What do you miss most from your own kitchen right now?
The grills we have tonight are amazing, but they’re not quite my grills. In my outdoor kitchen at home, I have a grill, a kamado and a charcoal oven. To me, those are the three most important things for cooking over fire.
I really love working with Josper grills, so this setup is already very close to what I enjoy most, but having a charcoal oven or a small kamado does help with keeping things warm, managing garnishes and controlling different elements of the cooking. So maybe I just miss a couple more bits and pieces.
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“I try not to worry too much about the things I don’t have”
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How is this place influencing what you’re cooking today?
Whenever I cook somewhere in the world, I always try to lean into local ingredients or a certain sense of place. Here, olives and olive trees became the main inspiration.
At home, I cook over olive wood and I have a beautiful olive tree in my garden. Here, even the skewer we served at the beginning, with olive tapenade, was on an olive branch, and it felt like a little piece of the South of France paired with this incredible Australian Wagyu.
There’s a simplicity to that which I really like.It’s actually something I’ve done before at the restaurant as a canapé, and I think after tonight we’ll probably take it back to the UK and keep evolving it there too.
What limitation has shaped your cooking the most here?
It’s always difficult trying to replicate something you do every day at home in a kitchen or open space that’s completely unfamiliar to you.
But I like to think you can do things about 90% the way you normally would, and then leave 10% room for improvisation. That’s part of the fun.
Honestly, one of the biggest differences for me here is the weather. I’m much more used to cooking in the rain than in conditions like this. It does happen in the UK… just not very often.
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How do you approach something you can’t refine over time?
Whenever I write a menu, I try to make sure a good portion of it is tried and tested. Maybe 30 or 40% are things I’ve done before, even if some of the garnishes or details evolve depending on the location.
At the core, the dishes should still feel grounded in something you know well. Then I don’t mind taking a few risks around that.
One thing that always happens when working on events like this is that certain ingredients behave differently than expected. You’re working with a caterer, with different products, different conditions, and suddenly something is only 80% of what you imagined. You have to think quickly, adapt, maybe dress it differently or change direction slightly.
And honestly, sometimes those mistakes create better dishes. Menus should continuously evolve. You discover something at an event and suddenly think, “I want to do that in the restaurant,” or “I’m taking that idea to the next project.”
I try not to worry too much about the things I don’t have. I just embrace the things I do have.
What are you chasing that you haven’t achieved yet?
Retirement, probably.
I’ve been doing this job for 27 years now and I genuinely love it, but it’s always highs and lows. There are days when I love hospitality and days when I absolutely hate it. And right now, it’s a difficult industry all over the world.
But there’s still life in it. We’ll keep finding ways through.
And one day, hopefully, I’ll never have to pick up a knife again. I’ll just be sitting on a beach somewhere in Mexico, drinking tequila. Give me another twenty years.
@chefandrewclarke
Juan Arbelaez
“A meal should make you feel something beyond hunger.”
A conversation with Juan Arbelaez following a private gathering created with Westholme
