Chef Jamie Bissonnette unleash unconstrained creativity around the world

Jamie Bissonnette is the James Beard Award—winning chef and partner of Boston favorites Coppa, an Italian enoteca, Toro, the Barcelona-style tapas bar, and Little Donkey, Cambridge's eclectic neighborhood restaurant. In fall 2013, Bissonnette and co-chef and partner Ken Oringer brought Toro to New York City, and received rave reviews from outlets like The New York Times and New York Magazine. The Little Donkey concept was expanded to Bangkok, Thailand during 2019.

What we covered in this episode

Chef Jamie Bissonnette travels around the world and brings back ideas for Toro and Little Donkey, inspired by specific ways of cooking tortilla Espagnola in Madrid or unique honey in Dubai.
“Spain is such an innovative culinary capital of the world, but it also excels at its simplicity”.
Toro is inspired by Spain. Chef Jamie Bissonnette and his partner Ken Oringer took inspirations from different part of Spain when they travel there.
Coppa is an Italian Enoteca. Handmade pasta and handmade charcuterie.
Linked Donkey in Cambridge, MA and Bangkok is small plates from all over the place.
Chef Jamie Bissonnette explains how they expended Toro from Boston to NYC and then to Dubai.
He goes over the reasons why in Bangkok they revamped their concept from Toro to Little Donkey.
Chef Jamie Bissonnette loves Indian food and Middle-Eastern food. He talks about the variety that exist with green cardamom.
“A lot of times young cooks, when they don't understand intrinsically that culture of food, they think that they need to have too many ingredients to make something more interesting”. Spain is such an innovative culinary capital of the world, but it also excels at its simplicity.
“The best creative outlet for me is to just start cooking. Don't overthink it. Sitting in front of a notebook and writing things down is great. But I will have more impact with things if you. just put me in the kitchen, give me a bunch of ingredients, and say start cooking”, says Chef Jamie Bissonnette.
To learn more about Chef Jamie Bissonnette, listen to the full episode!
Link to the podcast episode on Apple Podcast

Submitted questions from podcast listeners

Where does Chef Jamie Bissonnette find inspiration?

You're going to find your inspiration from a lot of different places. It can be from a song. It could be from an article that you're reading, a cookbook that you're looking at, a dinner that you've had and opening up your mind to realize when something strikes you to try to remember it and do something with it is important. But for me, I find that the best creative outlet is to just start cooking. Don't overthink it. Sitting in front of a notebook and writing things down is great, but I will have more impact with things you just put me in the kitchen, give me a bunch of ingredients, and say start cooking! I become way more creative than I would be if I was just looking for recipes and reading books and looking at pictures and my notes from travel.

What is Jamie Bissonnette's Tortilla Española recipe with chips?

I always have eggs in the house that one of my favorite foods. I don't always have potato chips in the house because I eat them too much. But you can get potato chips if you live in the city. You can get potato chips within three blocks, pretty much anywhere in any city you live in. Whether it's a bodega store. Guess what? So my one of my favorite tortillas to make is I make tortillas española. But instead of using potatoes cooked in olive oil and onions, I use some sort of either just regular straight-up salted potato chips, sometimes salt and vinegar, potato chips, barbecue potato chips do not work. Don't try that at home. They taste terrible. And I make a tortilla where I add they add to the eggs some potato chips at the beginning. Before I do my first flip, I add more potato chips so it gets the bottom side on the first flip gets a nice like very, very like golden-brown crust from the chips that you can slide it right if you use an individual pack of potato chips and you only use three or four eggs. You can slide it right back into the potato chip bag and you've got tortilla española on the go.

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When we travel, we leave no stone unturned. We go down every alley, we go into every store, we look at everything, we get inspired by everything that we see.

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Spain is such an innovative culinary capital of the world, but it also excels at its simplicity.

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A lot of times young cooks, when they don't understand intrinsically that culture of food, they think that they need to have too many ingredients to make something more interesting.

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I always say don't cook the recipe like you have to follow it exactly. It's like music. The first time you want to play somebody else's song, you follow the sheet music and then you figure it out.

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The thing that I love about Spanish culture is, because it's so innovative, that you can really mix any kind of flavors together and you can still have that same spirit of delicious, impactful bites like tapas and pinchos.

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Ken and I are like little kids when we start talking about food. So as long as we can get the business stuff out of the way in the morning, by the afternoon, all we wanted to do is taste food, eat food and make people happy.

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We know what and how we do something. But knowing why we do is what makes it authentic.

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You don't have to be traditional and authentic all the time. You can be innovative if you can. Use your own whimsy. But as long as you do it in a way that is educated and that you're not just throwing things together.

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The best creative outlet for me is to just start cooking. Don't overthink it. Just put me in the kitchen, give me a bunch of ingredients, and say start cooking.

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