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Taipei
In 2006, I packed a bag and traded the familiar rhythms of Spain for the neon-soaked humidity of Taipei, jumping into a small Italian joint without a second thought. It was a sensory ambush. The air was heavy with smells I couldn’t yet name, punctuated by rains so massive they felt like a cleansing of the soul. For the first time, I wasn't just cooking; I was living.
Behind an open kitchen—fueled by market-driven menus and the immediate, terrifying feedback of the guests—the shy, introverted kid I thought I was simply evaporated. Every night was a fever dream of expansion. I’d finish a shift and find myself huddled at a folding table in a different night market, flanked by a ragtag crew of future directors, actors, and chefs. We’d kill cold beers and crush plates of local soul food until the early hours, the world suddenly feeling bigger, brighter, and a hell of a lot more delicious than I ever dared to imagine.
Shangai & Beyond
After three years in Taipei, the call came to join the pre-opening of Les Suites Orient on the historic Bund in Shanghai. My answer was the same as always: Let’s go. If Taiwan was a gentle introduction, Shanghai in the lead-up to the 2010 Expo was a full-scale assault on the senses. This was the "Wild Wild East"—a city mutating in real-time, growing taller, louder, and faster than anything I’d ever seen. It was a frontier where the ancient and the hyper-modern collided in a haze of construction dust and neon.
The food was a revelation that made everything I thought I knew about "Chinese cuisine" look like a cartoon. I dove headfirst into the mind-numbing heat of Sichuan peppercorns, the rich, silk-road fusion of Xinjiang lamb and cumin, and the delicate, vinegar-laced complexity of the South. I spent my time off pushing my limits in triathlons and bike races across the mainland, pedaling into far-flung corners of the country where a Mandarin-speaking foreigner was still a total anomaly. It was a deep, unfiltered immersion into a culinary landscape of staggering scale, far beyond the simplified versions the West often settles for, and it permanently recalibrated my understanding of what flavor can be.
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