Fugitive Chefs – Détails, épisodes et analyse

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Fugitive Chefs

Furqan Meerza

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Fréquence : 1 épisode/16j. Total Éps: 80

I’m Furqan Meerza, a chef who worked in some of the world’s top kitchens, including Mugaritz and Noma. Like a lot of chefs, I hit burnout. And I realized I needed a different way to stay connected to food; one that didn’t cost me my health or identity. Fugitive Chefs is a podcast for chefs and food creatives who still love this craft, but need change. Each episode features honest conversations with those who’ve stepped away from the traditional kitchen and into something new, from fermentation and R&D to storytelling, drinks, food culture, and more.

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Données mises à jour le 14/10/2026

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From 80,000 Meals a Day to a Kitchen Full of Founders | Samer & Sami Simreen, KiCo

mardi 13 octobre 2026 • Durée 49:15

Their family built a catering company that served around 80,000 meals a day. After they sold it, Samer and his brother Sami asked what would happen if they filled a kitchen with food founders instead.

KiCo is a co-working kitchen and food founder community in The Hague. This conversation is about the gap between a home kitchen and a co-manufacturer, why chefs are often the missing perspective in food startups, and why big food keeps getting surprised by its own trend reports.

In this conversation we discuss:

🍽️ How Samer's family grew a catering company in the UAE to around 80,000 meals a day, and the question they asked after selling it

🏠 The gap between a home kitchen and a co-manufacturer, and why founders get stuck on the "hamster wheel"

🏗️ Why they chose infrastructure and knowledge, and how a dark kitchen built on virtual concepts pushed them toward founders

🧑‍🍳 How common a chef background is among KiCo founders, and what a chef brings to a food brand

🧪 Sami's pilot event: chefs cooking with ingredient startups' products for retailers, manufacturers and policymakers, and why "Will people eat this?" is the question that matters

💡 Why you never hear of hackathons in food, and the case for bringing in junior chefs

📉 Why big food keeps getting surprised by its own trend reports, and why Sami says focus groups don't work

🛒 Why a startup's power is in building its own following

🔮 What comes next for KiCo, including a surprise planned for early 2027

🌐 KiCo: https://www.kico.kitchen/

🎧 Fugitive Chefs explores how culinary expertise creates value across the modern food system.

🌐 Website: https://www.fugitivechefs.com

🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/57kmFAUgp6DhgnguexFuDs

🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@fugitivechefs

🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fugitive-chefs/id1676930088

📩 Beyond the Pass: https://beyondthepass.substack.com

📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/fugitivechefspodcast

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What Happens When You Stop Waiting Your Turn?

mardi 6 octobre 2026 • Durée 19:02

Recorded the week I turned 30, this is a solo check-in — on what's changed since I left consulting work to become a Senior Innovation Chef at Kraft Heinz, and on an idea I keep coming back to: that "paying your dues" might be the most outdated piece of career advice still floating around food.

In this episode, we discuss:

Why working inside a major food company surprised me more than I expected it to
The real cost of skipping steps — and why I don't think waiting your turn means what we're told it means
What changed at Fugitive Chefs this year: the guests, the community turning one, and a line I finally stopped debating with myself
A few names and conversations shaping where the show goes next

🎧 Fugitive Chefs explores how culinary expertise creates value across the modern food system.
🌐 Website: https://www.fugitivechefs.com
🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/57kmFAUgp6DhgnguexFuDs
🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@fugitivechefs
🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fugitive-chefs/id1676930088
📩 Beyond the Pass: https://beyondthepass.substack.com
📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/fugitivechefspodcast

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Should You Go to Culinary School? Four Honest Answers

mardi 29 septembre 2026 • Durée 18:33

Should you go to culinary school? The president of the Culinary Institute of America says it depends. A head of school says you might not need the next degree. And I never went at all.

Over the last year, I've asked this question to very different people on Fugitive Chefs. This episode puts their answers side by side: two chefs mid-way through the Master's in Gastronomic Sciences at the Basque Culinary Center, the president of the CIA, a head of school in New Zealand, and me, a chef who skipped culinary school entirely.

In this episode we discuss:

- Why the CIA's Michiel Bakker answers "it depends," and when culinary school becomes just an expensive hobby

- Harsh and Hans on the real investment behind a culinary Master's, and what it actually opens up

- The gap between manager-level promises and entry-level reality after a degree

- Adrian Woodhouse (Otago Polytechnic) on imposter syndrome, collecting credentials, and who really owns culinary knowledge

- Why career changers are the group culinary education rarely talks about

- Skipping culinary school: the door I had, and what hiring conversations actually asked me

- The four different questions hiding inside "should I go to culinary school?"

🎧 Fugitive Chefs explores how culinary expertise creates value across the modern food system.

🌐 Website: https://www.fugitivechefs.com

🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/57kmFAUgp6DhgnguexFuDs

🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@fugitivechefs

🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fugitive-chefs/id1676930088

Food Industry Internships: What R&D Actually Looks Like

mardi 22 septembre 2026 • Durée 48:35

Most food industry job requirements don't make sense until someone who's actually applying explains why. In this episode I cook pasta with Vincenzo, a Kraft Heinz intern about to finish up and go job hunting, and we get into what the process really looks like right now.

We discuss:

Why AI resume readers are changing what a good CV should look like
Why entry-level food jobs keep asking for years of experience nobody starting out has
How restaurant experience gets overlooked in food R&D hiring
The real difference between interning in a restaurant and interning at a food company
Practical advice if you're interning in food right now

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De Nieuwe Winkel: What a Restaurant Can Sell Besides Dinner | Jan Majoor & George Erotokritou

mardi 15 septembre 2026 • Durée 51:37

De Nieuwe Winkel has two Michelin stars, a green star, and a dining room it wants to depend on less.

About a year ago, the restaurant started DNW Lab: an R&D arm set up as a separate entity so it can work directly with universities and with industry. I recorded this one in person at the restaurant in Nijmegen, on their Sunday off, which almost never happens on this show. Jan Majoor is Head of R&D, from a food technology background at Wageningen. George Erotokritou is Head of Gastronomic Development, out of the Basque Culinary Center, Spora and Alchemist. Both are co-founders of the lab alongside Emile van der Staak, who owns the restaurant.

In this episode we discuss:

🔬 Why the lab had to be a separate entity instead of a department inside the restaurant
🍫 Chocolate made from fermented chestnuts, with no cocoa beans and no cocoa butter
🛒 Why that product can't reach a supermarket shelf, from solid state fermentation to allergens to price
⚖️ Why product development starts by asking how to cut costs, and what the lab refuses to start from
🌰 Buying the entire harvest from the only Dutch sweet chestnut producer to prove agroforestry can pay
🔒 Whether a restaurant can protect what it creates, and why IP isn't the real worry yet
📈 The plan for lab revenue to balance or overtake the restaurant
🗓️ Four-day weeks, and serving the same menu at a lower price to more people
🧩 What still isn't solved between the lab and the kitchen

🎧 Fugitive Chefs explores how culinary expertise creates value across the modern food system.

🌐 Website: www.fugitivechefs.com

🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/57kmFAUgp6DhgnguexFuDs

🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@fugitivechefs

What Is Restaurant R&D? Inside a Test Kitchen

mardi 8 septembre 2026 • Durée 29:48

🎙️ Most people think a restaurant R&D kitchen is where new dishes get invented. What I saw looked closer to a library than a laboratory.

In this solo episode I break down what restaurant R&D actually is, based on four years in fine dining at Mugaritz and Noma, then three and a half years doing R&D at Basque Culinary Center, and now as Senior Innovation Chef at Kraft Heinz. This is the on-ramp to next week's episode on De Nieuwe Winkel, the two-Michelin-star restaurant in Nijmegen that turned its R&D into a separate business.

In this episode we discuss:

🔹 What an R&D kitchen or test kitchen actually does on a normal Tuesday
🔹 Why R&D teams are physically separated from the service kitchen, and why that separation is structural rather than cosmetic
🔹 The seasonal pipeline problem: creating in January for an ingredient that only arrives in August
🔹 Why restaurants deliberately hold back portions they could have sold
🔹 Why the method, not the dish, is the actual asset a restaurant owns
🔹 Why some failures are deliberately left undocumented
🔹 Who actually gets hired into these rooms, and why food science degrees are not the entry point
🔹 What changes when a method leaves the restaurant and enters industry
🔹 Gold standard: what it means and why it matters

Mentioned in this episode:

📌 What Is a Corporate Chef? Breaking Down the Real Roles Inside Food Companies → [link]
📌 Jozef Youssef, Kitchen Theory, on the science of flavour and gastrophysics → https://open.spotify.com/episode/6zMM7znbNPttrHbpeuFWpj?si=993b10c091be4bde
📌 S1E14 John Regefalk, Basque Culinary Center → https://open.spotify.com/episode/3NvdgFKGaL8OcmzxEPB8z3?si=140203f4a7b84424
📌 Beyond the Pass, "The Recipe Was Never the Capability" → beyondthepass.substack.com

🎧 Fugitive Chefs explores what happens when chefs step outside the traditional kitchen path.

From Kitchen to Corporate Innovation, Coaching, and AI | Tiffany Poe

mardi 25 août 2026 • Durée 52:59

Most chefs measure a career in kitchens. Tiffany Poe has measured hers in classrooms, boardrooms, and now, AI chats at 2am.

In this episode of Fugitive Chefs, Furqan sits down with chef, educator, coach, and AI trainer Tiffany Poe to trace a 25-year career that moved through restaurants, culinary education, corporate food, professional coaching, and artificial intelligence — including the year she lost her job, and how she rebuilt from there.

In this episode we discuss:

Tiffany's "Forrest Gump career" and why none of it was planned
Getting unexpectedly "kidnapped" into a culinary education career
What's broken about how culinary education is priced and structured — and what's actually changing
Why competency-based, micro-credentialed learning is replacing the four-year degree model
Losing her corporate chef role during COVID, and how that became a coaching career
Letting go of the "hats" she'd built her identity around
Why she calls herself a "possibilitarian" — and the story behind it
The biggest misconceptions chefs have about AI, and why she calls it "the most consequential tool" the profession has ever had
Her advice for any chef with something going on their back burner

Learn more about Tiffany's work:
🔗 Website: https://tiffanypoe.com/

🎧 Fugitive Chefs explores what happens when chefs step outside the traditional kitchen path.
🌐 Website: www.fugitivechefs.com
📸 Furqan's Instagram: https://bit.ly/4dtiyTv
🎧 Podcast Instagram: https://bit.ly/43ndATO
🎵 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3F6j25A
🍏 Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/43vBtbT
▶️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@fugitivechefs

How Missing Culinary School Actually Put Me Ahead

mardi 18 août 2026 • Durée 27:40

I had an admission letter to culinary school in my hand. I never used it.
Some of you told me this podcast is starting to feel like an advertisement for culinary school. It's not — and I want to correct that directly instead of letting it sit.
This solo episode is my honest answer: the specific things that became possible for me because of the door I actually had in front of me, not because skipping culinary school is better than going.
Join the Fugitive Chefs Circle - a community for people building better careers, organisations, and ideas in food:

🌐 https://fugitivechefs.kit.com/297093b0dc
In this episode, I explore:

Why I never used my culinary school admission letters — and what a one-bedroom apartment in Bombay had to do with it
The real financial gap between hotel management and culinary school in India, and why IHM Mumbai wasn't a backup plan
What I didn't know walking into European kitchens for the first time — and the hazelnut praline moment that exposed it
Why nobody at Mugaritz, Noma, or Kraft Heinz ever asked me how many degrees I had
The two years I spent undocumented in Spain, and why I don't recommend anyone copy that path
Why the real problem isn't culinary school — it's that there's no map connecting kitchens to the rest of the food system
What I'd actually tell 19-year-old me, and what I think about the Michael Bakker and Adrian Woodhouse episodes
🎧 Fugitive Chefs explores how culinary expertise creates value across the modern food system.
📸 Furqan's Instagram: https://bit.ly/4dtiyTv
🎧 Podcast Instagram: https://bit.ly/43ndATO
🎵 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3F6j25A
🍏 Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/43vBtbT
▶️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@fugitivechefs

The Forager Chef: Alan Bergo on Restaurant Burnout, Reinvention & the Power of Following Curiosity

mardi 11 août 2026 • Durée 48:27

Every restaurant Alan Bergo ever worked at closed.

In this episode of Fugitive Chefs, Alan — known online as the Forager Chef — shares how walking away from restaurant kitchens didn't mean walking away from food. It led him to become one of the world's most respected voices on wild ingredients, foraging, and building a business entirely on his own terms.

In this conversation we discuss:

Growing up grounded with a cookbook, and landing his first industry job at McDonald's
Taking a $2-an-hour pay cut to learn under Heartland's menu that changed every single day
Spotting a mushroom he'd just put on the menu while playing disc golf — and realizing he could forage it himself
Why he built his own website instead of relying on social media ("a website is a house, social media is a rental")
Getting "forced" out of restaurants after back-to-back closures, and monetizing his site overnight to survive
Pitching a Minneapolis restaurant a $500-a-week exclusive foraging retainer — and where that idea eventually led
Mentoring chefs who want to leave restaurants, including the visioning exercise that changed his own path
Why he now sees himself as more of a teacher than a chef

Learn more about Alan's work:
🌐 Forager Chef website: https://foragerchef.com/
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/foragerchef/

🎧 Fugitive Chefs explores what happens when chefs step outside the traditional kitchen path.
🌐 Website: www.fugitivechefs.com
📸 Furqan's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/furqanmeerza/
🎧 Podcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fugitivechefspodcast/🎵 Spotify: 🍏 Apple Podcasts: ▶️ YouTube:

Why the CIA President Says "It Depends" on Culinary School | Michiel Bakker

mardi 4 août 2026 • Durée 01:00:05

Should you go to culinary school? The most honest answer we got all year: "It depends."

In this episode of Fugitive Chefs, I sit down with Michiel Bakker, the sixth president of the Culinary Institute of America, to talk about the future of culinary education — and what culinary expertise looks like in 2035.

Before leading the world's most influential culinary college, Michiel spent 12 years at Google building their Food at Work program, and 17 years before that in global hotel operations with Starwood. His path into food education wasn't a straight line, and that's exactly why this conversation matters: he's spent his career at the intersection of hospitality, technology, and now higher education.

In this episode, we explore:

Why "it depends" might be the most honest answer to "should I go to culinary school?"
Michiel's Vision 2035 — and what he hopes the food industry looks like a decade from now
Why AI could kill creativity for chefs, or free them to be more creative than ever
The industry's shared responsibility around diet-related disease
Why stackable credentials and short-form courses may replace the traditional 4-year degree
What CIA looks for in educators — practitioners vs. traditional academics
The transferable skills chefs don't realize they already have
Why Michiel believes the future workforce will be human, AI agent, and robot — all at once

Join the Fugitive Chefs Circle - a community for people building better careers, organisations, and ideas in food: 🌐 https://fugitivechefs.kit.com/297093b0dc

🎧 Fugitive Chefs explores how culinary expertise creates value across the modern food system.
🌐 Website: www.fugitivechefs.com
📸 Furqan's Instagram: https://bit.ly/4dtiyTv
🎧 Podcast Instagram: https://bit.ly/43ndATO
🎵 Spotify: 🍏 Apple Podcasts: ▶️ YouTube:

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Fugitive Chefs – Détails, épisodes et analyse

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