Danny Boome
You grew up in Cambridgeshire, England. I grew up in a town called Peterburg, which is in Cambridgeshire. Cambridge is the province I'm from. To identify East Anglia, it's the big lump that sticks out on the right hand side of the country when you see it on a map only an hour away from the sea. There's lots of fresh fish, meat, fruits and vegetables always. That sort a helps the learning process when you are becoming a chef. Was food a big part of your childhood? Very much. I grew up right in the middle of what we call the Fens, a huge agricultural area. I would say that 95% of the potato chips in Europe come from my 'back garden.' Carrots and all the greens were right on our doorstep. You're brought up, more or less, living off the land. We used to go collect fruits, like blackberries and apples,take them home and make pies. It's a very standard thing when you live in the country. Whatever country you're in, people that live in the country, the urban areas, live like that. Your grandmother was very influential in shaping your view of food. Not in just cooking, but food and family. Tell us about that. I have many grandmothers. It's quite funny. Actually my grandmother Boome (he's laughing), she's the first person I know who used to go into the supermarket and taste the grapes before she bought them. Her grandmother was a great cook and so on the Boome side of the family there was always a great cooking tradition. We're a big family, my grandmother was one of 14. Cooking in that sense was made en mass. She saw cooking like on MASH, it was always an army operation. My dad's an only child, so when my sister and I came along to a Sunday lunch, she'd invite a few other people over. Sunday lunch is usually roast beef or chicken, but when you go to my grandmother's, it's a whole chicken, a side of beef, a little bit of pork, (pork belly), and then a lamb shoulder. My goodness! And then 6 or 7 different vegetables on top of that and a variety of different potatoes. It's just amazing. Even now, she's in her late 70s, she still cooks like that whenever anybody comes round. (Lou) I grew up in an Italian family, a very large family, so I obviously know from which you speak. I'll give you a perfect example; we used to have 30-40 people for Easter dinner. Another 30-40 people would come over later in the day, and my mom would bring it all out again and feed them too. Strange thing is, when I became a chef, I used to say to people, "Oh we cooked for 100 - 500 people," people would go WOW! My grandma, my nanny Boome, she is the quintessential, traditional English cook. England was not known for it's food. It's getting better now, they're coming into the 21 century, so to speak. (He's laughing) I think people's opinion of British food is rather poor. That's all they think, it's very bland and everything, but when you think that the number one dish in Britain is curry, any day of the week you can't say that our food is dull. To understand that you have to look back at England's history. The reason why British food was very, very bland at the time was because of the war and all the rationing. Dishes like Spotted Dick and the Great English breakfast, were all brought around because of the war and the rationing process. The other thing you have to realize is that rationing didn't stop until the mid 1950s. People were brought up on starch. Basically, it was all carbohydrates and meat. Bangers and mash. Exactly. Toad in the Hole and those type of things. Anyone my grandmother's age was brought up cooking like that. So when those people took a step back and their children started taking over cooking duties, it became who was inspiring them, and what inspired them to cook differently. Thank God we got the Euro Tunnel, Easy Jet and the European package holiday. All of a sudden Spanish cuisine became very popular. Italian cuisine has always been popular at home (England), because of the migration of the Italian workers after the war into the UK. The same with India, Jamaica and Pakistan. We're this very multi-cultural society. It took twenty (20) years, but then all of a sudden the penny drops and food started getting flavor and taste and different ingredients. That brings it to the modern day with chefs that have been around for the last twenty (20) years. The challenge now is to constantly educate. The thing about the British culture is that it is very aspirational. The interesting thing about British cuisine, is that we actually invented fusion cuisine. People don't realize that the British people invented fusion food. From the first day an Englishman put milk in tea, that was the first point of fusion cuisine and the revolution of the cake.(Laughter) Interesting point, I hadn't looked at that way. Yeah, when you look at a lot of Indian food, we encouraged Indian food to be milder because it was too spicy for our palate. The rogongosh, the vindaloo, the curries were actually invented for the empire's taste. There was an extremely hot one and an extremely mild one and an extremely cold one. It was encouraged by the empire that no way were these people going to come and eat in our restaurants. With that history it's quite something how it developed. My parents were of that generation of anything goes. It's strange because everybody has their favorite dishes. My mom is quintessentially still in the 80s because she still makes chili con carne, which is not like any chili any American would ever eat. It's very mild, it's still got the beans and everything like that. It's very meaty, more like a bolognese sometimes. Kind of like a beef stew. Yeah, but it was still one of those dinner party dishes and it's always stayed with my mom and she makes the best. The next day cold is always the best. The food is always the best the next day. They should open a restaurant and call it The Next Day, because it'd be so much better the next day. There's a niche (laughter). My mom, and my dad, always took us to the restaurant. They took us to the party. The thing is as a child, your traveling and you're so close to Europe and everything, we were exposed to so much more. It was amazing. My palate growing up, there hasn't been one food I've never tried. Did you cook with your mom and dad in the kitchen? I probably didn't start cooking for my parents or with my parents, or actually having any interest in food, until I was 16. We want to keep this chronological, you mention 16 and at 16 you were the Captain of England, hockey. Yeah, I played Junior Hockey at 16. My path was going to be a professional hockey player, or I was going to be a graphic designer. They were the two things that were in my path. I'm very good at art and I was always good at sports. Hockey really took to me, I was really bugger about it at a very early age. You still have it, obviously. I still write about it. The thing is as you get older, you're thinking now if I only knew then what I know now, I'd probably be the best player in the world, in hindsight, all the time. The major thing with playing was it actually started me building my skill set for life. When I was 16, I was playing very competitively in the Junior level and International level. Between 15 and 18 you begin to think about what you are going to do after school. Are you going to go on, or are you going to go pro, or are you just going to get on with your education. Somehow you transitioned to food. Yeah, I transitioned to food. I never really paid much attention to food. My dad said, "What are you going to do after school? What are you thinking about?" It's a strange thing, because I think about this conversation now and where I am and it's weird. It's a strange thing. There's another guy from school who turned out to be very, very good chef. His name is Danny Gray, he was in my class at school. He went off to work at the Ritz and Harrod's and he's been all over the world. He left school and became a chef. Five years later after leaving school, that's when I became a chef. It's strange because the only thing we have in England is called Options. At 14 you're expected to take the subjects that are going to be your majors. That's an early age to ask someone to make a life decision. It was a case of what am I going to do. I was having this with my father one day, I was making sandwiches. It's a sandwich basically which is onions, peppers, tuna, bit of mayo, salt, pepper, maybe cucumber and it's all put into a sandwich. I remember and I always had this thing for how the presentation on the plate should look. I always used to put the sandwich in a spiral and put the chips in the middle, and this is at 14. My dad said, "Have you thought about being a chef?" I think my dad deep down wanted me to become a hairdresser like he did. Hairdresser, interesting. Yeah, my dad is a hair dresser. So I think that was on the cards, taking over the family business, playing hockey or doing something else. I said, nah, I really don't want to be on my feet all the time. So I chose to be a hockey player. Which is kind of being on your feet all the time! (Laughing) I've got a little bit of ADD, so it was something to keep me active, keep my mind completely concentrated, and as a kid you want to become the sport's star. Or a rock star. I pursued that and I was doing okay. At 18 I was snapped up by the biggest club in Britain, the Sheffield Steelers, and I was given an educational scholarship by them, which was awesome. I never thought about food after that. The always with food, it's not necessarily a passion with me as much as a necessity. You have to eat and use food as a necessity in life. That's all it's ever been and until it became my job. It's a necessity to cook the meat. It's a necessity to eat it. It's a necessity to go to the farmer's market and find the best produce, because it is comforting your soul and the energy you need to push through. That's what you have to think about. You apprenticed in Switzerland, how did that come about? How everything happened was, I was playing hockey and I got a bit disillusioned, I had a couple of injuries. I was around 22, 23 and I just didn't know what I was doing with my life. I tried to pursue advertising and marketing cause basically I worked for numerous sports agencies. I tried the sports-world and then I went into banking. The corporate world has never been mine. I'm not a corporate person. No, nor am I (Lou), that's why I own my own business. Even then, I just couldn't tow the line as such. I think you meet most chefs and they have some from of ADD, they're not exactly academic and they are artistic, dyslexic and they are probably also having other issues. They're a little bit neurotic.(laughter) They're left brained, that's what we are going to call it. It sounds funny, every time you meet the guys or the girls, everybody comes from a similar story. I think Anthony Bourdain said it best when he said, "they're like pirates in the kitchen." It's a skulduggery type of society, because we all come from a similar broken down background that's thrown us into this position. It's what we can do. When you throw chaos and creativity in the pot together, we find some sort of stimulus with it. We actually say this actually feeds my  soul. That's why I sort of adopted it. Getting back to Switzerland, I was working in the corporate world and I decided "I can't do this". My thought was I was just going to go away and do a ski season. I always wanted to do one. I was living in this rut of life, in which I wasn't accomplishing anything. When you've lived in a competitive world, such as sports, it is a very, very hard gap to fill. It really, really is. I agree. I thought musician but now I still don't know what I'm going to do. I'm enjoying talking to you.. You say, what are you going to do next. What was your first kitchen gig there? I got to Switzerland and I was going to do a season. I got there and I needed a job. I looked around for all sorts of jobs, a bar manager, a chalet manager, I had this manager thing in my head, I don't know why. They said, look kiddo, you're not qualified and all we've got is au pair jobs at the moment. I said, "I'll take it." They said, "What? You're a guy, why would you want to look after kids?" I said "I'll take it." I had the interview and got the job. That decision shaped a lot of what you're doing now. Yeah, okay. You've got to realize that all these opportunities in your life are like putting shoelaces through the eyes of your shoes. Every time that shoelace goes through the eye it crosses another path. What you're doing is your building your skill package up. Working as a Nanny, gave me a skill set I never had before. I learned to cook, I learned to clean, I learned to look after children. I actually learned how to budget a household and manage people. Managing children and managing parents are more or less the same thing and when you get into the kitchen, it's the same type of thing. With the sports background it was great. I had something athletic so I went skiing every day with the kids. The fundamental thing is this is where I learned to cook. This is where I had to learn to cook because I had to feed people. Now, this was my job,' so I had to keep coming up with something creative every day. You have to deal with your boss's clients coming in for dinner parties. It was a hard, hard thing at first. I made a lot of rice. As a bachelor, all I ever learned to cook was rice. It's very cheap and a big filler. As a student, a bachelor and a sports person that's all you do is eat carbs and protein. After my first season in the Alps, my dad said to me I don't know what you're going to do. He was funny, he said, "You can't be a nanny for the rest of your life." (Laughing) I'm like, "Well okay, that's a point." I did the nanny job for two seasons and then I moved on to being a chaperon for a season. It was very strange, it was the best job I've ever had. It was the most fun and the most challenging. I look back on it now and I think I did it at the right age. It helped everything else. From there you went to Canada, correct? Yes, I went to a place called the West Wind Inn and worked for a guy who was possibly the most instrumental motivator.. He was the epitome of the pro. He was a passionate advocate of food and he is today. He runs a nice little business up in the Lakes, in Cottage Country in Canada. Now we're in the middle of nowhere. We are literally in the bush of Canada, Ontario. He said we need to do something different and it's not in our budget. So he goes fishing and catches salmon and I make gravlax out of it, or we would go foraging in the forest for wild mushrooms. I'd make wild mushroom risotto. For me it was great because I'd traveled and been to other places. No one had ever really had tuna tartare before, or an Asian twist on it. The funny thing going back to what people think of England like, I go to Canada which is a multi-cultural society, with a high immigrant level of Asian, Africans and Jamaicans and anybody that was left over from the Empire, that moved to Canada, and some of these people didn't know how to make these dishes. Dishes like Thai infused chicken. I think it was because people just don't throw caution to the wind. They stay safe. | Even in this country, if they are French Culinary Institute trained, they stay French forever. He's like, "You've got to just drop the ball a little bit kid and pick a different one up and have a go. If you're not trying, you're dying. It's as simple as that." That was great, cause this guy realized what I had the ability to do. He said let's play with it, let's do more with it. You went from there back to the cookery school. Well, I went back to Switzerland again and basically had a year of playing around in other people's kitchens. I went back to be a nanny again, but hired myself out to do dinner parties helped out in a few bars, and made extra money that way. After that season, I decided this was what I want to do. I'm going to go and take this seriously. I went for a month 'taster' to see if I was on the right path. I went for the first month and then I dropped out. I did my time. It was this month course to hone me and take this raw energy that I had and solidify it into something more to take into the corporate kitchens and such. You spent quite a bit of time working as a personal and/or executive chef or freelance chef for a number of entities. I want to get to some of the highlights. Tell us how you get to work for the Sultan of Oman. My actual first proper gig was Asia to Cuba in London. Sean Gilmore was my head chef then. To be honest, the kitchen life then wasn't what I aspired to do. When you actually work in some kitchens it's more like you are on an assembly line. You're working the line, you've got your station, a plate comes by you. You're just knocking it out everyday. To me, that doesn't suit my soul. What I needed was something that would give me a challenge every day, push myself. I think a lot of people can cook, but when you are actually working in an industrial kitchen it doesn't push your skill set. You're just reproducing other people's stuff. How about you, what are you going to come with today? Right. The personal chef gave you the ability to be every station. Yes, and also, when you cook, they are your recipes. If you get it wrong, you get it wrong. If you get it right, you've made the money that day. I like the challenge of actually being pushed. That was it, I was done. I didn't want to do this treadmill any more. I was becoming a zombie. I then went to the agency work and freelanced. Very lucrative contracts over a short period of time. I thought this was the rock n roll lifestyle cause you're traveling, you're cooking, you're working for really high powered people. You're also getting a gauge on how good you are. Once you make something that good for somebody and they eat in every night, you know what that means. You're cooking better than a restaurant. That's correct. They don't want to go out to a restaurant because they've got you. I think that's the best compliment ever. So the Sultan of Oman, how did that happen? I was very lucky. I wasn't his personal chef, I was the estate chef. I basically built the kitchen in Paris and looked after his 50 staff and the skeleton staff that maintained the grounds. Interesting thing, I maintained the ordering and things like that. When the actual Sultan arrived, I'm not a Muslim, so I couldn't cook for him. He has a team of 60 chefs that travel with him. They are on demand 24 hours. It was an amazing thing. Working for the estate of the Sultan was like working in a James Bond movie. It was so big, we all had golf carts to drive around on. So it's kind of like he was Goldfinger. (Laughing) Yes, he was exactly that. It was an absolutely amazing experience. You have cooked for quite a number of celebrity people. I don't really like name dropping. We've cooked many events, I've done the Chicago movie premier in London so Bronson and Zellwieger were there. The executives and people I've cooked for though they hire me for my discretion. Lately, Robert deNero, Brett Michaels, and people like that have graced my presence at times. I never really cooked directly for them, but they've been there. I'm more of a Robert Irvine style. How did TV come into play? The first thing you did was Wild and Fresh? The TV thing was very funny, it was a case of opportunity. One of my housemates in London, her boss was an agent and met me at a party. He thought I was very funny. When she found out I was a chef, she said there's got to be an opening, there's a market in Britain, or the world, for chefs. There's a big demand, a supply and demand thing. My personality has always been one of being very chatty and open and friendly. We're going to have to edit the heck out of this (Lot of laughter). I think the point with the TV thing was getting the opportunity to do Wild and Fresh was that it was over in Canada and the UK. I never really thought of TV to be absolutely honest. I just wanted to make myself as a cook. Then when someone approaches you and you obviously have a good gift of the gab here and your personable... And you don't break the camera... ....and also the message I'm trying to put across. When you do TV you make it your own. You own the show and that's something that I've had to learn in the last six years. In that time from doing Wild and Fresh and then Danny by the Sea. Danny by the Sea was a very interesting program. It was a very good show, an award winning show in the UK. One of the highest viewed cookery shows ever. It was great, it was very personal as well, it was about my back garden where I was from. It was about the people I know, the purveyors I use. So it came full circle. You came back to do this show Danny by the Sea, and it's in Norfolk. I'm thinking back to your dad's statement, "Why don't you be a chef?"  This is the funny thing. It was the amount of pride I had to do that show. Everything it reflected is who I am, and what has got me to be where I am. That show made such a great foundation for me. It's amazing that years later and a shame that we don't realize it until years later, that our parents might be smart and we should listen to them. (Laughing) You know what Lou, my biggest hate in life, is being right about being wrong. My dad is the guy that I will always sound board with. I'll say (to myself) he doesn't know what he's talking about. Then I'll go back five minutes later and say, he does know what he's talking about. Sometimes the messenger isn't the person we want to hear that from. Yeah, I've had to learn to bite my lip and listen a little more. Interesting thing now is he's listening to me, which I think is very cool. That is very cool. It's a very interesting path that you took. You've gotten some great accolades in Britain, how does Rescue Chef come about? 2006 was a great year in TV. 2007 was an awful year in TV in the UK. There was nothing happening and I changed agents and I was thinking of turning it all in. It (TV) was becoming so hit and miss. I decided I was going to throw it all in and got a proper job and was working for a hotel and everything was going great. One day I get this phone call from my agent, "Have you ever worked for the foodnetwork?" I answered, "In Canada, yeah." "No, the US one."I went, "What?" Apparently, they head hunted me to do Rescue Chef. Was that their concept or yours? It's theirs. Basically Rescue Chef was Tyler Florence's old show, Kitchen 911. So you just changed the name. Once you change the name, Tyler and I are totally different chefs. I had to make the show my own. To be honest, Rescue Chef gets better as each episode goes. The first six episodes I wasn't really happy with, you're still finding your way. After show six and into the second season, it really became my show. It was me. I understand what everybody put forth in front of me, because at the end of the day, we all have this problem, and my philosophy of cooking is that I give you permission. What everybody wants is someone to say, "Yes you can do this or you can do that." It's not necessarily the point that someone knows how to, but the confidence to do it. When you are trying to learn to cook and do something on your own you need someone there to explain a few things to you. I was really lucky that this show came along. It really, really is me. That's how I like to teach and like to cook. Let's get back to that philosophy of Nanny Boome, which was the passion in the kitchen. Use what you've got, be creative. This is the interesting thing, you know when I said I had many, many grandmothers? Right. The one that is the most influential in that response is the Nona. The Italian grandmother that I have in my family. She's our surrogate grandmother. My grandmother was the traditional one. She was the one to make do with what you've got. When we started talking about food, I would say, "I've got no Parmesan, what am I going to use?" She'd say, "Well you know what I'm going to do Daniel, I'm going to take this cheese that comes in the cellophane packet. You know it sort of looks like wax, I put that in the freezer. Then when I don't have any parmesan I use that because it's the same stuff more or less. It's just less salty." It's like Oh! She actually taught me to make due with what you've got, because it's all you've got. Then when we've got some different things we diversify it. That to me was a huge opening there of how to get those messages across to people. If you don't have this, use this. If you don't have that, use this instead. It was sort of like a dawning. When you're training as a cook, the ingredients are always available. What happens when the ingredients aren't available? This goes back to the show, when it says use thyme, is there another herb I can use because I haven't got thyme. It was funny in that respect. That brings us to Crash Bang Boome. You have this focus on educating kids and parents on eating healthy and that is something that has been a passion of yours. Talk about that for a minute. Crash Bang Boome started about three - four years ago, just before Jamie Oliver started in schools in the UK. It's my production company as well. My girlfriend at the time was explaining to me that there was a situation where there was no actual culinary education in schools. I started basically on this plan that I was going to reinvent the school cooking class and teach kids about healthy eating and quick meals to cook. Because most days, especially kids in high school, they basically looking after themselves because mom and dad are working. It developed from there. Now, since I've come to America, I've developed this package where I do everything from elementary, right through high school. We can educate children about healthy eating, where fruits and vegetables come from, believe it or not, some people don't know that.That's scary on a number of levels. I got involved working around that. Now we've come up with the Home Revolution Cooking Tour. We actually do a three day tour now, we'll do a school, go to a house, go to the dorm. We will literally do more of a lecture, but a practical lecture, where it's very interactive, it's very fun. We sit around and talk about these things. We talk about what vegetables are, cow food, what's good for you and what's bad for you. We talk about everything that schools aren't talking about. Bringing it to consciousness. There's not point in talking to a kid about mini recipes, healthy eating and where the good stuff comes from and what's bad for you as well, if the parents aren't backing them up. When we go into the schools we invite the PTA and the parents to do a lesson with me straight after I teach the kids in school. How do you get your contacts into the schools? Are you talking to boards? Virtual advertising and press engagements like this. We're talking about it and actually making it a subject. I hope that parents say, "I really like that idea and would want my children to be exposed to it." Now we have the tasters and I'm trying to put it out as a proper product to areas. We're doing it virally, school boards, they are a little bit precocious because you have to be brought in privately, or a parent has to bring you in. Instead of the school itself taking the initiative to do so. Any thought to putting a show together? Kids are way more interested in food then adults actually give them credit. A child won't eat what their parents won't eat, it's nature and nurture. I heard a funny statement about that. Home schooled kids, basically don't know what their parents don't know. Exactly. It's strange, because we live in a society, I live in New York, and went to a couple of schools here. Children in Manhattan were shouting out the answers before I even asked the questions. I found that strange, but obviously it is your surroundings and what you are exposed to. America is such a fast-food, chain restaurant, deep-fried mecca. It's so ingrained in our society here. Not that there is anything wrong with that once in a while, but we've taken it to an extreme. The problem is that society in America is too expensive for those people who live on a budget. It's cheaper to eat at the fast-food store. It's cheaper than trying to buy the food itself. Take New York for instance, in some places in here it is cheaper to eat in a restaurant than to actually buy the food. Especially if you are trying to eat organic and sustainable. The worse thing about organics is that it is only for the wealthy. It's an amazing thing that in some areas, everything is taken out of it and nothing is left. In an country that is as economically unfair, the first thing a person thinks about if they leave their job is that they lose their benefits. People are worried about their insurances and their work, they've got to put the hours in because their salaries are so low, that' when the diet is always affected. People don't have the time and the money. They purchase boxed 'meals' and things like that. This is your opportunity to get on the soap box. What would people be surprised about to learn about you that they don't know. I'm self taught mainly, and I've been taught through my own inspirations and situations. I'm diversifying my skill set to the need. I'm not pretentious in any way of what I do. I have pride but I'm not pretentious about the food or the ingredients. At the end of the day I live in the real world, not a world where there's a vain-ability if you can afford it. That's one side of things. The other thing that no one realizes about it me that the food was a hobby and then became a job. The point for me is that it is my job and I take great pride in teaching people to cook and to have a healthier life. I have some sort of aspiration to be able to say that it is affordable to do and it is available to do. My passion is living. You refer to yourself as a renaissance man, I do myself. I understand where you are coming from with regard to that. Your passion is living, your job is food, but it's much more than just 'cookery.' Where does your desire to reach out and educate people come from? My passion for that comes from complete frustration with the system. Alternately a frustration of the corporate world and the lack of education that people are given about products and things like that.  What's on the horizon?(He's laughing here) We've got books, we've got merchandise, we're looking at having relationships with new networks and some big name programming. The future's bright. I think 2010 is going to be a better year, I always work better on even number years for some reason. I honestly think I can take things places. Breaking America is the hardest thing in the world. Being on the foodnetwork's been great, but they have their own identity, and I probably may not fit in with that in the future, but if I do, Rescue Chef I hope will be the show that they turn to. We'll have to see where we go from there.Always world domination, I want it all. (There's a smile in his voice.) |
