Chef Aarón Sánchez chats with Guilty Eats about HERDEZ, the Green Goddess Salad, and more
Guilty Eats: Guilty Eats is all about finding the foods that we love and sharing it with people and as a chef that really is what you do as well. So we want to know what inspires you as a chef?
Aarón Sánchez: “Well, I think right now, I go through different periods of my life being inspired, but I think there’s a couple of constants. The constants are me traveling and talking to all new people and I’ve been doing it for a very long time, and you know, kind of accessing information from those grandmas, that older generation. They’ve been doing this recipe for many years plus.
And know I’m really fascinated with like the current trends and what young people are doing because if you are not watching the young people as they move forward, you’re going to be left behind. So in our restaurants and all of our team, there’s a really strong younger generation that is really, really engaged and super crazy about food. That’s what gets me excited. I know that the future is bright. You can find all of these different avenues to play with food.”
GE: Are you seeing people bring the foodie trends of social media and TikTok into the kitchen more now?
AS: “Yes absolutely. I’m seeing it a lot. But my concern is, or my hope is that while you can get something right, you have to be able to put the time in to create a foundation of knowledge. That’s why I hope that a lot of these influencers and people who are trending really understand what they are talking about. Because if they do that, there’s going to be a representation of these legacies in the traditional kitchen.
Just the idea of the trends and what’s happening, I think it’s pretty exciting. The food landscape has changed so much. When you have a platform, just make sure you are doing the right thing as far as paying homage.”
GE: As a judge on MasterChef and MasterChef Junior, do you see them bringing these trends and even things they’re learning from social media and TV into the kitchen with them?
AS: “Well, that’s hard to kind of decipher and isolate. I think there are a lot of the young people who are coming from MasterChef or MasterChef Junior, who love the idea of how food makes people happy and I think that’s really neat. And how it transcends cultures and transcends people’s backgrounds. So I see a lot of that kind of coming to the MasterChef kitchen as far as their opportunity to be able to create a dish for instance or something that speaks to their personal journey. I see a lot of that.”