The kitchen chose me long before I understood what it meant to choose anything.
Parallel to culinary training, another form of training unfolded. Photography while I lived in Denver. Fine arts in Antwerp at the Royal Academy of Art. A Master’s in Artistic Research at the University of Amsterdam. In the art world, waiting for inspiration is a fantasy. Work must exist. Exhibitions must open. Ideas must materialize even when doubt lingers. There were mornings in those studios when I questioned whether I belonged there at all. Whether seriousness was something you earn, or something you simply decide to embody. That question followed me into kitchens. Over time, I realized belonging is built through repetition. Research. Experiment. Document. Polish. This framework became an anchor.
Years later, collaborating on what would become The Black Flavor, we stood in front of a massive solar-thermic dehydrator humming under steady sun. Garlic blackened slowly. Pineapple darkened into something almost molasses-like. Corn deepened into unexpected umami. Some experiments were failures. Entire trays discarded. The smell of burnt sugar lingered like an accusation. There is a particular silence that comes after something you believed in fails. You can choose to interpret it as defeat. Or as instruction. We chose instruction. Slowly, depth emerged. Sweetness transformed. Vegetables tasted aged, concentrated, and almost philosophical. Pleasure returned — not naive pleasure, but earned pleasure.
I did not choose the kitchen. The kitchen chose me long before I understood what it meant to choose anything. My earliest sensory memories relate to the smell of moisture. Guatemala City’s foggy mornings, the markets at dawn, metal tables sweating, fish blinking in crushed ice, the smell of salt, iron, and citrus suspended in thick air. Vendors shouting. Knives striking wood with a sharp rhythm. My mother is walking ahead of me holding her wicker basket. My eyes are scanning. Coconut water in a big glass jar. But not just the water. The heart of the coconut, the seed. That soft, porous embryo floating inside the glass, slightly sweet, slightly resistant to the teeth. I remember the way it yielded slowly, like something secret being revealed. I insisted on having it every time. Even then, I wanted what was hidden inside the obvious.
I sometimes wonder if that was the first time I felt that what nourishes you is rarely the surface. I remember lime burning my tongue as I drank it straight, as freshly squeezed juice, testing how much acidity my mouth could endure. I remember live clams split open and immediately drowned in citrus, flesh tightening in seconds. I remember eating fish eyes, organ meats, and textures others avoided. Intensity did not frighten me. It steadied me. But intensity also isolates you. When I shared fish candy from a Japanese friend at school and another child cried from disgust, I learned something quietly painful: not everyone tastes the world the way you do. Curiosity can be misunderstood. Pleasure can look strange. For a moment, I considered softening. I did not.
The Kitchen Was Always There
Adolescence shifted my posture. I began watching more than eating. In the back of the “San Pancracio" bakery owned by a friend’s family, I stood under warm yellow lights while dough was rolled in silence. Yeast is breathing softly in the air. Hams hanging in smoke rooms, wood perfume heavy in the lungs. Milk left overnight, cream rising quietly to the surface, later transformed, I remember touching that churned butter — soft, almost warm, fragile. While living in Denver as a young adult, I first smelled crushed lemongrass and torn kaffir lime leaves, and something in me expanded. There were flavors I did not know how to name. I felt excitement — and inadequacy. How much was I missing? How many worlds existed beyond the ones I had tasted? I understood then that the more you learn, the more you see what you do not know.
My turning point did not arrive in a glorious way. It arrived in restlessness. Back in Guatemala, I spent long hours in “Camille”, a friend's restaurant, sitting in the kitchen simply watching. Butter foaming. Garlic browns too quickly if you lose attention. Fish skin blistering under heat. The choreography of service: wipe, plate, send. I wanted to be inside that rhythm. When the chef handed me an apron, the fabric felt heavier than it should have. The first time I cut fish professionally, my hands hesitated. The blade did not glide as I imagined it would. The bread dough stuck. Timing faltered. Desire is not the same as skill. There were nights I lay awake asking myself whether fascination was enough to justify the risk of starting over. He told me to go to culinary school. So I left.
Barcelona was first. Then Paris, at Le Cordon Bleu. Stainless steel surfaces reflecting fluorescent light. Stocks simmering for hours. Sauces were reduced until they coated the back of a spoon with exact thickness. There, ego dissolves quickly. You think you know how to cook — until technique exposes your weaknesses. Knife cuts must be identical. Temperatures exact. Reductions controlled. I failed quietly many times. Failure did not humiliate me. It clarified me. In Michelin-starred kitchens such as Restaurant Hisop and Restaurant Christophe, I witnessed two realities. In one, prestige masked cruelty — shouting, chaos, tension thick as steam. I questioned whether excellence required humiliation. I learned that it does not. Excellence requires structure. Cruelty is insecurity disguised as rigor.
Around that period, I was leading a couple of restaurants in Guatemala. I could immediately feel when a kitchen’s rhythm was broken. Equipment misplaced. Air too thick. Voices tense. The menu and the space are misaligned. Vision collides with budgets. Standards collide with fatigue. You cannot control everything. I learned that leadership is less about imposing perfection and more about cultivating coherence and listening to what needs to be listened to. I remembered that years earlier, at “The College Hotel” in Amsterdam, I had been teaching interns and would shape croquettes beside them when they lost their discipline. Not to correct them from above, but to demonstrate that uniformity is respect — respect for the guest, for the ingredient, for the craft.
Culinary Collector did not appear as a strategy. It condensed from years of tension between curiosity and structure. The child who sought coconut hearts. The student was humbled by the technique. The cook who endured chaos. The experimenter who documented failure without flinching. All of it converged. Culinary Collector is my attempt to make culinary creativity accessible and sustainable — to ensure that passion does not burn out, that curiosity has scaffolding, that making excellent food consistently is a pleasure preserved through discipline. It is not about doing things my way. It is about building a way that works.
If I search for the thread that binds it all, it is this: I have always been drawn to transformation. Milk to butter. Lime to cured flesh. Garlic to blackened sweetness. Uncertainty to clarity. There were moments of hesitation. Of questioning. Of imagining the path would be simpler than it was. But I am still here. Still tasting. Still adjusting. Still learning that intensity without structure collapses — and structure without pleasure becomes hollow. The kitchen was never just a room. It was discipline and desire negotiating. It was adversity braided with joy. It was me, learning to stay. And I am still staying.
Renato Osoy