The Future Is How We Eat | Dalad Kambhu on Food, Creativity & Connection

The future is how. Have you asked yourself today, what's next for me? You're not alone. We've all felt that way at some point. My name is Frederik Pferdt, and for years I've helped the brightest minds at Google and Stanford and people around the world shape their futures. Now I want to help you to do the same. Because the future isn't just something that happens. It's something you can create. Starting right now. From within. Instead of waiting to see what happens next, let's explore how you can make it happen. Each episode dives into one key area like sleep, nutrition, relationships, creativity, storytelling, mindfulness, beauty, movement, or purpose, and brings you real stories and practical tools you can use to shape a better future for yourself. So what's one step you can take today to create what's next? Let's dive in and explore how to build a better tomorrow, starting right now. All right, welcome back to The Future Is How. This is the show where we don't predict what's next, we practice how to create it. And today I truly couldn't be more excited. We are joined by Dalat Kambu, Michelin-starred chef, a creative force, and someone who has really reimagined what food and especially Thai cuisine means in Berlin and beyond. And here's what I want to explore with Dalat today and what you'll take away from this conversation as well: how food is not only nourishment but also imagination. How cooking can be a classroom for creativity and empathy, and how every meal can become a ritual of gratitude, and how the way we eat today can shape the future we live tomorrow. So whether you're a passionate cook, a curious eater, or simply someone wondering how to bring more connection into everyday life, this episode will give you practices and perspectives to taste the the future before it even arrives. And this is also a special episode for me. It's my birthday week, and I remembered a lot celebrating one of my birthdays. It was actually my 40th birthday at your famous restaurant in Berlin. That evening was truly magical, and even years later, friends still tell me how special it felt. So I have to ask right away, what did you do to create that kind of experience? Back in the days, and what are you doing today to create experiences around food that really are truly delightful?

So it was a really long journey. It started out when I was 20 years old and I got to New York. I came from Thailand. I grew up in a foodie family. Every meal is a celebration of flavors, of, you know, love for food. So it doesn't matter if it's hole in the wall or if it's like a nicer restaurant, it's a home cook. My parents, my mother particularly, loves to eat and share that love with me. So I didn't realize how much of a foodie I am or I was until I left and moved to New York. When I got to New York, you know, I no longer have my family cook for me. I was in a new city and now that I look back, you know, I was just eating. Like I pretty much eat through the whole city and knew all the hot spot and not so hot, the hidden spot. I knew every all sort of places, you know, some places that I went And some chef would be like, how do you know that place? And I started to dream then, how would it be if you have Thai food, but in the way of the restaurants that I found in New York at that time. It was about 2006 when I moved to New York and New York was very exciting. You know, David Chang just opened Momofuku. There was Dirt Candy, which is like a vegan restaurant, but so delicious, a little bit on the basement with a little neon sign, you know, a little sexy and fun. Will Goldfrapp had his dessert bar where you walk in and you only have dessert from 1 to 10, and people just queue up from 6 o'clock to midnight just to eat desserts for your meal. And it was incredibly— New York was incredibly exciting. It was vibrant and diverse, but I did not find any one Thai food that was represented in that way. I didn't find like, you know, Cambodian, Vietnamese, I didn't find, you know, even Chinese food at that time. There were all sort of, you know, Asian food in general except of Japanese food. And, you know, maybe a bit of Korean that David Chang had like an inspiration from, but still it's not like, you know, Korean food that I know. They were not represented in the modern way. They were all quite— it's still— they were still quite served in a very outdated way, cheap and fast and you know, just almost like it felt like there was another category and there were classes divided between the cuisines, and Thai food was just in another class. And being a Thai person, knowing how rich our culture is, knowing the complexity in our cuisine and how difficult it is to actually make proper Thai food, I just started to dream that what if I could serve Thai food that I knew growing up in a more modern way, you know, I would do Thai flavors, but why don't I use local produce? Why don't— instead of, you know, use papaya that flew in from Thailand, why don't I just use whatever I found locally? You know, because Thai food in general, the cuisine is based on local produce. We eat seasonally because we're so blessed with abundant variety of fruits and vegetables. Each season we have like 10, 20, 30, if not hundreds of produce available, and they're all delicious and fresh. So we eat seasonal, we eat what nature gives us. So if I were to cook Thai food outside of Thailand, I would look for what is available then, because freshness or the quality of the produce that is in season is incomparable. You know, it's just a Thai way of being sustainable without calling it sustainable. You know, Thai people, we grow up with nature. We're growing up with a philosophy to be respectful to nature, to listen to nature, to be respectful of nature, and to live with nature. So same goes with our eating. Anyway, so I started to dream then, and it took me about 10 years to realize it. In 2017, I moved to Berlin and opened that restaurant. And what I realized is that back then, Berlin had a movement of expats coming in, young people, older people, but it was started to become more international. But when it comes to eating, it was still not exactly there. And, you know, and when, you know, you're German, so you know that like German food cultures, apparently I was told that after World War II, you lost a lot of things. And one of them is eating because after the war, people didn't have much varieties of products and you just eat to survive first. And there's a small percentage of people who, you know, eat to enjoy, you know, it's not become the priority anymore. So therefore the food culture is quite behind. But still, even, you know, when I opened Kindi, I went to France. Italy, you know, which is very lush with the food culture, is very lush and advanced, or even Spain's, or, you know, anywhere else, Thai food or Asian food in general are still, with exception of Japanese food, are still being categorized at the lower class. So I wanted to change it, and everyone was against me, you know, everyone was against me.

How did that show up? Kind of like, what do you mean, like, against you? Like, were they competing, like, in terms of, like, we want to cook differently, or?

No, it's just everyone was like, Thai food, it cannot be a star food, you know. And this is— this particular sentence came from someone who quite sophisticated, you know, and travel around the world. And people say like, yeah, but Thai food— and then so many customers came in like, Thai food should be cheap. You know, I would ask the question, why? And they couldn't tell me, it has to be sheep. You know, I'm like, yeah, but why? And it was really, I was walking through a storm that wanted to blow me south and I just keep going north. It felt like that for a really long time, but because I had like so much belief in my culture and in Thai food and Thai women particularly. And I think that sort of kept me going for a really long time and It wasn't easy, you know, because there were times where like we don't have enough money coming in, in the restaurant and we are running tight. And, you know, the restaurant we took is a little bit off location. It was an institutional type place. So we took it over, but you know, it wasn't, it wasn't an easy path at all. It was really, really difficult. And I just fought and fought and fought and kept going.

Thanks for sharing your journey, Dalat. It's really, really inspiring. And you mentioned the word dreaming a couple of times that, you know, 10 years back you dreamt about taking a modern approach to the Thai cuisine, but also practice sustainability, right, in a very natural way, in a way that it's not, you know, you put a label on things, but you just practice to work with nature, be inspired by nature and so forth. So before we continue, I usually like to ask my guests to imagine the future, right? And especially their own future. So let's imagine it's the year 2035. So it's 10 years from today and you're being introduced on stage to a group of young chefs and leaders. What would you want them to say about you and the future you helped create?

There have been some women saying something really nice to me already, and I would hope that there's something that people would say to me, which is that I help pave the way and make rooms for so many more young chefs to do what they want to do, especially Asian chefs, especially like, you know, women chefs. People of color chefs, you know, I think for me that's always been incredibly important because I experienced firsthand that the world is not fair. And we all grew up in the world, even including myself, to look up, you know, that certain races more superior and certain cultures better than what I have and, you know, and so on. So I would hope that by then it's gone. And that people, everyone can do what they wish to do and have it easier following their dreams.

Thanks for sharing that, which is truly inspiring, right? To create a world that is more fair, right? More inclusive, more equitable. What would you give to the young chefs as advice, or kind of like, um, things they should look out for, right? As you shared in your journey, you had a lot of pushback. People didn't believe in you and your abilities and in Thai food or other Asian foods. So what would you give young leaders as advice?

Hmm, I would say that the world is not a fair place and we cannot change the world, but we can start the change. And if somebody started it before us, which I believe someone else started before me, and I hope so, we can only continue to do the change. You know, and it's a collective effort. I wish I am a superhero, and you know, I love Marvel's movie. I hope I'm like Captain Marvel or the Scarlet Witch and have all this superpower that I can just drop in one place and make a big bang show and, and change the world. But unfortunately, we're not. But that's the beauty of human, that collectively we can do so much more. And anything is possible, but we just have to come together and also have to believe that it is possible. Because if you don't believe that it is possible, it will never happen.

Absolutely. Yes. That optimism, right? That belief that things are possible. And you remind me of that beautiful quote, be the change you want to see in the world. So you're absolutely right. We can change the world, but we can be that change. That initiates things that we wanna do differently, that we wanna see or experience differently in the world as well. So thanks for sharing that. So when I cook with my children, which I do every evening, sometimes they like it, sometimes they not so into it. Sometimes they actually do the cooking by themselves, which makes me very happy. I'm reminded that the kitchen can be really your first classroom. It's not just about preparing meals, right? It's about learning to be patient. It's learning to use your creativity and also the joy of sharing. So, Dalat, how do you see food as something that teaches us about each other, about culture, and even about the futures we want to live in?

There's so many So many thoughts come up from this question. So many ideas and notes I can say. Well, first thing first, like, you know, like Thai cuisine is all about sharing. You put food in the middle and you have your own plates and you have rice and each food in the middle was usually like 5 dishes, the minimum. And you have spoons in them and you take the spoon to scoop the food and you put it in your plate and you just eat and you, you know, and then, and you also mix all the food together sometimes and you sometimes you don't and you know, It's so amazing because this big volume of Thai people. If you go to Thailand and you ask anyone on the street for help, they help you. And if you go to a stranger's house, you're walking, you get lost somewhere in a village or somewhere outside of the city, and you just knock on someone's doors and ask, most likely they invite you in to sleep. Find you a place to sleep and make you food. You know, it's a culture that's incredibly open and warm and loving and trusting, you know. And this is something I've learned when I came to, when I went to New York and when I lived in Germany, that people often like questioning why is she so nice or so open and, you know, because it's something different. And Another thing that's really important is that, you know, there's a lot of discussion about human neutron and energy and, you know, the how the neutron react to each other and the human energy, blah blah. Why I don't have conclusive evidence, I can say that when you don't love to cook the food and you going in there and you hate cooking, you hate what you're doing, you don't enjoy it and you don't like what you're making. The food usually tastes shit. But when you want to cook it and, you know, same, it can be same recipe, but you want this dish to be good and you put the love into it. It's so incredible, you know, and I think food is a medium for that too. And, you know, eating different culture, different kind of food is not only healthy for your body because introduce you to different kind of biome, an organism or the bacteria and stuff like that and diversity. It's also show you that there are more than just the world that you around you. There are more to it. And if we, and then somehow, you know, it can make us perhaps think more that we are not alone, you know, just because we're different doesn't mean that we are really different. Yeah.

You mentioned on your journey that, you know, you blended really Thai tradition with, I think, what we could consider Berlin innovation while always focusing on sustainability, sourcing locally. What's one practice from your kitchen that maybe our listeners could try at home? Something small, what makes them go either like in a direction of zero waste cooking or sourcing more local or even slowing down to taste, right? Or the sharing practice that you just mentioned. What's one small thing that people could try maybe tonight when they're preparing a meal?

I think a few things you can do. One, you know, when you cook food, instead of plating, on your own plate and give it, you know, on a plate and give it to everyone on the table. Put the food in the middle and have everyone take the food from the middle. Secondly, you know, don't be afraid to try different recipe, like different culture, and try to make food and, you know, try that. And if you want to cook Thai food, I would recommend adding a little bit of garlic, smashing fresh garlic and chili into your whatever salad you're making next, you know, with meat or with vegetable, whatever. Or you can try to use fish sauce instead of salt. And go buy local produce, go buy local, you know, go to your local farmers market, wherever that is, where you can buy the stuff from the farmers directly, or from a shop that take it from the farmers. But you know, going to farmer market is one of the most wonderful things that you can do because you get to meet the people who is you know, the true hero of the world. Without these small farmers, you know, we don't have good food to eat. We only left with industrialized products which have less nutrition, less flavor. It might look more beautiful, but it's just really not great, you know. And I know this podcast is not about that, but I have to mention that, that, you know, there's so many studies shows already that when you go to an area where like a lot of small farmers who know and care for how to take care of the lands and really have, you know, take care of the land they love. When you go in there, it's just more cooling in the summer. And, you know, it just— the soil have more nutrition and less drought. And, you know, they are real protector of the world. Like, they are the people who keep our land livable. If you don't respect them and keep them going, we will be left with nothing, you know. And the industrialized products Unfortunately, it's just like, you know, every time you're sick and you take an antibiotic and that's not the way to do it. Instead of, hey, you're not that sick, how about you have ginger tea, take some vitamin C, have a rest, you know, or I think your body actually deficient in this. So why don't you supplement with this? You know, it just, you know, we don't have enough time to go into details and stuff like that. I would can only recommend a book called The Third Plate for everyone to read. But, you know, those are the true hero. And if you can, if you really want to make a difference, go buy small farmers. And it's not even about organic. It's about if they care for the produce and they do not put any nasty spray on it. And if they don't have organic certificate, um, certified, that's totally fine for me.

Do you have some like morning practices that you want to share? You just mentioned ginger tea. You know, you mentioned adding garlic and chilies as well in your salad dressing. Are there any other things that you'd like to do to wake up in the morning to make your body wake up to get energy, but also to have your body and your mind calm down in the evening? What are some of the Dalat rituals that you can share?

So I had a really bad habit when I was a chef. I just wake up, have coffee, go to work, come back home, and sleep really late. And I've learned to change that because I got really sick. I had like really bad health problem for a really long time. And now it's like, I don't have my phone in my bedroom. Sometimes I still forget and have it in as a habit, but it became like 10% that I have a phone in the bed. I take ashwagandha before I go to sleep. If I can, I always do like a warm mint tea, like a warm tea that, chamomile or lavender tea, you know, I spent quite some time in Mallorca, so we got blessed with like this wild mint and, you know, and rosemary and thyme. So we just mix it and that's like a tea we have before we go to bed. But the most important thing is that the gratitude. Before I go to bed, I don't make a prayer and thank God for what I have, but I try to think about what happened in the day or in the weeks if I haven't done it for a while. And sometimes I even, even though I do it every day, I think about what I've done in the years. And I thought about things that happened that I didn't like, and I'm still trying to be grateful for that experience and ask myself what I learned from it and be grateful for what I have. You know, I have been receiving a lot of this year, like a lot of unfortunate events. I lost my grandfather. I received like racial discrimination from some Germans in certain topic. I'm not going to get into it. And it made me really, really stressed out for a period of time with all these things that happened to me, you know. But every moment I try to be grateful as much as I can for what I have, even though some situations that happened to me, I can't change it. And it's really unfortunate that it happened. I still choose to be grateful for other things that I have. And also grateful for the mistakes I've made and not seeing it as like something bad in your life, you know, and try to see it as an opportunity to learn. And it's okay to make mistake and it's not something to be ashamed of. What can I do differently? And then focus on the good things. Yeah.

Wow. Very powerful. Thanks for sharing that, Dalat. For me, you know, those gratitude practices really can be connected with food as well, right? Being grateful for the farmers who grew the food, being grateful for the people that you can share the food with, and being grateful that you actually can enjoy a meal.

Yeah. That we have access to food, you know, which is in the current moment, we know so many people in the world do not have access to food, and we have access to food, and I'm so incredibly grateful for that.

So I think that's a, a great thing that goes beyond kind of like food as something that just nourishes our body, right? Food can be something that also nourishes our soul with those practices that we do when we sit together, when we cook together, when we enjoy a meal together, right? I think it goes way beyond just the nourishment for our body. It nourishes our spirit and our mind as well.

Especially a good home-cooked meal is just something that makes you so happy. It's so nourishing and it brings people together and you share the love and so on.

Absolutely. I want to do a Mindstate Moment. Next, let's take a moment to pause and reconnect. This is your Mindstate Moment, a chance to reset and come back to yourself wherever you are right now. These moments of presence are powerful. They remind us that the future starts from within by shifting how we show up in this very moment. So these are moments that I want to introduce as ways for our listeners to pause for a moment to, when they can, close their eyes and just imagine, imagine a different future for themselves. So I think sometimes we underestimate the power of imagination. Have you ever felt probably that your mouth watered just by reading a menu in a restaurant, right? By just reading it, your mouth waters and you're like, you really want to have that dish. Or thinking about your favorite dish just triggers that body response in your mouth. That's not just the memory, that's imagination at work. And it shows how powerful our minds are in shaping not only how we experience food, but also how we imagine and create futures. If we can taste the future before it arrives, maybe we can also learn to cook it into being. So let's try the power of imagination now. So let's do our mindstate moment together. I invite you to just close your eyes for a moment if you can. If you're driving a car, obviously don't close your eyes, but if you, you know, walk somewhere, Just pause for a moment and stand still and close your eyes. Imagine a future dinner at your table. And just imagine who is sitting there with you. The people at this table. What is being served? As Talat mentioned, what is in the middle of the table? Ask yourself who helped prepare the food. And think about all the others who contributed to this moment. The farmers, the cooks, the people who carried these ingredients to you. And now, with your eyes still closed, just breathe in a deep breath through your nose. How does it smell? What flavors are waiting on your tongue? And can you see different colors of the meal even with your eyes closed? So picture yourself passing a dish across the table. Feel the weight of it. Notice the hands receiving it. See the empty chair at the table? Who might arrive in the future to join? And before you open your eyes, let's practice that gratitude that we just talked about and just say a silent Thank you to everyone who made this dinner possible. So you can open your eyes again. And since we are close to Thanksgiving, right, that very prominent holiday in the US. Maybe you can take this practice into your own celebration. Before the meal, invite everyone to share not just what they're grateful for, but also what kind of future they hope to nourish. I think that might be a great Thanksgiving conversation to have around what future do we actually imagine and how can we nourish that future. So Dalat, if I may ask you maybe a fun thing to do, which is if you had to design a future recipe, a dish that really represents the kind of future you'd love to create, and you talked about inclusion, you talked about being or living in a future that's more fair, what would that dish be and what ingredients, preparation, and meaning would go into it?

I think in the future that we will all, whatever that dish would be, I can't say exactly one dish, but whatever that dish will be, it will be plentiful of fresh local ingredients that is so diverse and available everywhere, and that is full of nutrition when you eat them. And I think that's something that I wish for the world because, you know, nowadays, if especially in the US, there's a study show that the same vegetable that you grow 5 years or 10 years ago and not growing now, they have less nutrition. And I can only hope that the food in the future will reverse that. And everything that we eat is full of nutrition and good for our mind and good for our body. It's good for our soul.

Thank you. So let's do some rapid reflections. So I'm gonna give you a couple of questions and I'd like to invite you to just answer very briefly whatever first comes to mind. So let's be short and spontaneous. What's one thing you learned from your parents about food?

That the flavors are not just salty, sweet, bitter, sour, but also the freshness. If the vegetable is being picked a day before, tastes really different than a week before.

Perfect. Thanks for sharing. What's one thing everyone should try differently from today when thinking about food?

Learn to share.

To share. Yes, yes. What do we all get wrong about food?

That there is not enough food in the world to share with everyone, or that food is not a part of the culture and it can't be evil. Food is a part of culture so that it can be evil, but people often think it can't.

Have you ever cooked a meal that completely failed, and what did you learn from it?

Absolutely. And even though I didn't learn it right then, now I've learned that preparing is the most important thing ahead of time.

What's one ingredient you secretly dislike?

Lentils.

Lentils, okay. If you could invite any historical figure to dinner, who would it be and why?

Maybe Einstein.

Why him?

I would love to talk to him and explore and feel his brain.

What's one dish you have not cooked yet but would like to cook in the future?

Oh, bake. I'm not a good baker. I would love to bake.

So, Dala, thank you so much for this conversation. You've shown us that food isn't just about what's on the plate. It's about how we live, how we connect, how we share, and how we imagine our futures as well. And for our listeners, maybe this week cook one meal as if you were designing the future, right? Invite others in, slow down, maybe say thank you, show gratitude, maybe put the dish into the middle, right? And let everybody share and see what shifts in how you perceive food as well. So let's close with a small gesture. Maybe raise your invisible spoon with me to the future dinners we'll create and the futures we'll share. Until next time, remember, the future isn't what happens to us. The future is how we create it. So thank you so much, Dalat, for joining today. And I hope that one of my next birthdays I can enjoy a meal with you anywhere on this planet. I truly remember 8 years ago that this was a very, very special evening. So thank you what you're doing and thanks for being the person you are.

Oh, thank you for having me.

Thank you, Dalat. See you in the future. That's a wrap for today's episode of The future is how. Remember, the future isn't something we wait for. It's something we create with every choice, every breath, and every step we take. If this episode sparked something in you, share it with someone who's ready to shape what's next. And don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. Your next chapter begins now. So what will you create today? I'll see you in your future.