There is a quiet honesty to cooking at home.

For you, your friends, your family.

You open the fridge and cook what’s there or, if you’re having people over,

you’ll have planned to cook what you love....

Most likely they're dishes you’ve done plenty of times before

If you’re adventurous, you’ll try something new...

it’s the challenge you like to bring to what you love doing.. and that’s to cook.

Not because it’s a job. Not because it’s what you have to do before bathing the kids,

or watching the tv, or because it’s the justification

to yourself to open a bottle of wine.

But imagine being the chef of an acclaimed restaurant, on an island, that relies (mainly) on what farmers bring them that day.

Imagine working service, then phoning your suppliers and they say "well, we THINK we're going to pick X, Y, and maybe Z tomorrow", then planning what the next day's service is going look like, not knowing what you will likely get....

It takes incredible confidence.

It takes world-class skill.

It takes the support of a team that you've trained, who share your passion for food.

In this episode I chat to Vinny Lauria.

He is exactly that kind of chef, with that level of skill, and every single restaurant he has opened shows it.

Being responsible for 50 MILLION litres a year, the CEO of Robertson Co-Op winery, Rianco van Rooyen and I chatted about wine, and how everyone in the value cycle has to adapt to survive. Wine, like classical music, needs a conductor - someone who is as good as reading the soil as he is at reading the crowd!

On Culinary Dodo, I explore Food & Beverage through the lens of Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection.

External forces shape evolution — whether you’re a species… or a restaurant. In hospitality, natural selection isn’t poetic — it’s real:

Diners change, trends fade, sustainability demands action.

Adapt or die. Simple. Cruel. True. Most of us in F&B have been there.

But some evolutions aren’t forced — they’re chosen.

Not because the outside world demands it, but because an inside voice refuses to stay the same.

The story of @Richard Ekkebus and the evolution of Amber has fascinated me for years.

It wasn’t just a monumental shift in what he cooked — it was a transformation in why he cooked.

An adaptation driven by a desire to better align what he felt with what the restaurant served.

I believe Amber’s direction is far more than the often-quoted “plant-forward” or “sustainable.”

It’s a philosophy - one that has become the DNA of the restaurant, the team, and @Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group itself.

I call Amber’s approach La Cuisine Claire — a cuisine where nothing hides.
Not ethics.

Not intention.

Not flavour.

A cuisine that evolves not out of fear of losing relevance, but from a refusal to compromise on values.

This evolution is led by conviction — not convenience.

Discover the human decisions behind Amber’s leap forward to three Michelin stars — and what it takes to evolve a restaurant already at the very top.

Listen to the new episode of Culinary Dodo:

La Cuisine Claire with @Richard Ekkebus

If we're masters - bending food to our biology, and bending our biology to the food we are able to adapt - what happens to US as a species when we meet a foe - a system that has taken OUR spot at the top of the food chain? In a world where the industry of food is literally KILLING us - diabetes, heart disease, obesity - can we adapt...certainly BIG PHARMA is in an evil relationship with BIG FOOD. It's a cure to the cause - and you can see it in a carousel of adverts - burgers / sodas / diabetes medicine ads / weight reduction surgery / back to fast food / throw in a few ads for weight loss injections.....In the West, we have an ABUNDANCE of food, but we are starving for nourishment...today, I swear a lot. But it was worth it.

We've been masters of preserving our food. We preserved for flavour and safety. We used smoke, salt, fermentation - all proving how ingenious we were. Today, we've lost that art - yes, artisans hold onto our history but corporations have turned craft into profit. We've sterilized everything, removing microbes. Science, backed by the pharmacutical industry, took the life from our food...and sold it back to us in capsules. This shows us how we did it - not because we had labs..but because we had instinct.

From humble beginnings as milk stored in a sheep's stomach, cheese has endured for thousands of years. For an industry that generates a trillion dollars a year, while 70% of the world's adults are actually lactose intolerant, dairy has adapted - to be delicious, and also a global leader in Dollar Darwinism - that twist in evolution where a fat bottom line will NEVER let ingredients go extinct!

More than any other dishes, these two achieved Gold and Silver in Darwin's Culinary Survivors awards. Spanning thousands of years, bread and noodles (in all of their forms) have adapted. The fed us, and filled us with joy, but they had to work for it!

As a self-styled Culinary Anthropologist, I explore food through the lens of Natural Selection.....how dishes and ingredients have either adapted, or died. Join me as we go beyond what we taste - from way back when to how it got to our plate.

Episodes launch 1st October.