So... I'm currently staying in Hamburg, Germany. This is 2nd time I came here. Last time I came here about 1.5yrs ago to go to Wacken open air festival... the world biggest and oldest heavy metal festival! This mean I'll probably come back to Hamburg next yrs to come, no question about it!! I may be a chef, but before that, I'm a metalhead, self label "Culinary metal vagabond"!!
Speak of, I really think it is great for chefs to have other passions besides cooking. I believe many chefs commonly love traveling, I mean one of the best part about cheffing are this job enable us to travel and work oversea. Travel is definitely one of the major sources of culinary inspirations for me. Different culture, cuisine, ingredients, styles, flavors profiles are always keep expanding our creativity.
And as I mentioned on my previous "my inspiration" posts, to be innovative as a chef, I always think I try to think cooking with different view not as a culinary professional. with 1000 years of culinary history, how we can build culinary identity as a single culinary professional? It is hard task, so I start thinking what if I think cooking as hair dresser or fashion designer or something. Because I believe that allows me to expand my culinary imaginations more diverse and unique, although I never work as a hair dresser or anything! Instead of reading many cooking books from another chefs, I rather get inspired by other arts, graphic designs, visual art, body art, painting, photography, architecture, nature, music, tagline, fashion and something not culinary related.
So anyway I have huge passion in heavy metal and traveling just same as cooking. I need all 3 of them equally in my life and can't live just cooking 24/7. Which give me the balance in my life like Mr.Miyagi said and we chefs absolutely need the balance especially since we work on long hard hours and work in extremely stressful environment. I'd thank you what I have , otherwise I maybe become cooking freak all I care about cooking and screaming in the kitchen all the time!
Oops, nothing about Germany.... Anyway the following is the list of the restaurant I made for Germany on this CJWDT'12 Gastro'N'omad tour.
http://www.tim-raue.com/index.php?task=§ion=&lang=en / / Berlin
http://www.pure-berlin.com/ / Berlin
http://www.reinstoff.eu/willkommen.html / Berlin
http://www.restaurant-lavie.de/uk/home.html / / Osnabruck
http://www.christian-bau.de/ / Nennig
http://www.restaurant-aqua.de/ / Wolfsburg
http://www.amador.ag/amador_restaurant/index.php/home.html / Langen
Full list of 2012 Michelin star restaurants although I'm not always agreed with their rating!
http://www.elizabethonfood.com/files/Liesbeth%20Auerbach/file/MichelinGermany2012.pdf
Germany = currywurst, one of the winner dog of the globe!
http://matadornetwork.com/nights/the-world-wide-wiener-hot-dogs-around-the-world/
Unfortunately I didn't get any position opening up to my CV, so I decided to move on to Copenhagen, Denmark tomorrow! I may come back to Germany later on though, I have one potential job on talk..... But for now I decide to go on Scandinavia to see if I can find my 'right' place.... So far I have one appointment to stage and will see how it goes!! CJWDT'12 Gastr'N'omad tour continues.....
Labels: CJWDT: EUROPE, CJWDT'12
