I stepped onto the culinary arena as a ramen pioneer in Vienna, Austria back in 2015. After three years, i quit the noodle business to focus on deeper learning and creating singular culinary experiences to later on open another kind of restaurant. Although noodles extend and entangle trough my whole life.

 

During early years I got inspiration from masters like Anthony Bourdain for his passion for travelling and Heston Blumenthal for curiosity, then later Christian Puglisi for holistic business approach and Francis Mallmann for fire cooking and love for life. 

 

Big deal of my skills i gained at the Basque Culinary Center in San Sebastián. By now indispensable, basics of traditional Japanese course i learned from Ōsaka san in a small middle class after work restaurant in Ningyocho. Even though for a short time, looking Thomas Frebel over the shoulder at INUA too left its traces to my style. And of course, philosophical romanticism and poetic finesse of Shinobu Namae san touched me deeply during my internship at his l´effervescence - one of Tokyos best contemporary restaurants.

 

In December 2019 I opened Noble Savage - a small eclectic restaurant in the centre of Vienna. Although those were very happy times, by the beginning of 2022 Noble Savage closed its doors for the sake of the quest for a new space. More Noble, more Savage. Since then however, I’m still on the road, learning less from restaurants, and more from monks in monasteries, shamans and farmers in the villages, customers and vendors on street markets, all kinds of people…

 

Since 2022 travelling the world learning and offering what I learned 

2019-2022 Head chef / founder at the restaurant Noble Savage

2015-2018 Head chef / founder at karma ramen, Vienna

2019 Training at INUA, Tokyo

2018 Perfecting culinary technique course at Basque Culinary Center, San Sebastian

2018 Training at l´effervescence, Tokyo

2016 Training at Nihonbashi ôsaka Washoku, Tokyo

2015 Training at Yamato Ramen School, Kagawa

 

I wasn’t raised as a chef. I didn't happen to be born into a farmers or chefs family somewhere in Southern France. I grew up in the suburbs of Moscow in the 90s. Just after Soviet Unions melt down, we had no good ingredients available at grocery stores, practically barely anything available. However, we had homegrown tomatoes, eggplants, potatoes, herbs and berries and those were fantastic. My parents also kept chickens. On my rooms balcony. On the 5th floor. 

 

My mom’s cooking is very simple and very delicious, just the best. However, my curiosity led me to wonder whether there was anything else, something surprising, beyond mother’s food. I was one of the rare kids who like boiled chickens skin and I ate dipping it into sugar. My first attempt to put a pan on the stove happened when I was 4 years old: I cooked play dough, I stirred it until it burned and ruined my mother’s pan. When I was 5, I liked making oatmeal cookies, when Mom baked bread or savoury pies. After years of eating and cooking all possible things, I’m sure that for me nothing can top her cabbage pie.

 

At the age of 18 I moved from Moscow to Vienna and have lived there for another 18 years. Then I’ve started next period of my life - travelling the world. Being a hopeless enthusiast of ramen, rice dishes like paella and Uzbek plov, freshly baked bread and sharing a large warming homemade one pot dish, it just doesn’t work for me to stick with one particular country's cuisine. Same as I don’t identify with one nationality, food must be independent from stereotypes. Additionally to its nutritional properties, it rather is defined by three things: first, honest ingredients produced with love for Earth and the community; second, inspirations from different cultures, which bring in new fascinating flavours and textures; third, cooks hands. In other words, food is an interplay between locality, authenticity and individuality. To find a healthy balance between those, instead of using recipes, I prefer to submit to my senses and intuition. While still being savages, we are learning to contemplate the impermanence and enjoy a moment in life.

 

Full of love and gratitude to you,

Igor *Iggy* Kuznetsov