Mar 27, 2020
Hello dear listeners!
Today’s guest is a chef on her own terms. Anais van Manen is making her mark on the London food scene and redefining what a career as a chef can look like, without even having her own restaurant.
Anais is head of R&D for much loved Taiwanese institutions Bao and Xu and has a whole host of other projects she’s been involved in - helping her friend Freddie Janssen open Snackbar, cooking her style of Vietnamese food at supper clubs, helping social enterprise Kitchenette Karts set up their Vietnamese food truck and the list goes on.
Anais was born in Paris, grew up in Vietnam and has worked and lived and cooked all over the world. London is home for now, and she happens to live two doors down from me so I headed over for coffee on her couch with her cat Audrey, and chatted about her background and career so far, her top tips for a secret country getaway in France (something to look forward to for when we can travel again), and what she loves about her colourful career in food.
*We recorded this episode two weeks ago, on the 14th March*