Fugitive Chefs

Furqan Meerza
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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.

  1. 13 hr ago

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

    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 🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fugitive-chefs/id1676930088 📩 Beyond the Pass: https://beyondthepass.substack.com 📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/fugitivechefspodcast

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

  2. 8 Sept

    What Is Restaurant R&D? Inside a Test Kitchen

    🎙️ 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. 🌐 Website: ⁠www.fugitivechefs.com⁠ 📸 Furqan's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/furqanmeerza/ ⁠🎧 Podcast Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/fugitivechefspodcast/ 🎵 Spotify: ⁠https://spoti.fi/3F6j25A⁠ 🍏 Apple Podcasts: ⁠https://apple.co/43vBtbT⁠ ▶️ YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@fugitivechefs

    What Is Restaurant R&D? Inside a Test Kitchen

  3. 25 Aug

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

    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 plannedGetting unexpectedly "kidnapped" into a culinary education careerWhat's broken about how culinary education is priced and structured — and what's actually changingWhy competency-based, micro-credentialed learning is replacing the four-year degree modelLosing her corporate chef role during COVID, and how that became a coaching careerLetting go of the "hats" she'd built her identity aroundWhy she calls herself a "possibilitarian" — and the story behind itThe biggest misconceptions chefs have about AI, and why she calls it "the most consequential tool" the profession has ever hadHer advice for any chef with something going on their back burnerLearn 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

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

  4. 18 Aug

    How Missing Culinary School Actually Put Me Ahead

    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/297093b0dcIn 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 itThe real financial gap between hotel management and culinary school in India, and why IHM Mumbai wasn't a backup planWhat I didn't know walking into European kitchens for the first time — and the hazelnut praline moment that exposed itWhy nobody at Mugaritz, Noma, or Kraft Heinz ever asked me how many degrees I hadThe two years I spent undocumented in Spain, and why I don't recommend anyone copy that pathWhy the real problem isn't culinary school — it's that there's no map connecting kitchens to the rest of the food systemWhat 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

    How Missing Culinary School Actually Put Me Ahead

  5. 11 Aug

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

    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'sTaking a $2-an-hour pay cut to learn under Heartland's menu that changed every single daySpotting a mushroom he'd just put on the menu while playing disc golf — and realizing he could forage it himselfWhy 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 survivePitching a Minneapolis restaurant a $500-a-week exclusive foraging retainer — and where that idea eventually ledMentoring chefs who want to leave restaurants, including the visioning exercise that changed his own pathWhy 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: https://open.spotify.com/show/57kmFAUgp6DhgnguexFuDs🍏 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fugitive-chefs/id1676930088▶️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@fugitivechefs

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

  6. 4 Aug

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

    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 nowWhy AI could kill creativity for chefs, or free them to be more creative than everThe industry's shared responsibility around diet-related diseaseWhy stackable credentials and short-form courses may replace the traditional 4-year degreeWhat CIA looks for in educators — practitioners vs. traditional academicsThe transferable skills chefs don't realize they already haveWhy Michiel believes the future workforce will be human, AI agent, and robot — all at onceJoin 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: https://spoti.fi/3F6j25A🍏 Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/43vBtbT▶️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@fugitivechefs

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

  7. 28 Jul

    Are We Training Chefs for the Wrong Careers? | Adrian Woodhouse

    Culinary school taught you bechamel. It didn't teach you how to prove you're capable of anything else.In this episode of Fugitive Chefs, I sit down with Adrian Woodhouse, head of school at Otago Polytechnic in New Zealand, to talk about why culinary education is still built around a narrow, traditional idea of what a chef becomes and why that no longer matches the industry.Adrian has spent years helping experienced chefs prove their capabilities without another degree, decolonizing a curriculum still rooted in French tradition, and rethinking what "industry readiness" actually means for graduates entering a food system that now includes R&D, food styling, social media, AI, and far more than restaurants.In this conversation we discuss: Why so many chefs default to more degrees and credentials before feeling legitimate outside kitchensThe imposter syndrome chefs carry when they step outside traditional kitchen pathsWhat "fair work" is, and why it shuts down growth in professional kitchensWhy some of the best chefs never stop thinking of themselves as apprenticesHow culinary curriculums are (slowly) being rebuilt around real industry needsWhat capabilities kitchens develop exceptionally well — and what they fail to develop at allThe future of culinary careers: food styling, product development, AI, and beyondLearn more about Adrian's work:🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrian-woodhouse-89267636/🎧 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

    Are We Training Chefs for the Wrong Careers? | Adrian Woodhouse

  8. 21 Jul

    Why the Fugitive Chefs Podcast Is Changing

    Fugitive Chefs started with a simple question: what can chefs become beyond restaurants? A year later, that question feels too small. In this solo episode, Furqan shares why Fugitive Chefs is evolving from a podcast about alternative careers for chefs into a broader exploration of how culinary expertise can create value across the modern food system. Join the Fugitive Chefs Circle - a community for people building better careers, organisations, and ideas in food:🌐 https://fugitivechefs.kit.com/297093b0dc After a short pause in publishing, this is an honest look at what it takes to build a sustainable platform alongside a full-time job—and why the future of Fugitive Chefs will include more than career-transition stories. In this episode, we explore: • Why culinary expertise matters far beyond the restaurant• Why the podcast is expanding to include educators, researchers, founders, hiring leaders, and innovation teams• What restaurants, food companies, and culinary institutions can learn from each other• Why better careers for chefs require better systems around them• What is coming next for Fugitive Chefs 🎧 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

    Why the Fugitive Chefs Podcast Is Changing
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Trailer

About

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.

Information

  • Creator
    Furqan Meerza
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    76
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Furqan Meerza
  • Show Website
    Fugitive Chefs

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