Michael Gulotta – Asian Inspired Cuisine with Louisiana Pantry

How do you get inspired to cook?

I think there's so many facets. There's so many different ways for a dish to come about. I have never been able to settle on a single way because I try to keep things seasonal. Sometimes it's me sitting down just with whatever. My local farmers will send me their produce lists and I'll try to go through there and figure out what to do. But also sometimes I'll eat something at a friend's restaurant or out, travel and eat something. And I'm like, wow, this inspires me to do my own take on this. Sometimes it is a food memory. Like I'll remember something that I've had and I'm like, man, I really love this dish when I had it. I think we should do a play on that at the restaurant. But also a lot of that is tempered with what customers want. The customer has to crave what you're putting on the plate. The customer has to be excited about it. And so a lot of that comes into play too. Sometimes I based dishes off of what I think the customer wants. And then I add my inspiration to it. There's a whole lot of different ways to attack and they're not always the same. I want my team to have input. So a lot of times I put it up to the team, like, what are y'all interested in right now? What's, what's exciting to you. And then we would all collaborate.