Following Recipes Perfectly Isn't the Thing That Makes You a Great Cook, Says One of the World's Greatest Chefs

On this episode

Picture Enrique Olvera in your mind and there's a good chance that he's moving across it in a Chef's Table glow, making the mole and tostadas and other dishes that made his flagship Mexico City restaurant Pujol into a global destination and landed it on Food & Wine's Global Tastemakers list for 10 Best International Restaurants. He expanded his reach into New York with Cosme in 2014 and Atla in 2017, and then Los Angeles in 2020 with Damian, and this year, he's adding more to the roster with Atla in Venice Beach and Tacos Atla in Brooklyn.

Olvera is a chef's chef; the biggest names in the culinary world plan trips to Mexico City specifically around their Pujol reservations and flock to his restaurants on America's coasts because he's got so much to teach them about the beauty and bounty of a cuisine that has long been undervalued outside of its country of origin. He has been at this for a long time now — Pujol opened in 2000 — and it hasn't always been easy, but the two things he has never doubted are Mexican cuisine, and the people who devote their lives to making it. In this episode, Olvera delves into what keeps him going, how he shares this motivation and passion and energy with the people he trusts to keep such a big empire alive, and the beauty of taking some time to sweat — in a good way. 

Meet our guest

Enrique Olvera is the chef founder of the Casamata group of restaurants, including the internationally renowned Pujol in Mexico City, Cosme and Atla in New York City, Tacos Atla in Brooklyn, Damian in Loa Angeles, and Atla in Venice Beach. Olvera has been profiled on the Netflix show Chef's Table, as well as appearing on The Final Table, Ugly Delicious, and Somebody Feed Phil. He is the author of Tu Casa Mi Casa: Mexican Recipes for the Home Cook and Mexico from the Inside Out.

Meet our host

Kat Kinsman is executive features editor at Food & Wine, author of Hi, Anxiety: Life With a Bad Case of Nerves, host of Food & Wine's podcast, and founder of Chefs With Issues. Previously, she was the senior food & drinks editor at Extra Crispy, editor-in-chief and editor at large at Tasting Table, and the founding editor of CNN Eatocracy. She won a 2020 IACP Award for Personal Essay/Memoir and has had work included in the 2020 and 2016 editions of The Best American Food Writing. She was nominated for a James Beard Broadcast Award in 2013, won a 2011 EPPY Award for Best Food Website with 1 million unique monthly visitors, and was a finalist in 2012 and 2013. She is a sought-after international keynote speaker and moderator on food culture and mental health in the hospitality industry, and is the former vice chair of the James Beard Journalism Committee.

Advice from the episode

Being high-minded

Food can actually make you feel like a better person. I remember walking out of the restaurant and just being, like, literally high from the food.

Finding my people

When I told most of my friends that I wanted to be a chef, everybody was really intrigued because nobody was a chef in Mexico. Back then, nobody chose that as a career path. Cooking chose you, you didn't choose cooking. I remember walking in just seeing so many people dressed in whites and feeling like, "OK, I'm not the weirdo anymore. There's so many people like me and that have the same interest." Most people in Mexico back then were either engineers or lawyers or architects, but I did feel immediately that sense of belonging.

Rising to the occasion

Because there was this huge movement in American cuisine, I always felt inside of me that this can be done in Mexico, because we have such a rich culture and such depth in our cuisine that it seemed natural. I was fortunate enough to move to Mexico right after working in Chicago and to be completely honest, when we started cooking at Pujol, most of the techniques were French because that's what I learned. That's what I knew. We did use some Mexican ingredients, but we were more concerned about creativity than actually rising Mexican cooking. It took us probably four or five years to realize that that was something that we can contribute to creating a new style of Mexican cooking instead of just having a good restaurant where you could eat deliciously.

Finding my voice

When I was at the Culinary Institute of America, I thought being a good cook meant following recipes to a T and being able to execute them perfectly. That was being a good cook. And then, I think when Ferran [Adria] became such a huge figure in the industry, being a good cook started to look more like being cultured, and being creative, and thinking outside of the box, and making people taste something that they've never tasted before instead of just tasting over and over the same thing. So to me, that license was super important because in a way, it also gave me license to start playing with Mexican food and that's where I felt more comfortable. As soon as we started playing with Mexican food, I also started showing more of myself.

Looking back and seeing ahead

In cooking when you feel like you're doing something new, you always realize there's nothing that new. I remember when I was in advanced cooking at the CIA, they asked us to create our own recipe. I remember doing a barley soup with saffron, and I thought it was very creative. And then a few years later, I found a very similar recipe in a medieval book. Not only was it not new, it was super old. I think that's something that we've also let go in the past few years in Pujol — like having that urge to create something new and just try to create something that is close to you. Authentic in the sense that it comes from you, and it doesn't matter if it's new or not really. As long as it's delicious and it represents the way you approach cooking, I think that's good enough for me now at least.

About the podcast

Food & Wine has led the conversation around food, drinks, and hospitality in America and around the world since 1978. Tinfoil Swans continues that legacy with a new series of intimate, informative, surprising, and uplifting interviews with the biggest names in the culinary industry, sharing never-before-heard stories about the successes, struggles, and fork-in-the-road moments that made these personalities who they are today.

Each week, you'll hear from icons and innovators like Guy Fieri, Padma Lakshmi, David Chang, Mashama Bailey, Enrique Olvera, Maneet Chauhan, Shota Nakajima, Antoni Porowski, and other special guests going deep with host Kat Kinsman on their formative experiences; the dishes and meals that made them; their joys, doubts and dreams; and what's on the menu in the future. Tune in for a feast that'll feed your brain and soul — and plenty of wisdom and quotable morsels to savor.

New episodes drop every Tuesday. Listen and follow on: Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, TuneIn.

These interview excerpts have been edited for clarity.

Editor’s Note: The transcript for download does not go through our standard editorial process and may contain inaccuracies and grammatical errors.