yeah and you know I don't know I just can't yeah I smoke a lot of weeds so like the word just like it looked right we have a good partnership like Roy does all of the the front stuff the smart stuff I just stay behind and just watch all of the namesake awesome job you know one one thing though like we're talking about all these things and there's a lot of chefs in the audience and one of things we're not saying is that is that chefs aren't doing enough I mean chefs have the biggest hearts of anyone I know you do more to donate their their time energy resources than almost any other sector I can think of than any other sector I can think of but I wonder sometimes if we couldn't use our efforts a little more effectively like I wonder about like this thing where we have charity dinners and all the chefs now as you know what I'm talking about you show up you make a thousand pieces of something for reception you make a plate for 400 people and crab canopy the crab canopy but you know it's like it is the the least efficient way of raising money that I can think of why not just write a fucking check let the charity do its job you know instead you're making the charity become a hospitality organization hospitality organization so what you get at the end is much less than what people pay but but that's not what I was thinking about we're thinking about is the funny thing which is that you know chefs are there like we're the entertainment you know we're the band we're the reason that people come but but let's just say the the charity is like trying to solve hunger I mean we're the experts it's like it's what we do we feed people I don't know maybe they should ask us I mean maybe we'd have some ideas you know I mean like maybe we should have them board of directors instead of in the reception line I just think that you know maybe chefs have a little bit more to offer than putting a piece of crab on a crouton so I mean I mean so we talked about the other institutional eating in our country like who else is gonna actually do the work to recreate an entire system and I don't mean just take something that's already there and make it a little bit better but fundamentally break it down and rebuild it in a way that we can we can feed people real nutritious food you know I mean who else have the drive the intensity the skill the experience who else is gonna care as much as a chef you know it's not a teacher not a doctor I mean they have other jobs to do you know it's not gonna be our government I mean they've shown that you know but there's there's something else that we have the other people don't have as we have each other you know I couldn't do this without Roy you can do without me you know and then so we're talking and I'm thinking I really want to have like a bun long fermented whole grain how can we do something that seems like a fast food bun but actually has some nutritious value so I called Chad the tartine bakery in San Francisco and so he made the buns the recipe I actually made the buns with Louise from I know myself there's any problem with them that would be my fault and not Chad's but it's 20% coji rice you know it's it's like is this really interesting delicious thing with perceptual sweetness that you only get if you know how to cook you know so okay let's show your hands a lot of chefs in the audience tonight like what if Renee Alex Dave Chang Alice Waters they call you up and they say I this idea that we can change how people eat in school so we can feed everyone the entire country nutritious food but but I need your help how many people say yes yeah so look around it's everybody you know and that's what we have that no one else has you know and there's there's something else too I'm sorry don't mind me that wasn't his water that's the crazy thing we're very sharing place I'll get you a new one I promise but you know then the idea of of this kind of cooperation you know this sharing of ideas and values I mean this is what matters all about this is why Renee started it this why come every year and this is how Roy and I met you know it's really important so I mean I think there's one other thing that's really important and that's that we spent a lot of time learning how to cook like years and years or my case decades unfortunately it's kind of grown to and sometimes people say you know chefs just stay in the kitchen as if it's like the feudal system still and we're the servants but I do agree for young cooks you know I think you should keep their head down keep their mouth shut stay off of the fucking Instagram and learn their craft you know but but if if you work hard over time if you're lucky you develop some skill and some experience and then of every once in a while you can step out of your kitchen like this and maybe do something more so anyway I asked a question and what can a chef do to create change but I think it's the wrong question you know and the question is what can all of us chefs do together I think the answer is a lot