Rising from the Ashes...

HELLO WORLD!!!

I apologize sincerely for the time elapse since my last email. As you can imagine, juggling an international move, round the clock job hunt, metropolitan relocation, equipment re-equipment, and time zone refract has taken a little bit of time. But I'm not going to waste space here on that, I have much to write about!






First, and foremost (as this is extremely delayed already) I have to stand up and thank from the bottom of my heart the unprecedented help and support that I have received from a few awesome people: John Sconzo, Mike Green and his son Aiden Brooks came together, established a fundraiser and drummed up support from every corner of the food world to raise us some money to help us replace our knives. In just a few days, they helped us cover the costs of replacing the knives that we had spent years collecting and working with. In the wake of their efforts, others came forward as well to go out of their respective way's to lend us support. Chad Ward, the author of The Edge in the Kitchen came forward to use his industry contacts, expertise and even personal collection if necessary to get us back on track. Mark Richmond, the owner of Chef Knives to Go jumped in and offered to let us purchase knives from his extremely extensive inventory at cost, which, trust me, is not something any of us had expected. As such, Korin Knives, also extended a generous discount to us, thereby making it feasible for me to replace the Excalibur of my personal knife artillery, a Nenox Corian Gyutuo.



Sorry this is becoming an Oscar-esque thank you note, but these are tremendous people who you might be lucky enough to come across someday, and when you do, I want you to recognize them and give them a hug for coming to the aid of their fellow man in a time of need.




These awesome folks contributed at firstgiving.com: Mike Green, John Sconzo (docsconz.typepad.com), Jason Yee, James Kane, Joseph Gerard, Rob Connoley, Fred Kellerman, Alex Saneski, David Barzelay, Chew Fatt Soh, Matthew Stein, Alex Talbot & Aki Kamozawa (Ideasinfood.com), Andrew Kirsch, Derek Slager, David Rodriguez, Cruz Caudillo (thisismybrainonfood.com), Craig Thornton (wolvesmouth.com), Kathy Tang, Christopher Powers, Chad Ward (chadwrite.com), Scott Alperin, Zach Hunter (an American set to stage at Mugaritz in May), Brett Posmnetier (a friend from the CIA), Elbert Cheng, Alan Hsu, Joseph J. Fenush III, Townsend Wentz, John Dryzga, Mattias Hagglund, Elements Restaurant Staff (elementsprinceton.com - a substantially interesting restaurant in NJ), AJ Jimenez, Linda Anctil, Brendan King (a classmate @CIA), Scott Dunkelberger (fellow CIA alum), Pim Techamuanvivit (Chezpim.com - one of the best foodbloggers alive), Anthony Nardi, Harold McGee (author of On Food and Cooking...a culinary god...enough said), Hugh Blair, Darcie Fontaine, Alex Lincoln, Martha Gehan, David Yewell, Sean Paroff, Jessica Vanderhoff, Hsun-Chi Chen, Zarmik Moqtaderi (zarmik.com), Paul Reiss, Amanda Tarrant, Naomi Bautista, Jo Stougard (mylastbite.com), Pat Sheldon (owner of Sheldon Farms in Upstate NY), Sarah Nash, Chad Burkhardt, James Biskey, Matt Kantor (Fellow CIA Alum who owns little kitchen in Toronto -littlekitchen.ca/), Patrick McGuire (owner of Neptune Oyster & Author of Server Not Servant), Wendy Miller, Andrew Kwan, Boris Portnoy (pastry chef/owner @ Sucrepunch in SF), Antonios Drakoularakos, Patrick Miller (chef at Gilt in NYC), Nina Chan, Reid Nakasone, and Robert Mayo. Un abrazo a todos de todos. A big hug from all of us to all of you.




Jeremy Fox, Antoinette Bruno, and an entire cast of people from the food world who contacted us either directly or through people, willing to lend us a hand in many different arenas. I wont lie, getting re-situated in a job was not the least of my worries upon getting home, but I will reconnect with this momentarily. The guys at StoveMonkeys.com wrote with support for our situation. Various other bloggers, twitterers, facebookers and even people in passing wrote in support of our cause, our situation and of the plight of Mugaritz.




I hope everyone gets a chance to visit mugaritz.com/blog. There they are keeping tabs on the reconstruction efforts and actually soliciting recommendations from the world on how to make improvements for their new kitchen. The fire was not fatal, but was certainly tragic, to see the time, care, and nourishing destroyed so quickly and so uncontrollably. My time at Mugaritz was cut short, but that makes my resolve to get back there only that much more intense. And to that end, I implore those of you with the ways, the means, the time, the ability, the money, the freedom to do it, GO TO MUGARITZ WHEN THEY REOPEN! Your journey, whether it be for a few hours as a guest or a few months as a stage, will open your eyes and give life to new ways of thinking, be it about food, about wine, about art or about life. It certainly did for me.




It will be wonderful again to jump back into a progressive and thought provoking kitchen. It will also test one of my other mottos, "fear is the enemy of progression". I expect to be challenged greater than I ever have before, but I am excited to learn and to grow with this family of chefs. On that note, its time for me to start ironing those blue aprons...if you need me, Ill be in the kitchen ;-)



All of my best,
Greg Kuzia-Carmel
13Mar10



The Photos are from Zigor, one of the dining room captains who also takes (very very good) pictures.