Fugitive Chefs

Most of the prestige in cooking goes to restaurant chefs. The impact shows up in a lot of other places. Recorded live at KiCo in The Hague, this conversation brings together Furqan Meerza (senior innovation chef at Kraft Heinz), Ernesto Vecilla (culinary innovation at a biotech ingredients startup) and Abir Lakehal (head chef at Bayonne and the baker behind Baked by Abir). Big food, biotech and po...

He’s had three back surgeries, built a leadership app with an AI coach in it, and still believes the kitchen is worth staying in. Chef Adam Lamb spent 40 years cooking everywhere from Ditka’s to a 650-person retirement community before turning that experience into coaching, a book, and a tool built to help kitchens hold onto their people. In this conversation we discuss: 🔥 Why kitchens promote th...

He never worked a line, but his book sits on chefs' shelves. Rich Shih started as a mechanical engineer at a space telescope company, taught himself to cook by hanging around chefs' kitchens, and went on to co-write Koji Alchemy and start KojiCon. Today he works in R&D for a brewery and food group in Aichi, Japan. This conversation is about how he built real authority in food without e...

Their family built a catering company that served around 80,000 meals a day. After they sold it, Samer and his brother Sami asked what would happen if they filled a kitchen with food founders instead. KiCo is a co-working kitchen and food founder community in The Hague. This conversation is about the gap between a home kitchen and a co-manufacturer, why chefs are often the missing perspective in f...

Recorded the week I turned 30, this is a solo check-in — on what's changed since I left consulting work to become a Senior Innovation Chef at Kraft Heinz, and on an idea I keep coming back to: that "paying your dues" might be the most outdated piece of career advice still floating around food. In this episode, we discuss: Why working inside a major food company surprised me more than...

Should you go to culinary school? The president of the Culinary Institute of America says it depends. A head of school says you might not need the next degree. And I never went at all. Over the last year, I've asked this question to very different people on Fugitive Chefs. This episode puts their answers side by side: two chefs mid-way through the Master's in Gastronomic Sciences at the Ba...

Most food industry job requirements don't make sense until someone who's actually applying explains why. In this episode I cook pasta with Vincenzo, a Kraft Heinz intern about to finish up and go job hunting, and we get into what the process really looks like right now. We discuss: Why AI resume readers are changing what a good CV should look like Why entry-level food jobs keep asking for...

De Nieuwe Winkel has two Michelin stars, a green star, and a dining room it wants to depend on less. About a year ago, the restaurant started DNW Lab: an R&D arm set up as a separate entity so it can work directly with universities and with industry. I recorded this one in person at the restaurant in Nijmegen, on their Sunday off, which almost never happens on this show. Jan Majoor is Head of...

🎙️ Most people think a restaurant R&D kitchen is where new dishes get invented. What I saw looked closer to a library than a laboratory. In this solo episode I break down what restaurant R&D actually is, based on four years in fine dining at Mugaritz and Noma, then three and a half years doing R&D at Basque Culinary Center, and now as Senior Innovation Chef at Kraft Heinz. This is the...

Most chefs measure a career in kitchens. Tiffany Poe has measured hers in classrooms, boardrooms, and now, AI chats at 2am. In this episode of Fugitive Chefs, Furqan sits down with chef, educator, coach, and AI trainer Tiffany Poe to trace a 25-year career that moved through restaurants, culinary education, corporate food, professional coaching, and artificial intelligence — including the year she...

I had an admission letter to culinary school in my hand. I never used it. Some of you told me this podcast is starting to feel like an advertisement for culinary school. It's not — and I want to correct that directly instead of letting it sit. This solo episode is my honest answer: the specific things that became possible for me because of the door I actually had in front of me, not because sk...

Every restaurant Alan Bergo ever worked at closed. In this episode of Fugitive Chefs, Alan — known online as the Forager Chef — shares how walking away from restaurant kitchens didn't mean walking away from food. It led him to become one of the world's most respected voices on wild ingredients, foraging, and building a business entirely on his own terms. In this conversation we discuss: Gr...

Should you go to culinary school? The most honest answer we got all year: "It depends." In this episode of Fugitive Chefs, I sit down with Michiel Bakker, the sixth president of the Culinary Institute of America, to talk about the future of culinary education — and what culinary expertise looks like in 2035. Before leading the world's most influential culinary college, Michiel spent...

Culinary school taught you bechamel. It didn't teach you how to prove you're capable of anything else. In this episode of Fugitive Chefs, I sit down with Adrian Woodhouse, head of school at Otago Polytechnic in New Zealand, to talk about why culinary education is still built around a narrow, traditional idea of what a chef becomes and why that no longer matches the industry. Adrian has spe...

Fugitive Chefs started with a simple question: what can chefs become beyond restaurants? A year later, that question feels too small. In this solo episode, Furqan shares why Fugitive Chefs is evolving from a podcast about alternative careers for chefs into a broader exploration of how culinary expertise can create value across the modern food system. Join the Fugitive Chefs Circle - a community fo...

Restaurants don’t have a chef problem. They have a systems problem. In this episode of Fugitive Chefs , I sit down with entrepreneur and former chef Yago Ferretti Gonzalez , founder of FoodWeb, to explore what happens when chefs stop accepting broken systems and start building better ones. After working in professional kitchens, Yago realised that many of the pressures chefs face aren’t inevitable...

Most chefs spend years trying to leave the kitchen. Stefan Loose did. After building a career that took him from a dishwasher in a small Greek restaurant to leadership roles across hotels, schools, healthcare, universities, and global food companies, he reached what many chefs would consider the destination: a corporate innovation role shaping food concepts at scale. Then he walked away from it. I...

Most chefs spend years trying to move up. A better restaurant. A bigger title. A more prestigious kitchen. But what if the biggest opportunities aren’t above you? What if they’re somewhere you weren’t even looking? Karl Wilder never planned to build a food tourism company. He didn’t plan to spend years cooking across Italy after a translation mistake landed him in a kitchen. He didn’t plan to rais...

What if one of the most attractive chef careers isn’t in restaurants at all? In this episode of Fugitive Chefs, I speak with Chris Demaillet, founder of Montclair Chef Agency and former Michelin-star, yacht, and private chef. Chris shares his journey from a 3 Michelin Star kitchen to working on superyachts and eventually cooking for ultra-high-net-worth families around the world. Along the way we...

Many chefs think the hardest part of leaving restaurants is getting into the food industry. I increasingly think the harder challenge begins after they arrive. In this solo episode of Fugitive Chefs, I explore why so many experienced chefs start doubting themselves after moving into food companies, innovation teams, R&D departments, consultancies, startups, and corporate environments. Inspired...

Most chefs are trained to think in dishes. But what happens when culinary thinking becomes a product, a company, and eventually an entire system? In this episode of Fugitive Chefs, I speak with Leif Friedmann and Jorge Aguilar from Eat Wasted — a startup turning surplus bread into pasta. What began as frustration around food waste inside restaurant kitchens slowly evolved into a broader conversati...

Most chefs think their impact stops at the plate. But what happens when a chef starts influencing systems, supply chains, and how thousands of people are fed every day? In this episode of Fugitive Chefs , I speak with Chef Matthew Beaudin — a chef whose career has moved far beyond the traditional kitchen. From leading culinary initiatives at the Monterey Bay Aquarium to working across education, s...

Why do kitchens feel chaotic in ways that go beyond long hours or physical pressure? In this solo episode, Furqan explores how many of the frustrations chefs experience daily are not just caused by intensity, but by badly designed systems. From unclear prep lists to inconsistent recipes and constant last-minute fixes, this episode looks at how confusion often gets mistaken for pressure inside prof...

Most chefs think kitchens are hard because of the pressure. Long hours. Fast pace. Physical work. But what if the real problem isn’t the work, it’s the system behind it? In this episode, I speak with Fabian Wilshues de Chavez, who moved from kitchens into building a startup focused on improving kitchen operations. We talk about: Why kitchen work feels harder than it should The hidden role of bad s...

Most chefs think there’s only one path. Culinary school → restaurant → head chef → maybe your own place. But what if that story is incomplete? In this solo episode, I break down something I wish I understood much earlier: There is no single way to be a chef. From R&D and food innovation to private dining, education, and building businesses — some of the most impactful chefs today don’t work in...