423 Chris Locke - Fermentation is the future of food

Fermentation is the oldest food technology on earth. It happens in our guts, in the soil, in every cup of coffee and most restaurants still throw the juiced lime away. At Baldío, Mexico City's zero-waste restaurant, Chris Locke has built an entire philosophy around that lime: a Korean-style raw syrup, a lacto-fermented powder for seasoning, a tapache, and finally a koji-based shoyu. Four products, zero waste, from something already used. 

In this conversation, recorded inside Baldío's production warehouse in Mexico City, Chris unpacks the three real drivers of fermentation — flavour, health, and waste reduction — and why most kitchens only chase one. He explains why the menu at Baldío functions like an ecosystem, where removing one dish breaks six others, why consistency is the wrong obsession for any restaurant working with small regenerative farms, and how 200 litres of surplus corn vinegar a week is pushing the project toward a retail product line. 

A UK chef who built his fermentation practice in Toronto and a circular innovation kitchen in Melbourne before arriving in Mexico City and waited four months for a job that didn't yet exist, Chris brings a rare cross-cultural precision to a practice most people still associate only with natural wine. Fermentation as a tool for closing loops, building shelf-stable products, and making the economics of zero-waste food actually work.

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Transcript

Fermentation As The Hidden Engine

Koen van Seijen 0:00

Fermentation. We exist because of it, and yet we usually don't talk about it. Maybe when we discuss natural wine or something. So join me in a quick conversation in the back of the prep place of Baldillo, nature's favorite restaurant, where all the magic and by that fermentation happens. Join us in a deep dive into why fermentation holds the key for a sustainable food future. From flavor to food waste to developing shelf-stable products which can be sold beyond the restaurant. Ferments hold the key to all of them. This is part of three conversations. First walking the land with Pablo in the Chinampas. Then the prep kitchen and fermentation tempo with Chris, this one. And finally, the kitchen of the restaurant with Dani. Enjoy. This is the Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food Podcast, where we learn more on how to put money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities, and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Welcome to another. I'm calling all the episodes special at the moment, which is not that that makes none of them special. But this is definitely a different one. We're in we were just on the farm on the and not the floating ones, on the islands. We walked, we talked, we snacked some things, or we tasted, we smelled, and now we come to the next phase of Arcetier, which is a warehouse. And which of there are 10,000 in Mexico City, but this is a special one. And we're here with Chris. First, let's start with where we are. There's gonna be some background noise or some humming freezers and fridges. There are people coming in and out, but where are we here? There's some strong music passing by in a car outside. Where are we? And then we get into your story into this place.

Chris Locke 1:35

Yeah, so we are currently sat in the Arcetiero warehouse, which is the like distribution center where all of the food from the Champas and other small farms comes to as well. Uh, but it's also the production kitchen of Baldillo, which is the zero waste restaurant in Mexico City.

Koen van Seijen 1:52

So, where are we going next? So, here this is where the flow comes in, quality control for both other customers, other restaurants, uh households, and of course the restaurant you also manage. And a bit more about your background. What brings you here and why do you spend most of your waking hours thinking, thinking about thinking and acting around fools?

Chris Locke 2:15

What brings me here to Mexico and also to the project is the project is why I'm in Mexico. I came here specifically to Baldeo and to be part of a zero-waste restaurant and a zero-waste food system that's operating in like a capitalist model, but like doing good things in that framework. Um, yeah, like Baldeo was the thing that drew me. And I've been working with food as a chef for uh around 20 years uh and working closer with fermentation for the past eight years. I started dabbling. I'm originally from the UK, but I lived in Toronto and Canada for nine years. So I started in Canada dabbling in fermentation. Where did you start? What was your entry point of fermentation? Lactoferments, so like just salt and vegetables, essentially, really easy. And then I got gateway into Koji and grew my first batch of Koji in 2018 and just snowballed from them.

Koen van Seijen 3:19

Like the opportunities, just yeah, the opportunity is. But in let's say the restaurant or again the food processing, which is not the transformation space, it's popping up everywhere. Even for a non-culinary follower like me, where work a lot in the food space, but not so much in the culinary space. Every third word is fermentation now. Like it's very interesting. Do you see it as well from eight years ago to now? Is it moment or is it still very small?

Chris Locke 3:52

Yeah, I think it's like a lot more prominent in restaurants

Inside The Zero-Waste Warehouse Kitchen

Chris Locke 3:55

and from like a it's becoming more popular in like an independent restaurant focus. So there's like chefs in small restaurants that are starting to do those processes themselves.

Koen van Seijen 4:07

I mean, independent is not as a restaurant chain, or independent chefs that are in the restaurant looking for another tool or another.

Chris Locke 4:15

I think like individual restaurants. So it's like chef-led, chef-driven innovation. So we've I think we'll we have definitely been exposed to fermentation all of our lives. Every time you drink coffee or tea, I think it's not talked about, but it's it is a fermented product, it's a product of fermentation. Of course. And the thing is like we are a product of fermentation. Yeah, like we have microbial processes and metabolic processes happening in our bodies currently as we speak.

Koen van Seijen 4:44

As you're listening to this, it may be gardening, cooking, etc.

Chris Locke 4:47

But yeah, we we wouldn't be able to like digest food, we wouldn't be able to extract nutrients from food without fermentation. So um it's all around us. I think it's just not been talked about. And the fact that we've been always consuming fermented foods throughout human history is significant. And when we talk about fermentation being like a new trend or something that's been like picked up, it's been executed and explored by chefs in restaurants. When I said like independent restaurants, there's a think in food processing, it's been around like even in modern industrial food processing, there's fermentation is present, but it's in a very controlled way with like very controlled e-strains and chemical processes. And just what we're seeing now is more of the I don't know if it's the right word, but like call it like artisanal way in that like the traditional processes and more natural processes of fermentation are being explored.

Koen van Seijen 5:44

And do you think the chefs it's difficult to talk for other people, obviously, are leaning in because of the flavor and or because of the health angle? I see a lot of people, I think, leaning in because of health and the benefits and egg-fermented food and the K fears popping up on places I never would expect that. But the chefs you're saying are leaning in, is why is it becoming a more central tool to them in their toolbox? Like together with all the other ones, they've always used it, but not so explicitly. Okay, I'm gonna experiment with.

Chris Locke 6:17

Yeah, I think there's three, three, like largely three kind of like buckets of benefits of fermentation, and one is health. And I think that's if it's been pursued as a health benefit, I think that's larger, like one bucket, and it doesn't really tie in with the other two, which would be pursuit of flavor or flavor development and reducing waste. So we use fermentation to reduce waste and to uh create flavor and develop flavor. And health benefits are nice, happy because it's ferment. Yeah, it's alive.

Koen van Seijen 6:52

Yeah, and so reducing waste is a huge topic we actually I'm thinking about, probably never cover. People are gonna correct me, but probably never covered in the podcast. Maybe slightly when we talked about seeds with an independent seed grower, like with uh row seven, and they

Health Versus Flavor Versus Waste

Koen van Seijen 7:10

were developing okay, how do you make the broccoli slightly different, or how do you select for reducing the stem, etc.? So how does that express itself through fermentation? Like, how does it help you create a zero waste restaurant?

Chris Locke 7:24

I think a lot of the processes that we do, like a lot of the fermented foods that we make here, we use with secondary ingredients. Um, there's very few that are primary ingredients that are like second sorry for all the non-color. What are secondary ingredients? Something that's already been used. So either something that's already been used or it's difficult to use or it's awkward to use. Uh fermentation is really great for extracting flavor from things that you might traditionally look at and be like, we can't use that, or there's no flavor in that. Or it would be like just too labor-intensive to make that work in a consumable way that guests would enjoy. And I think there's like selective processes through experience and through just traditional processes, and finding ways to apply those traditional processes to those ingredients that are more difficult to use. Like an example would just be in the most simplest terms, is like a juiced lime. Like it has been used in a lot of like traditional sensors or modern day sensors. The use of that lime has happened, it didn't like it has been costed, you juiced it, and you extracted the juice. The juice has been used, the rest is discarded, which is probably weight-wise the majority. Absolutely. Yeah, but there's so much flavor that can be extracted from there through through fermentation processes. As an example, it's a really nice like closed loop process where we take something that people would usually throw away or might throw away, uh, and turn it into three other products and finish with something that's entirely consumable. Um so we make a chung, like a cemented raw syrup. Okay. And all of the waste from the chung.

Koen van Seijen 9:09

Okay, we moved space people. If you were scared that the audio is gonna be like that for the whole time. Yeah, we moved in between the wines, which are great. All the different bottles are a piece of art, basically. Yeah. Like the natural wine people do really well. Is that a it's interesting that they, I'm saying a very big day. Now we get back to the what you were describing before, are ahead of this game or something? Like the fermentation-wise, more natural. It seems like the natural wine space has been a bit more leaning into that a slightly longer than most chefs. Is that fair?

Chris Locke 9:45

I think we're still talking about like commercial production and also like retail products, and also just looking at a different way of fermentation rather than adding fermentation. So, where restaurants would use traditional cooking techniques of heating in different ways. The natural wine scene has moved away from commercial yeasts and just using kind of like indigenous wild yeast and spontaneous fermentation with a whole cluster fermentation.

Koen van Seijen 10:14

And they're able to sell. That's also interesting. They create a brand around it, it's very appealing to many, and branding is very good if you look around the bottles we see. But sorry, you were saying there's a beautiful one we do in three different ways in syrup. Yes.

Chris Locke 10:27

So with the limes that have been juiced, we make the raw fruit syrup. It's called a chan. It's a Korean cultural process of creating a raw fruit syrup. All of those juiced limes then go into either go to be lactofermented, um, and then we

Four Products From Juiced Limes

Chris Locke 10:45

make a powder, or they can be made into a lactofermented, then dried, then a powder. Uh-huh. That's one kind of that, and then we use that in a tahin, like a seasoning powder. But then it can also be used to make a tapachi, like a fermented Mexican fermented drink, traditionally used with pineapple, but you can use it in different fruits. And then after that, we can make a shoyu, like a soy sauce, kind of soy sauce-like product with a specific strain of uh koji rice, like the mold grown on rice, and make this delicious kind of it's almost like preserved lime juice.

Koen van Seijen 11:23

Is it like it's like you have to choose one of the three roads, or it's even some are sequential?

Chris Locke 11:29

So those are sequential apart from the lacto ferment. So it's chung, tapache, shoyu, and then finally when we strain the shoyu and we have the salads, we can make marmalade. Wow. So we have four products, zero waste, under juice because already used. Yeah.

Koen van Seijen 11:48

And that kind of thinking is fundamentally different than most restaurants. I think Abra was sharing how much restaurants waste in terms of just raw weight that comes in and then gets and it's I think 30-40% easily. That kind of thinking, where were you exposed to that? Or was that a reason you're getting to hospitality? When when was that kind of mentality? Because it is a fundamental creativity, like it's super creative, but also super difficult because the standard is so much more we cut it and we compost it if we're lucky.

Chris Locke 12:21

Yeah, it is a it's like a it's a mindset, it's a mindset, and it's an absolute like thinking shift as well. So I first came across it in in Toronto when I was working in a restaurant, and we started fermenting and we started trying to reduce our waste and started to look at like byproducts and how we could use them in because it was very specific as a strategy.

Koen van Seijen 12:42

We want to reduce waste, so we're gonna let's see what we can do from yeah.

Chris Locke 12:46

It was like a farm to table restaurant, and it seemed like if we're working with farmers directly, get an amazing produce, working seasonally, and using fermentation to bring out flavors, we can also use fermentation to reduce waste. We can also menu engineer to be able to include all of these things that were like waste products, but then you actually make something that's a greater sum of its parts.

Koen van Seijen 13:09

Yeah, menu and menu engineer like material and requires a lot of creativity there.

Chris Locke 13:15

Yeah, when you start to want to make use of things that that would be discarded, then you start to accumulate them, and then you need to find a way to use them. So that's putting them back into the menu, into a dish, either a new dish or uh an existing dish. And then suddenly you start to uh connect these loops and become a challenge then as well. So I like the analogy of creating an ecosystem where you create an ecosystem where everything is reliant on each other. If you remove a dish from the menu, it affects six other dishes, and suddenly you don't have ingredients for those dishes. So there's a lot of it like any system needs to be maintained and it needs human interaction. I think Pablo probably talked about this in the Chanam pass in that like when the if those like those lands are left without human intervention, the soil fertility drops and it's not as fertile, you don't have as active in the ecosystem. So the the need for human intervention is the same in the menu, and that we're building something that is very similar to what nature represents as an ecosystem, and then we we begin to close the loops on all of these things that would be loose ends.

Koen van Seijen 14:27

And how did because in an ecosystem the balance is always the tricky part in the sense of you might have a lot of Lyme and you might have not so much of something else. Like, how do you balance and are you starting to almost also acquire more of certain things because you know you have a use for it just to make sure because it has to fit in dish number eight somewhere? Like you're building the menu and just procurement completely different than oh, I need X grams of this final product.

Menu Engineering Like An Ecosystem

Koen van Seijen 14:55

No, I need X grams, which means two kilos of that, which means ten other things.

Chris Locke 14:59

Absolutely. Yeah, and there's menu engineering. There is some menu engineering and also being okay with with change and how things evolve. We if there's one dish that's not we're not selling as much of this dish, so then we're not producing as much residue from that dish that is then feeding something else, then is finding maybe we do use primary ingredients to fill that gap in a way that's still delicious, that we would be doing anyway in a normal quote unquote normal restaurant system where you would buy ingredients and they are used directly in that dish. So having like options where you can use some of our recipes reader choose your own adventure. It's like you can use this or you can use this.

Koen van Seijen 15:43

Ah, because of course, yeah, there are certain yeah, there are you can swap certain things relatively easily, not perfectly, but you have some flexibility there, which as a chef I imagine is super interesting and super challenging and demanding. Like it's very different from the standard restaurant where you could try to get maybe seasonal, try to get the dish the same for at least three months, maybe six months.

Chris Locke 16:06

I think there's too much focus on consistency in restaurants. I think there's too much focus on consistency in like human existence. Like nature is not consistent in what it produces, and there's huge amounts of variety and diversity, and that's beautiful, and that's why nature is beautiful. And we as ourselves are products of nature, and we are diverse and absolutely not consistent from one person to another, or even in our own in our own lives. But then we try and create these systems that are super diverse, super rigid and consistent system, yeah. Yeah, and it's just it's very difficult to maintain, and it's also you're just like constantly fighting a battle of nature, and you want to work with small farms and you want to work with organic regenerative farms that way the produce you get in like differs even in one delivery. Like the range of flavor, shape, size, texture changes, but then trying to make something that's consistent in a menu, like it doesn't make sense at all.

Koen van Seijen 17:09

So there's some consistency that you need. Like you have a certain menu menu flow following, you have a certain it's not that you can you can some restaurants do uh spontaneously cook every day, something else, but it's a very limited yeah, you can only have a few tables like that.

Chris Locke 17:25

Yeah, and there's consistency in that we will also we will always provide like amazingly tasty food that looks good, that tastes good, that feels good, guest experiences that where people leave, and that was amazing. That is a level of consistency that is achievable, and that's that's what we want that in terms of making everything exactly the same.

Koen van Seijen 17:44

Yeah, it's it's it's not a factory, yeah. No, it's not a it's not a crowd farming, a big direct to consumer organic and many region farmers as well. Yeah, in Europe says it's every single farm says it's not a screw factory, yeah. Every single fruit looks different. We buy the ones that are a bit colored, etc., and the oranges still taste amazing.

Chris Locke 18:06

They should look different if your food all looks the same, it's from an industrial system.

Koen van Seijen 18:10

And so you were in Toronto, starting to explore zero ways through fermentation and other methods, then what brought you here?

Chris Locke 18:17

After Toronto, I went to Australia and I was working around the corner. Yeah, I was in Melbourne for a year, and I was working on a project that was like a circular innovation kitchen that was built in the main market in Melbourne, and my job was to salvage things that things from the vendors in the market that would be thrown away because they didn't have an outline, things couldn't be sold, they couldn't sell vegetables.

Koen van Seijen 18:39

At the end of the day, you everybody know who's been in markets?

Chris Locke 18:42

That's it was there was no option for them to do, they had no like processing facilities, they it was just a stand in the market. So, yeah, basically trying to divert things that would usually go into the waste bins there and making long life shelf-stable products. It was also part of a non-profit that was doing education programs for at-risk youth. It was an amazing organization, but that was a lot of fun playing around with large quantities. And large quantities, yeah, and and also the unpredictability of what was going to show up from day to day. There's one within my first month, I got I can't remember what it was, 400 400 kilos of sweet potatoes or something. Showed up on a palette and got to work just kind of find all the way to sweet potato in like a long life product.

Koen van Seijen 19:31

What have it become?

Chris Locke 19:32

A lot of it became soy sauce. It made like a sweet potato soy sauce, it was delicious, and an exosauce, like a vegan exo with fermented sweet potato. Yeah. And then you were thinking, oh, Mexico City. Yeah, the obvious next move. I came back from Australia and I went back to Toronto and didn't really have a plan. I was like looking at the next move, and I'd been following Baldeo and following the opening of Baldeo and reached out and said, Are you looking for somebody? I want to work there,

Chris’s Path To Baldeo

Chris Locke 20:05

and I feel like I'd be a fit. What pooled you here? What pulled you because you saw it from Instagram and new stuff. What pulled you to this place? I think seeing somewhere that has such a strong intention to do good things is super important. I don't want to work anywhere just for a job and I never have. It needs to have some intention and an opportunity to learn Spanish and a new challenge. And yeah, just the philosophy of the project and the fact that working with the Champas so closely in I think what is say internationally recognized as a very important agricultural project. Yeah. Just everything out, and then that's where it should be.

Koen van Seijen 20:52

As many places probably ignored or not?

Chris Locke 20:54

Like what do I think?

Koen van Seijen 20:55

Yeah, I started.

Chris Locke 21:03

And there wasn't a job when I came here. We made one. Yeah, and then I there wasn't a job at that point, so I've hung out for four months uh between Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Mexico, just waiting to see if something would happen. And then at the end of April we started talking again, and I was here by the start of May. Amazing.

Koen van Seijen 21:25

Yeah, and you remember the first time you were on the Chinamas?

Chris Locke 21:28

Yes. Yeah, it was actually the first time I went was when we just got the Michelin Green Star. So I was there with the whole team. It was like a celebration that I was brand new and I hadn't contributed anything to the May last year, right? Yeah. But it's beautiful to to be there and it's an amazing place. And then I've obviously gone several times since then, sometimes at sunrise, grab a canoe and just paddle out there. It's so peaceful. And to know that land has been farmed for millennia is quite astounding.

Koen van Seijen 21:59

And create it. By man, yeah. Without that, it would have been still a wetland, which is interesting and relevant, but it creates a lot of food. And so what happens apart from the distribution, the cleaning, or the selection, etc., for other restaurants, etc., what happens here specifically for Baldillo?

Chris Locke 22:18

What happens here for Baldio?

Koen van Seijen 22:20

For the restaurant. What the stuff comes in, everything happens here. Like what is happening here in terms of transformation, in terms of not prep, that's not the right word, but yeah, it is the right word.

Chris Locke 22:30

Yeah. Like how are the things processed from your ingredients? So we have the production kitchen, which does 90% of the production for Baldeo. There's some things that are like prepared at the restaurant, but a lot of the we have the space and equipment, and it's a lot easier to do things here. So about 90% of all of the prep is done in the production kitchen, as well as all of the fermentation processes. And that also includes the bar. So we have a separate head of production for the bar who does all of the fermented beverages. Because we only buy Mexican products, that means that a lot of things that would usually be on a bar from like an industrial like beverage industry, we just don't have access to. So the bar team goes pretty deep into finding alternatives or making alternatives to those traditional things that you might they guess might be accustomed to the tasting.

Koen van Seijen 23:29

And then beyond that, now in terms of products and etc. Like this space, it's not enormous, but I know there it's much bigger than the average kitchen, obviously, of a restaurant. How much of that is also outward facing instead of in terms of Pablo talked about sauces and things, like how much of you're thinking, okay, what else can we do with the production capacity we have here? Machinery, but also human, of course, after you've fermented it for one restaurant, then there's not the need, but there's so much else you can do.

Chris Locke 23:58

Yeah, so we've slowly we're selling to some restaurants, some fermented ingredients, but it's not huge. And that's it, it's nice to nice to like help out friends because the the restaurants we work with are you also taking stuff from them or it's all from here? No, so it's all from here. So there's some processes where we accumulate more waste, like more byproducts, than we can actually use the finished product of that byproduct for. And a good example of that is corn vinegar. We have a dish on the menu that includes corn, which we absolutely should because we're making it. Um so we accumulate a lot of corn husks and which we can use to make vinegar. So we have enough corn cobs and husks to make about 200 liters of vinegar a week. We use about 15 litres a week. So it's like way, way more than we can actually use. And we are selling some to restaurant. We've also started

Scaling Ferments Beyond The Restaurant

Chris Locke 24:55

to we have soft launch and but look into launch in a bigger way a line of retail products that include some of those some of those products from residual ingredients so we can we can make use of them, they're not just going to the bin. And we can they're also healthy, their health benefits and flavorful and reducing waste.

Koen van Seijen 25:18

So it's like a it's almost impossible, obviously, to use everything and everything in the same within the same kitchen and within the same restaurant because just physically it wouldn't make sense because you put a corn menu and you have 200 liters. Yeah, what are you gonna do with so much vinegar? And after so many years in in fermentation, what excites you? What is interesting? What is on the edge of what you would love to do maybe more if there was more time and more space, etc.

Chris Locke 25:43

But or are you doing what is what is in front of mind? There's a lot of excitement just in in fermentation itself, even in call I'm mundane now, but probably is not mundane to anyone else, and it wouldn't have been mundane to me like a year ago. Uh, but just the production of the ferments in the menu, and just knowing that the processes that are going on in those mixes or pastes or liquids is like microbial and chemical reactions that are like constantly changing over time. I think there's like a zen element to it in that you can you can make something and then sit back and just observe. Like your role as a fermenter is to curate a space where that fermentation can thrive, but then after that, you are just observing. It's very meditative, and that you just observe what is happening, but you don't really have any intervention, um, and the microbes will do their thing.

Koen van Seijen 26:43

Yeah. And it's gonna be super tasty or not, and then you try again.

Chris Locke 26:47

It's not that you cannot do a lot during Yeah, and if something goes wrong, then you kind of look at your processes, but generally it doesn't. Uh yeah. And it's still, even if it is going wrong, like it's still fun to observe. Yeah, it's still fun to observe those changes and see what's happening and trying to trying to understand the process.

Koen van Seijen 27:07

And how much of this is also almost archaeology or research into Mexico? We're in a very special place, obviously, globally in terms of biodiversity and history and also culinary history, to relook at things and apply it to today. You're only using Mexican ingredients. How much of that is going down the rabbit hole of what was fermented here before, maybe now not anymore, or in a different way that could be applied on and like I don't know, fermenting archaeology history in Mexico? Like, how did do you go there?

Chris Locke 27:36

There's the obvious like fermentation of Gavi, which is very culturally uh ingrained, and fermentation of agave into pukay and then into tequila or mezcal or sato or any of the other beverages. But I think there's there is obviously fermentation a history of fermentation, and there would have been a history of spontaneous fermentation of fruit. Um but there's as much as other cultures. I'm from the UK, and I don't know that there's any any kind of rich history of fermentation in the UK. The cheeses and the usual aspect of beers, yeah. Yeah, yeah, cheese and cheese and beer. That's about it. Probably a good combination. It's not like South Korea or Japan or China, yeah. So there are fermented, a lot of more fermented beverages, tapachi, as I mentioned earlier, punk and tewino, a beverage from Halisco.

Koen van Seijen 28:32

So it's not you can go to the older generation of the and ask, okay, what were you doing? That's it's more applying standard fermentation to the current ingredients you have for the.

Chris Locke 28:42

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So there's there is like cultural crossover and a lot of the fermentation processes that we're doing. So it's koji spores from imported from Japan, but grown on Mexican rice and fermenting Mexican ingredients. One of the main fusion, yeah. Cross boilery. Yeah, like you think fusion, but it's not really fusion.

Koen van Seijen 29:06

No, like in cross-baller, it's a very interesting that a strain is now living here, super culturally, let's say, accepted because growing on rice, etc. But originally a tiny part of that still came from somewhere very far away.

Chris Locke 29:21

Yeah, so we make a miso from corn masa, which is like a very great cultural representation of Mexico, but using like miso, like making a miso from something that's like very like corn has sustained people in this area of the world and Mesoamerica for millennia. So to make something that's entirely different, but so familiar with something that's so culturally relevant to Mexico is really special.

Koen van Seijen 29:52

Yeah, and their fermentation and processing are like it's really it adds something to that. Like it couldn't have wouldn't have been possible without.

unknown 29:59

Yeah.

Koen van Seijen 29:59

It would have been a very different dish, very different flavor, very different health benefits, etc. etc. And how are you

Koji, Corn Miso, And The Zen

Koen van Seijen 30:05

then in touch with a lot of other chefs outside Mexico? Is there a group of similar, similarly minded that share fermentation photos? Or like how does that work? Is there are there WhatsApp groups?

Chris Locke 30:19

There's a few groups. There's a few nerdy groups. Yeah, and then there's like personal connections as well, and just like sharing, I think, the fermentation community. When I first started to scratch the surface of fermentation, so I had to find these other nerds that were like interested in doing it or already practicing, I found it very welcoming, like very dissimilar to the culture of the culinary culture at that point. It's like eight years ago. And I think it's it is progressing, but it's very closed. And like the safeguarding of recipes and is mine. I made it, but like fermentation is very open. It's you have to I'll tell you, yeah, it's like they're not your microbes. You don't own the microbes. You say whatever you want, but that's not true. And also, if you gave someone a recipe and they made it, it's not going to be the same, especially if it's like a wild ferment using like almost by definition, it has to be more open.

Koen van Seijen 31:13

Absolutely, yeah. It's a very interesting observation. And so there are, and what is there something, and then we close off, that you would love to ferment you haven't yet? If I only could.

Chris Locke 31:24

I think more kind of dairy animal combos, um, like fermenting cheese and sheep stomachs, and more like ancestral processes that I'm not familiar with than there's like the cheese making processes in like Central Asia. Um, is really interesting. I'd like to make my way over there at some point and deep dive into cheese and yogurts and dairy, cemented dairies.

Koen van Seijen 31:50

Which is not really part of Mexico in that sense, too much, right? Yeah. It's another strain of. And it's very interesting how this how the strains are traveling more than the food in that sense.

Chris Locke 32:02

Yeah. Yeah.

Koen van Seijen 32:03

Which is good. That'd be probably the lightest thing that can travel, and that's the least, the least, let's say, carbon footprint or footprint in general. I want to thank you so much for a short, not so shallow, actually, deep dive into ferment and what it means for restaurants and for how to get food from a farm to eventually a plate or a bottle.

Chris Locke 32:24

Thank you so much. Thank you so much.

Koen van Seijen 32:30

Fermentation, fermentation. I think we can make a song about that. Anyway, it's something so fundamental. Like we exist, it happens in our guts, it happens on our skin, it happens in the soil, it happens in food. Some of the best things in life, I'm thinking coffee and wine, come from that and our salami as well. And yet we don't really talk about it. There's a hype around it now. It becomes very hip, but it might also hold the key to nutrition, it might also hold the key to zero waste, it might hold the key to unlocking a lot of nutrients. And yeah, I'm just happy we only had a small amount of time. It was in a prep kitchen, the sound is could be improved. But I hope that wasn't too distracting and you really felt like this is a place where food comes in, where it gets transformed, where it gets prepped for one of the best restaurants, I would say, in the world, and where it goes to a lot of people in their houses. So it's not just an exclusive restaurant distribution center and prep kitchen. It also goes. And I think on the economic and finance side, very interesting that it could lead to more shelves table. Of course, it's still alive. Products that actually could have the impact both financially and non-financially go way beyond what you can serve in a restaurant, even if you have an enormous one. Of course, shelf table products are not the holy grail, but very interesting. We've talked about products many times with Martin Reiter, with Dan Barber, and others to like really we need to bring this into the kitchens as well, not just in the kitchens of fancy restaurants or semi-fancy. So I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you're gonna try some fermentation at home. There are beautiful books out there, there are guides, it's really not that difficult. Start with cabbage.

Try Fermenting At Home

Koen van Seijen 34:05

It's what is it, two to three percent salt? Check that, I don't remember. Um clean, clean surface to work with. You cut it in pieces, you squeeze, you add the salt, you leave it in a very well-cleaned jar, and you get crowdie, which is amazing for your gut. Yes, I know I sound like a hipster now, but it's really good. So I hope you manage to do something at home. And if you have any feedback about the fermentation or in general, get in touch and please let us know what you thought about it and hope to see at another one. Hopefully, you also want already listened to the one of Pablo on the farm, the Chinampas, or andor uh one of Dani in the kitchen. So if you are if this is the second stop in the three-part train ride, then I hope to see you at the third stop in a bit. Chao ciao! Thank you for listening all the way to the end. For show notes and links discussed, check out our website, investinginregenerativeagriculture.com slash posts. If you like this episode, why not share it with a friend? And get in touch with us on social media, our website, or via the Spotify app and tell us what you like most. And give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or your podcast player. That really, really helps us. Thanks again and see you next time.