This is an audio transcript of the Life and Art from FT Weekend podcast episode: ‘Chef Victoria Blamey is giving the tasting menu new life’
Lilah Raptopoulos
Welcome to Life and Art from FT weekend. I’m Lilah Raptopoulos. There’s this thing that I keep hearing about the restaurant world, which is that fine dining might be over and it’s not over that it’s starting to feel old, like an outdated ritual. The argument is that the tasting menu with all these courses of tiny things on giant plates has gotten too predictable. You’ll get the caviar course, you’ll get the Wagyu beef course, but there won’t be any real character. I’ve absolutely felt that myself. But recently I went to a restaurant here in New York that didn’t feel outdated at all. It felt like it was using the tasting menu to actually have fun, play with our expectations, play with flavour, and really do something different. The restaurant is called Blanca and its executive chef is Victoria Blamey. Blanca’s reviews have been excellent — it’s been called one of the best restaurants in America — but also a little divisive. One major critic called it not for beginners. Another called it a marathon only for food nerds. The restaurant is also a mix of high and low since it’s located at the back of a pizza joint. And all of that makes it a really interesting case for what fine dining can look like in 2024. Victoria doesn’t seem to mind being known for challenging diners, and she’s with me in the studio today to talk about her work. Victoria, hi. Welcome to the show. How are you?
Victoria Blamey
Good. I’m super excited to be here.
Lilah Raptopoulos
We’re so happy to have you. I’d love to start by sort of setting the scene of your restaurant, where it is, what it’s doing differently, for listeners. We have listeners around the world. Blanca is fundamentally unique because it’s a restaurant within another restaurant called Roberta’s. Roberta’s, to many, is shorthand for kind of the New York hipster movement of around 2007. It opened there in Bushwick by chef Carlo Mirarchi. And then some years later, Carlo opened Blanca as his fine dining offshoot. It closed during Covid. And then just this past January, yeah, it reopened with you as executive chef.
Victoria Blamey
Yeah, of course. I mean, this is Carlo’s, you know, restaurant and Carlo’s baby.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. When he asked you to take that role, why did you say yes?
Victoria Blamey
I mean, it wasn’t so quickly. Also, he wasn’t so quickly (inaudible) . . . The whole thing was just pretty slow. I was very puzzled that he asked me to be honest with you. I was puzzled to be like, what am I going to do in Bushwick? You know, I’m not really that cool-kid cook of like, tattoos, even though I do have one. But I only got it when I was 36. So, you know, and yeah, I mean, I have had a much more classic training career. You know, I didn’t just go on my own. I mean, I was very determined and planned ahead of like, where do I need to go? Where do I want to get? And I guess it was just because so many different reasons, you know, one of them being, you know, from South America and then a female chef. I think those two things kind of like, made me realise like, OK, so where do I have to go to get in this game? But like, for real, you know?
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Just a bit more context for listeners for what you’re saying. You came up, as you say, in a very classic way, right? You’re from Santiago, Chile. You staged at Michelin restaurants around the world. You worked at Mugaritz in Spain. You’ve really kind of risen through the establishment. And you finally opened your own place a few years ago in Tribeca, which got amazing reviews. Mena was the restaurant. It was a beautiful restaurant and it closed so quickly unfortunately.
Victoria Blamey
I know, I know, yeah, that was really painful. That was actually, you know, I’ve realised now there’s no moment in general that you don’t learn something. I think you just take some time, you know, to get over the pain.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, I can imagine. So when Mena closes and then, you know, sometime later, this kind of DIY hipster guy comes to you to say, come do this weird thing instead. Like, let’s do this differently. What appealed to you about that?
Victoria Blamey
I would have never thought about it. One of it, I would have never thought I would get a call from Carlo. Second, me going there. And third, not only being in Brooklyn, but Bushwick. So and then, you know, I think Carlo said it much later and if he . . . we have interesting conversations. You know, he said to me, I think you’ve been working towards this your whole career. And I was about to be . . . immediately to say, like, no. And I was like, you know, probably. I have come from fine dining my whole career. When I moved to New York, I had to kind of start all over again, which was really, really difficult. And then things just took a really funny turn, you know, like, I found myself into a casual dining restaurant like Alimentari. Then I was supposed to do a fine dining place when I was actually at Nakazawa, waiting to open some sort of French and Japanese tasting menu. And then it just never happened.
And so I guess, you know, that I was meant to be doing this sort of omakase tasting counter for a long time. You know, and I think it makes sense. I think my food is sometimes hard to get. You know, I think it’s not very straightforward as in like, I don’t understand, you know, some people say, what’s the narrative? When someone’s trying to get really fucking interesting they’re like, what’s the narrative? And I’m like, I’m the fucking narrative! You know, like, I’m right here! What else do you need for a narrative? Like, do you want a book that help to eat? And, you know, some people are excited. Obviously you get others that they’re like, oh my god, but you have Chilean stuff, you have things from Japan, and some things are from this. And I’m like, yeah, that’s an immigrant life. You know, you’re filled with little bits and pieces of places you’ve worked and lived and things made an impact in your life.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
So you’ve done all this high-end fine dining and this is probably the opposite of a restaurant that’s prim and proper. Roberta’s is kind of a compound. And you enter through a door that, like . . .
Victoria Blamey
I mean, you have shipping containers.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yes. It’s like built of shipping containers. You walk in. It looks like a dive bar that’s kind of nothing when you walk in and suddenly you’re in this big space.
Victoria Blamey
The patio is huge. The garden or whatever. Yeah. It’s a huge compound.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Totally. It like, kind of walk you through and you walk by like, pizza ovens and graffiti and surfboards and you see a . . . there’s a radio station in there, Heritage Radio. And then you walk into this like other little world that’s kind of this serene room when you walk into Blanca in the back and it has this marble countertop with 12 seats.
Victoria Blamey
Thirteen. It was 12 and then we made it 13, which is good.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. It’s good, lucky 13th seat.
Victoria Blamey
Yeah, yeah.
Lilah Raptopoulos
And it looks out into this enormous kitchen. And so you sit down and you feel like, OK, we’re in this, like, spaceship together. Where are you going? Where are we going? And you kind of look around and the room is like 90 per cent kitchen, and we’re really watching you.
Victoria Blamey
Yeah.
Lilah Raptopoulos
And I know that I realise that all of this was there before you, but like, in your mind, when you were first going in there and when you were deciding to work there, like, what was interesting about that setup? Like, what do you get to do there that you couldn’t . . . ?
Victoria Blamey
I mean, I did go to Blanca like twice or three times before, so I was familiar of like what they were doing. I mean, of course it’s the biggest kitchen I’ve ever worked as an executive chef. You know, people used to laugh at me, my friends and colleagues, and like, I worked out of shoeboxes. So obviously, you know, I walk into Blanca and Blanca is like 10,000 times the space that I’ve ever had. And when finally we clear everything and everyone was out of there and there was no more production, no one from Roberto’s there, I was scared to death because it’s so open. I mean there’s really nowhere to hide. You know, there’s not like a little plant or like a little pillar or like a little area. Nothing. So I was like, holy shit. You know, at the beginning I was like, they’re looking at me. And then I was like, OK, I have to stop thinking they’re looking at me. But then, like, they are looking at me. (Laughter)
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, it’s been 10 months now. Like, what is it like to cook in this house? This is your house now.
Victoria Blamey
Yeah, for sure.
Lilah Raptopoulos
There’s like, you’re very close to your customers.
Victoria Blamey
Yeah.
Lilah Raptopoulos
We’re looking at you, but you’re looking at us.
Victoria Blamey
Yeah. I mean, I just forgot that I think it’s as overwhelming for the customer, I mean, for the guests, that it can be overwhelming for me that I realise that also you do feel seen too, you know. Like, you guys have nowhere to go because we’re looking at each other, you know, this is like Abramovich, you know, one on one. Probably the think is like we’re talking, there’s noise and sometimes a little too loud. But, you know. So it’s great. I mean, I do believe the energy is something you have to be very careful with, even though you’re the one commanding the pace, commanding what they’re eating, commanding the front of house. And you’re this orchestra, right? I face you, you know. So someone at orchestra, they’re just facing the people they’re singing. You know, it’s all like playing the instrument. If I were to give my back, it probably would be a little bit different, perhaps. But this is like eyes on eyes, you know? So if the people are not really on that really nice high energy level, it can get very intense.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. It’s interesting. Yeah, it is. It’s really a small ecosystem. So the vibe of the people, and then the vibe of the team . . .
Victoria Blamey
So small. Thirteen people, four cooks and four front of house, you know. But some people don’t go for that food experience. Some people do go because that’s a ticket that means something, right? You know, they were here.
Lilah Raptopoulos
They can check it off their list. Yeah.
Victoria Blamey
Yeah, I can afford to come. And that’s changed dining a lot. But also we have amazing people, you know. Like, we have this amazing 80-year-old couple that came on Saturday and they’ve been there already five times with me. They’re big, big fans of Carlo. He has a walker, you know. I mean, the effort that I don’t even see a 28-year-old do, you know, or a 34-year-old. So, yeah. So you obviously, when someone’s interested, when someone wants to know more, it’s not about people liking everything. It’s about people trying to understand what you’re doing, you know, and it might sound obnoxious, but I mean, that’s a tasting menu. It’s literally going to get to go and get to know the chef that’s cooking. That’s what it is.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Lilah Raptopoulos
Let’s talk about your food. So, as you said, you serve a tasting menu. You have two seatings a night. There were, I think, 16 courses when I was there. I thought of your food at Mena as sort of like briny and seaweedy and cool and fun.
Victoria Blamey
Yeah, there was a lot of seaweed.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, it was cool. Can you walk me through, like, a typical menu here? Like, what’s important to you when you’re building, when you’re building a dish?
Victoria Blamey
You know, it’s hard. I think it’s hard to build a menu out of nowhere because you like the structure. You know, once there’s a structure in place and you want to almost, like, break the structure again.
I think my food for sure, it goes on the acid, briny, seafood, seaweed, punch of flavour. I’m not very good at being subtle, so I think here’s just a little bit more intentional. Definitely seasonal. And definitely with the idea that we want to just kind of slap someone’s face, you know, we’re like, hey, wake up, you know? Whether you like it or not, this is what’s going on right now.
Lilah Raptopoulos
One fun thing about the experience dining at your restaurant is that, like, I feel like often in fine dining situations that you get, like, a full description of everything that’s happened to the thing you’re about to eat. They’re like, you know, this eggplant was dehydrated and rehydrated and then done it again and then rehydrated again and then put in this thing and then cracked out of its nest. And in this, in your restaurant, you really don’t know that much about the dish.
Victoria Blamey
I mean that’s a Carlo thing.
Lilah Raptopoulos
That’s a Carlo thing?
Victoria Blamey
Oh definitely.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah.
Victoria Blamey
I embrace it. Not all the time. I’m sure he knows. Not all the time because there’s times that I think the diner needs a little bit of an explanation, and if not they get really lost. So at times, I explain something that I think it means something and they need to understand. Especially, you know, with the bread. If it’s something to see where that is from Chile, you know. And other times it’s just three words, you know? And that’s that and it’s . . . I love it when someone like a drop mic, you know?
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of my favourite dishes felt like a drop mic, which is this little dense roll of spinach.
Victoria Blamey
Oh, the spinach. Yeah, yeah, that’s off the menu now.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Oh, man. It’s off the menu now? Well, may it rest in peace. It was just like . . .
Victoria Blamey
It might come back and, you know, it’s OK next year. Yeah.
Lilah Raptopoulos
It’s this dense roll of spinach. It comes in a little, a beautiful plate that looks kind of like a tire. And . . .
Victoria Blamey
Yeah, we call it actually the doughnut bowl.
Lilah Raptopoulos
A doughnut bowl. And it’s sitting in this sauce. All I know is that it’s tomatillo sauce, but I don’t . . .
Victoria Blamey
No, it’s a tomatillo gelée and it has a grated serrano. So it’s basically we do a little balancing of literally just spinach, then we serve it really, really cold. We grate serrano on the side, put it on top of the tiny, tiny roll of spinach, and then we make a tomatillo gelée, and then the dressing is made of out of ponzu, sesame, French olive oil.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Right. Why is it so good?
Victoria Blamey
You know, I think it was funny when I thought about it. I was like, is this too dumb? Because, I mean, this is pretty dumb. I mean, like ponzu, sesame, tomatillo, serrano. And I was like, oh god, fuck it! And then I said who’s doing actually cold spinach that much? So . . . I don’t know. I mean, I think the umami obviously, the acidity of the tomatillo, the little kick of the serrano. You know, I think it’s a combination of things, but it was born really quickly, which I love, you know. There’s a lot of things that are born just like that and other ones that are like literally nine months of being pregnant. And, you know, it just . . . It’s hard. Yeah.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, you have other dishes like this big red tomato comes out . . .
Victoria Blamey
Oh, the Canestrino. Yeah. Last day was Saturday.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Oh really? That’s so sad.
Victoria Blamey
I know. We’re like, oh god . . .
Lilah Raptopoulos
It looks like a pregnant tomato. It’s just this big, really red, very plump. Sort of . . .
Victoria Blamey
And then explodes on the plate. Yeah, that’s also a good one. Simple, but good. You know, simple is the most hard thing to do.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, yeah, I can imagine.
Victoria Blamey
It really is, you know. I guess you have to base it on ingredients. A, you have to base it on really good cooking and simple is not a lot of intervention.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. As we reach . . . I just sort of, I want to talk about this bread with you because like, as we reached the end of the meal for one of the courses, you tear off a hunk of a loaf of bread and put it in front of us. And it’s called . . .
Victoria Blamey
Tortilla de rescoldo.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, tortilla de rescoldo, and it’s inspired by this Chilean bread. It has hunks of meat in it. I think in Chile you use chicharon. The version I had had lamb in it. You’ve told me that you worked with a baker friend to recreate it, but I imagine it’s pretty similar, right, to the Chilean bread.
Victoria Blamey
It’s 100 per cent a cultural DNA Chilean side of me, which is another layer of who I am doesn’t always show up.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. I think one of the beautiful things to me about it is like, you get this sort of big hunk of bread with this beautiful butter, and that’s the dish. And it’s very comforting.
Victoria Blamey
Yeah.
Lilah Raptopoulos
And you do that a few times. There’s like very delicate dishes. And then you give us like a big crab empanada and you put and it’s like flaky and the best crab empanada, but it’s like a big sort of thing.
Victoria Blamey
And it’s.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Delicate dishes, these big sort of comfort things.
Victoria Blamey
Well I mean, if you think about it, I mean South America or like cultures that actually did not really get taken over by, let’s say, French cuisine. You know, that’s what it is. Yeah. You know, I mean, it was much more, you know, not subtle, much more in your face, you know, peasant. Which, you know, Chile. I mean, you know, it was a hard country to take over. Indigenous were super difficult and really tough and really violent. So I guess, you know, our food is much more, I mean, for lack of a better word, rustic. I love the history side of it. You know, I love the marriage of the immigration migration that you have right there. Not fully developed at all. Yeah. No, that’s what it is. An empanada, who doesn’t have it. Tell me one culture that doesn’t have a Hot Pocket, you know, and they’re all usually on the bigger side, comforting. You know that that level is like we are breaking how fine dining was years ago. You know, I did fine dining in England, and everything was tiny and very, like, white, you know, very non upsetting, you know, not discomforting. And I think the good thing these days is. And now we don’t look only at, like, France or Spain or, you know, Italy. We just looked everywhere.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah.
Victoria Blamey
Yeah. I mean, the world’s too big. It always was, you know, we just never made it to be talked about.
Lilah Raptopoulos
You know, I wanted to ask you sort of about, like it seems like you don’t want everything to be balanced all the time. But I also feel like even in the imbalance, that’s like it’s own balance.
Victoria Blamey
Definitely
Lilah Raptopoulos
You know? Can you talk a little bit about like, how you’re trying to push your diners or what you want us to feel or.
Victoria Blamey
I think it’s more myself. I’m a tough diner. I also get like not bored easily, but I’m like, I have seen this like, done that. Why people are still doing this? Why do we have Wagyu on every tasting menu these days? Like why do I wanna Wagyu? I mean before it was special and fun, you know? Why do I want to eat caviar everywhere? Why do I want to have lobster, which crab is way better anyway? Like I think in general, I want to for diners to appreciate the difference, you know, in, in our in our dining culture. I think I want diners to understand that, you know, a lot of them. You haven’t seen any vegetable yet. If you haven’t seen I don’t know, florets of cauliflower. If you haven’t seen a cheese pepper or you know, I mean these days we have like five items in our, you know, in our in a fridge and you’re lucky. And the food culture has been going down for years, you know, so do I try to lecture them? Very, very mildly. Do I try to show new things, especially produce? I do like showing that we’re working with things that people used to work before. Like what? Well, you know, tongue. You know, we’re working on pork liver right now. Snails, you know, people think snails are meant to be just done with garlic. You know, we did it with lavender back in the day with a pasta where we had just trying to understand that, you know, for was even more interesting before. Yeah. And I have memories of getting excited about food because the first time I ate, you know, like Osso Buco in Chile, which wasn’t the Italian version, but you know that marrow? Oh my God. I would come from school and I would open this pot that, you know, my nanny used to cook, because my mom was working all the time. And I will come in and steal every single freaking marrow and my mom yelling at me like I run 8 to 9pm if she was actually home that early. And that’s how I fell in love with food, you know. So, I just . . . everyone’s so safe these days, you know, everything, everyone’s so scared. Yeah, everyone is so I never try this, you know. It’s like, what do you mean? And it’s like, you live in New York. Like, this is the place to try pretty much everything, and also to have fun. You know, I love having fun. And I thing is true, you know, I don’t want things to make sense all the time, but they do make sense. What don’t make sense? You know, it makes sense that, you know, you’re coming out of this hunk of bread or you’re coming to this gorgeous Japanese salmon(?) Fish, and then you moved into a gigantic piece of bread that is dense and meaty and fatty. Why not?
Lilah Raptopoulos
Right
Victoria Blamey
You know, I mean, how else are you supposed to explore food?
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, yeah.
Victoria Blamey
You know.
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[FT GLOBAL BANKING SUMMIT TRAILER PLAYING]
Lilah Raptopoulos
You know, for all of this sort of experimentation and like fun that you get to have this format. The tasting menu is a very traditional format that can be thought of as a very traditional format. But it seems like there are some upsides for you about using a tasting menu. What is it? Just that, like, you know, you get to like control. People will eat whatever you put in front of them. You get to control the balance.
Victoria Blamey
No, I mean, there’s people that, you know, I have people that are like, yeah, not my thing. I don’t know. But I think Carlo said it very well. This interview, this interview we did together, and he said, you know, it is so far the best outlet how to show a chef’s cuisine. And that is because if you go to Mena, if you went too, many of you would have a prix fixe menu. And I did try, you see, to kind of steer your food choices, you know, very gently. But then you would only know what you want to eat.
Lilah Raptopoulos
You would only have one story.
Victoria Blamey
You would only know one side of that person. You would only know one side of what people are doing. I mean, I think to be adventurous, you have to, like, surround yourself.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah.
Victoria Blamey
If you’re not surrounded, surrender. It’s like, you know, when I go to a place like that, I am in the hands of the chef. It’s not my choice. I think the only time I’ve ever asked for something, and I think I’ve told this story many times and I think maybe I told you when I went to a really great tasting menu in Austria and the somm(elier) didn’t want to change the wine for me. And I was like, you know, buddy, like, this is not your game, actually. You know, this is a chef’s game. And I am also a guest, and I hate that wine. And that was the only time I’ve asked for something like that. I’m lucky I don’t have allergies, but I’m at their disposal. You know, I want someone to take me and, like, shake me and break me apart and put me back together. I don’t want someone to please me. You know, I want to be pleasantly surprised, you know? And I think the problem with tasting menus in New York is like everyone’s afraid of losing customers and losing guests and losing money because it’s a business. And we all live on the same fear, the same fear. Yeah. But if we’re going to live in fear, might as well get some fucking fun about it, you know? And, like, can you imagine, like, if we were doing, like, lobster? I don’t. I don’t. I couldn’t see it, you know?
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. What do you want to see more of in fine dining or in restaurants?
Victoria Blamey
This I want just people to just. I want someone to just explore more. You know, I want people to be more adventurous. You know, I think we’re getting it all wrong. You know, we’re pushing away diners just by doing the same thing all over again, which also happens in Europe. You know, I have a good friend of mine. He’s like, if I eat more, one more fucking squab. He said to me. I was like, why? So yeah and it’s true. A lot of tasting menu restaurants in England and other, you know, Austria, whatever. They finish with a squab and you have like one more pigeon then and then I will walk out, you know, it’s like, I get it, you know, here is you don’t say hello, but obviously was the number one like meat, you know, one point and you’re like, gosh, boring. Yeah. Yeah. I just, I guess, be more uncomfortable, take more challenges, you know?
Lilah Raptopoulos
What do you feel? Sort of, I guess, most worried about as sort of as one of my. Maybe my last question. What are you most worried about and most hopeful about with the in the restaurant ecosystem.
Victoria Blamey
Yeah. Worry. Money.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Money.
Victoria Blamey
Money. Again generations guest tastes, you know, guests experiences and how they view food. I find that a little scary.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Do you think that they’re informed too much by social media or by trying?
Victoria Blamey
No, that’s a great question. I don’t even think is that I just think that there’s some misconception because of all their restaurants, just they all doing the same thing. Someone told them they needed to put a Wagyu. Someone told them they needed to put lobster. I am very glad that Carlo’s not like that, you know? Yeah.
Lilah Raptopoulos
And what makes you most hopeful?
Victoria Blamey
I, on the whole, at the same time, seeing a couple who is 80 years old, all of them coming with a walker and saying, I love your food. I mean, that just, like, melt me, you know? I was like, gosh, I am so bad sometimes about taking compliments. I get very critical about, hypercritical. And I get embarrassed, you know? So but for someone like that, I do believe it.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah.
Victoria Blamey
So, yeah, I guess the hope was having a customer like that at the restaurant. Yeah.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Victoria, thank you for your time. Thank you for your food. This was such a delight.
Victoria Blamey
Thank you for inviting me. It’s always fun to talk about this, You know? We don’t do it enough.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Thanks.
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That’s the show. Thank you for listening to Life and Art from FT Weekend. Take a look through the show notes I have linked to where you can find Victoria. As always, there’s a link for a discount to a subscription to the Financial Times and places that you can find me on email and on Instagram where I’m @LilahRap and I love chatting with all of you about culture.
I’m Lilah Raptopoulos and here’s our incredible team. Katya Kumkova is our senior producer. Lulu Smyth is our producer. Our sound engineers are Breen Turner, Sam Giovinco and Joe Salcedo with original music by Metaphor Music. Topher Forhecz is our executive producer and our global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Have a wonderful week and we’ll find each other again on Friday.
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