Chef Paul Qui Talks About His Career
Earlier this year, I went to Venice (the one in Italy) to see 10 chefs from 10 countries, all under 30, compete in the 14th annual S.Pellegrino Cooking Cup competition. Each dish, judged by an international jury of chefs — including the legendary Peruvian chef Gastón Acurio and last year's Cooking Cup winner, 34-year-old Austin-based Paul Qui — was evaluated in terms of its presentation, difficulty, taste, and proper pairing with wine and (yes, that's right) water.
The S.Pellegrino Cooking Cup is a two-day event, opening with a tasting dinner attended and judged by international journalists, and culminating with a Saturday afternoon regatta, during which each chef prepared a meal in the galley of a sailboat that was simultaneously being raced through the Venice Lagoon, from the Lido to the island of San Giorgio. The winner of this competition was young Russian chef Sergey Berezutsky of Kak Est' (As Eat Is) in Moscow, who presented what he called "Two Ways" of langostines (purchased that morning at Venice's famed Rialto Market), one smoked in birch bark, the other served with local zucchini and tomatoes, one atop the other in stacked Chinese steamer baskets.
This whimsical presentation, which to me was reminiscent of Russian nesting dolls, epitomized what Paul Qui believes it takes to win a competition like this: "A chef having fun and thinking outside the box." The Russian's dish, Qui explained, "was cleverly presented, but it also made sense." That assessment might well apply to Qui's own cooking.
Qui is the chef/owner of Austin's qui restaurant, a series of East Side King food trucks, and, most recently, a restaurant within a restaurant, the Tasting Room at qui, where he serves an always sold out 26-course tasting menu to 16 people a night. One of the reasons he has become the media darling — being named one of Food & Wine's Best New Chefs in 2014, and, most recently being crowned Esquire's Chef of the Year — has to do with his own idea of having fun and thinking outside the box. With offerings like tacos stuffed with Japanese ingredients, steamed "poor qui" buns, Filipino pork blood stew, and other things your mother never made. he embodies the current generation of chefs, combining multiple cultural influences — in his case, his ancestral Filipino cuisine, which in itself includes Spanish and Chinese influences, along with Japanese (he worked seven years at Uchiko) and Texan, since that's where he resides — with farmers market ingredients and elements not many other American chefs think of. Pig's head, banana ketchup, coconut vinegar, and grilled peanut butter all have a place on Paul Qui's menus.
I caught up with Qui in October to discuss the Venetian competition and to learn something of what's inside the mind of this playful, irreverent, and extremely talented chef du jour.
You won last year's S.Pellegrino Cooking Cup. What, if anything, did this mean to your career?
First of all, it was a huge honor to be asked to participate, to represent the United States in this international competition. I'm always interested in the chefs that are on the World's 50 Best Restaurants list. The year I won, Massimo Bottura was the head judge. [Bottura's Osteria Francescana in Modena currently holds the #3 spot on the 50 Best list.] He's one of my heroes. The minute I heard that name, I was like: Sign me up! Whatever I have to do to go, I'll do it! Once I was there, it was really cool to see what chefs were doing all over the world and to see a reflection of how my style resonated with an international audience. This year, I got to be a judge with a lot of people I admire, such as Gastón Acurio. That was a really great experience. So, yeah, for me, the Cooking Cup has been a very big deal.
How did judging the event compare with competing in it?
I was a lot more relaxed this year. It was a lot easier to be a judge! Last year I was so nervous. I had never cooked on a boat. I had no idea that the stove moved to keep stuff from sliding off. That was really cool. Still, it was crazy. There were pots of water sloshing all over the place. It was really difficult. This year I just sat on the judges' boat and the dishes came to us. That was fun.
What's your favorite thing about being a chef?
My favorite thing about being a chef is the ability to make something with my hands. I have confidence issues; I can be insecure. This goes back to ever since I was a kid. When I was growing up and I realized that I could make something with my hands, it meant a lot to me. It gave me confidence I didn't have before. I also really like the camaraderie — being close to a bunch of people, like a family. Working in kitchens is always compared to being on the battlefield or being on a sports team. And it's true. You feel that with the people you work with every day: that you're all in it together. I also like that with cooking — and eating — it's instant gratification. You either succeeded that day or you failed. All of these things make me love being a chef.
If you weren't a chef, what would you be?
I don't know, man. I wanted to be an artist. I realized I wasn't good at it. Then I found cooking and it made me feel so special that I don't know that I'd want to do anything else. To a certain degree there's an art to being a chef, I guess, and I know there are some chefs who like to say they're an artist. But I think cooking is very much a craft. One of the things that has come with success as a chef, is that I'm now a restaurateur. I'm not just cooking. I'm crafting a whole restaurant, a whole experience, from making a table look good, thinking about service and how I want that to go, working with designers... It all gets my creative mind going... I love it.
What dish that you make are you most proud of and why.
The dish I'm most proud of it my grandmother's dinuguan. It's a very common Filipino stew made with pig's blood. My grandmother on my father's side taught me to make it later in life, after I became curious about cooking. It's the thing I was most intimidated to make because I really wanted to get it right. My grandmother passed away, and never got a chance to eat my version, but my dad did. Dinuguan was his favorite dish growing up, and he approves of mine, so that was a big deal. I serve it at the restaurant, and over the last couple of years, I've been able to get non-Filipino people to eat it and like it, which I'm also proud of.
How would you describe your style? [pullquote:left]
I would describe my style as "still learning." My cooking definitely has Asian influence, Filipino, and Spanish influences. But so many things in the food world enamor me that I'm always trying to learn and pick up new things. I've been cooking for 12 years, and I still feel like there's so much more to learn. I cook with a lot of Texas products and I use seasonal ingredients. I'm always inspired by new things that famers bring me; the latest one is Malabar spinach tendrils. One of my purveyors, a local farmer, game me some to try; I'd never even heard of them before, but I loved them. Even though I'm the same age as a lot of them, I feel like an infant in the cooking industry compared to the chefs I look up to: Ferran Adrià, Josh Stevens, Sean Brock, Rene Redzepi, Massimo Bottura, David Chang... So, yeah. I'd say I'm still finding my voice.
The kitchen culture has changed from one of French chefs with extreme hierarchy to one of young chefs doing their own thing. Do you think it's a good thing?
I think that's what I love about being a chef, is being able to try to define my food the way I do now. But I often think about: Would I survive in an old-school, three-star kitchen, or working with this or that chef? And I think I would. I think I'd love it. As crazy as my style is, I work well when I'm doing one specific thing. When I worked at a Uchiko, for five years I made the same two rolls: a crunchy roll and kappa maki, a very classic, very simple cucumber roll. The repetition is therapeutic for me. My favorite task in the kitchen to this day is to cut green onions really thin. And I loved making white rice for the sushi bar: trying to get the water temperature right, the moisture right. Rice is foundation of any sushi bar and it was so satisfying getting it just right. Now that I have so much going on, I miss the days when I had a stricter day and regimen. I feel like my brain is kind of all over the place. All the chefs I admire—some of the guys I've named—have a single focus. I think about the guy that folds the napkin in a resturant the same way, hundreds of napkins, every day for years. Or someone like Jiro [from the movie Jiro Dreams of Sushi]: he's done the same thing for like 40 years. I probably don't have it in me to do something like that but I admire what I know you can learn doing the same thing day in and day out. I love all those OCD things that chefs do that you pick up along the way. I wish there were more time and I could work in every single kitchen; going from kitchen to kitchen to kitchen just learning from different chefs would be a pretty badass dream come true.
What's your favorite dish to cook at home?
Lately I've been cooking a lot of adobo at home — pork and chicken. Adobo is a traditional Filipino thing; it came from the Spanish and the Spanish got it from the Moors. It's a mixture of garlic, bay leaf, peppercorn, vinegar, and some versions have soy sauce, that you put on meat before grilling it. Adobo is something I've stayed away from doing at my restaurant because I feel like everybody's family has their own version, and everyone thinks his family's is the best. Adobo was the first dish that my grandmother on my mom's side taught me to make, when I went to college, so that I wouldn't eat microwave food. Hers doesn't have soy sauce in it, and she cooks it until it's dry so it's crunchy, like carnitas. My dad's mom's does have soy sauce in it. Hers is more like a braise. Recently, I've been tinkering with different adobos, but I haven't nailed it yet. I know that my adobo isn't as good as either of my grandmothers', so I still have some work to do.
How do you like all the media attention you've been getting?
I think if you want to be a chef you should do it because you want to be a chef not because you want to be a famous chef. For me, a celebrity chef is a different animal than a chef. I could never be that kind of chef. I want to cook. But at the same time, I want to live my life and see the world; that's one reason I got into cooking. And the media totally helps you in that regard. It makes the world smaller. You get to do so many cool things. Like when I did Cooking Cup, I'd never even been to Italy, ever. So going there to cook on a boat, that was my first time in Italy. And this year, when I got to be a judge, my wife, Deana, and I took a little side trip after Venice and I got to eat at Bottura's Osteria Francescana and some places in Bologna. So that was really cool.
Do you have advice for any chef wanting to have a career such as yours?
For me it's just to know that food is subjective. Not everybody is going to like what you're going to cook all the time. Just get over that and move on. Keep on doing your thing.