{"id":104078,"date":"2017-10-26T13:54:45","date_gmt":"2017-10-26T04:54:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fukuoka-now.com\/?p=104078&lang=en"},"modified":"2017-11-01T11:29:23","modified_gmt":"2017-11-01T02:29:23","slug":"interview-mr-vincent-gadaud-executive-chef","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fukuoka-now.com\/en\/interview-mr-vincent-gadaud-executive-chef\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Mr Vincent Gadaud, Executive Chef, ANA Crowne Plaza Fukuoka"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fukuoka Now sat down with Vincent Gadaud, the new Executive Chef at the ANA Crowne Plaza Fukuoka to learn more about his past and his plans for the restaurants and cafes inside the hotel. We also enjoyed tasting many of the yummy desserts his team has prepared for the hotel\u2019s Grapes-centric Sweets Buffet<\/a>, which takes place every Sunday this October.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

First of all, welcome to Fukuoka! I heard you arrived relatively recently?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, on the 8th of August, so it’s been just a few months now, and things still feel new.<\/p>\n

You survived the hot Kyushu summer?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes I did, it\u2019s…actually it\u2019s better in Fukuoka than in Osaka so I\u2019d rather be here [laugh]<\/p>\n

So tell us, where are you coming from? We know you\u2019re from France, but you spent some time in other parts of Japan, too?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, well, I started in Japan in 2008, in Tokyo actually, for opening of the Ladur\u00e9e Confectionery, famous for macarons and similar things. So, I opened the first one in 2008 in Ginza, and I opened one in Nihonbashi two years after…and at the time I found my wife, so that was pretty quick and we moved to London. I was assigned as a chef of the London branch of a famous department store and opened the company\u2019s second restaurant in Covent Garden. Then there was a period where I worked in the Middle East, but we decided to move back to Japan, because I wanted our child to grow up close to family. Now in Osaka, I worked in a well-known, busy and lively Japanese restaurant that served modern Japanese cuisine, and then at a first-rate hotel. So, before Fukuoka, I was in Kansai for about three and a half years.<\/p>\n

How do you feel about your move to Fukuoka? It\u2019s a much smaller town than Tokyo or Osaka.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pretty excited actually; I\u2019m coming from the countryside of France, so [laugh] I\u2019m more about small cities, small…more friendly people, etc. It\u2019s better for me, and for the kids to grow up, close to the sea, good weather, good food, we can find everything we need, so, it\u2019s a pretty exciting challenge to come here.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve worked all around the world, so I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve picked up all kinds of influences along the way, but what are your specialties?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well I\u2019m still cooking French food, I have to say my French roots are still very strong in my cooking. After that, I learn how to use it with local products, so putting in local ingredients, so using…now everybody does it, use miso, wasabi and all that. Well when we have this wide range of products, fresh products, quality products, you need to learn how to use it in your own kitchen, so I\u2019m cooking French definitely but I\u2019m gonna cook French with wagyu<\/em>, and I\u2019m going to cook French with different sauces and put in different spices. Now what is difficult in Japan is the seasonality. Japanese love seasonal foods, we need to work with those, because the customers in Japan are sophisticated; they know the taste, they know the price, they know everything so it\u2019s a challenging relationship between us and the customers.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

How has working in Japan influenced you or your own style?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, like I said, it\u2019s challenging to adapt to customs, and when you first arrive the first thing you learn is patience, because everything is at a different pace in Japan. It was a very good lesson for me, I had to lower my stress, my blood pressure down [laugh] and everything went better, so that was a big, big step up for me.<\/p>\n

How do you deal with food trends? Do you follow them and try to keep up?<\/strong><\/p>\n

My goal here is to update the style a bit, the cooking, the range as well, to find the target customers. So the dessert menu was a bit too small, so I\u2019m bringing it up to fourty, fifty items for the dessert buffet. I really want to make people in Fukuoka look at us with a \u201cwow, it\u2019s looking good, it tastes good, it\u2019s not that expensive\u201d. So we really want to position ourselves so that we\u2019re affordable with a good taste.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Interview by Nick Szasz and Ludi Wang
\nOct. 10, 2017<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fukuoka Now sat down with Vincent Gadaud, the new Executive Chef at the ANA Crowne Plaza Fukuoka to learn more about his past and his plans for the restaurants and cafes inside the hotel. We also enjoyed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27918,"featured_media":104082,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_locale":"en_US","_original_post":"104078","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4911],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-people","location-hakata","en-US"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.fukuoka-now.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/ana-interview-oct-2017-001.jpg?fit=1400%2C1007&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fukuoka-now.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fukuoka-now.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fukuoka-now.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fukuoka-now.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27918"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fukuoka-now.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104078"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.fukuoka-now.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104346,"href":"https:\/\/www.fukuoka-now.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104078\/revisions\/104346"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fukuoka-now.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fukuoka-now.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fukuoka-now.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fukuoka-now.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}