Ilan's Quickfire Questions

MANILA, Philippines - What is your go-to ingredient in the kitchen?

Salt. Salt can change so many different food items without even cooking it. You can take an egg and cover it with salt, leave it for a couple of days and you’ve got a salt-cured egg, or put salt on some salmon, put it in the fridge and it’ll be a cured piece of salmon that’s ready to fry and eat. It enhances the natural flavor of ingredients, so it’s the most important ingredient in the kitchen.

What’s your favorite kitchen tool?

I like a really good, hard-scraping spatula, or a just a plain

9 1/2-inch Japanese chef’s knife, which is what I use for everything.

What food could you eat every day and not get sick of?

Probably Japanese food — sushi — just because it’s something not too heavy but still extremely satisfying. As an everyday food, for pure flavor I’d like to eat deep-fried pork belly every single day, but that’s going to make feel not so good and not look so good, so I can’t do it all the time.

Is that also your favorite binge/comfort food?

You know what I like? Traditional Jewish food with bacon or ham all over it, like matzo balls wrapped in bacon and then roasted in the oven. Delicious. I have that on the menu of my restaurant. I did some for an event in South Beach in Miami for 1,000 people a couple of weeks ago, with chicken skin sandwiches, roasted pickles and dill aioli. Can I tell you something gross, though? I made a four-gallon bucket of aioli to go on the sandwiches and we went through four gallons of aioli in an hour and a half.

What is your favorite drink?

I’m having a whiskey right now because it’s the evening. I love whiskey. My father is a big single-malt Scotch whiskey man because he’s Scottish — he actually used to teach courses on it. I love gin also. Right now I’m drinking a beautiful Lagavulin double-matured distiller’s edition. I bought it in London when I was coming back from Scotland. 

What dish would you cook to impress a date?

I can give you successful dishes in the past! (laughs) I think to impress a date it’s more conceptual than anything else. The fact that you’re cooking for a date, that’s the special part, not necessarily what it is. The first dish that I cooked for a woman I got out of a cookbook that I still have, out of a restaurant called Live Bait in London. It was in high school and I was dating this girl, she was really pretty and she was Korean. It was Sea Scallops with Red Wine Pears.

Who do you dream of cooking for?

(Whistles) I’ve cooked for some of the most amazing chefs in the world, and I’ve never been scared to cook for anybody except for my cousin Aaron, who’s a chef. Because he’s the most judgmental person I could cook for, and I feel like I need to prove something to him.

Who are your personal top chefs and top restaurants in the world?

Absolutely Mario Batali — he has an innate sense of what’s wonderful and what people like, which is very, very important. Thomas Keller and French Laundry — he’s a force to be reckoned with. Juan Mari Arzak of Spain — he’s amazing and just continues to make amazing food. Ferran Adria is wonderful. José Andrés, he’s a wonderful chef and also a very fun and warm person. I feel he’s the Spanish Mario Batali. He’s not stuffy with his food and has a really good attitude about the entire food world.

What inspires you most as a chef?

The smell of the ocean.