Pedro Fernández: "Cooking is an act of love"

Pedro Fernández, "The Chef is Back" is a Colombian chef with more than 20 years of experience who understands cooking as an act of love. He has a cooking workshop at his home in Medellin where he organizes exclusive and personalized gastronomic experiences.

A graduate of Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, Pedro Fernandez has worked in companies such as Ritz Carlton, Compass Group, Team Alinghi, and the Holiday Inn chain. He has presented the cooking show "Código Latino" on the Gourmet channel in his country. His specialty is recipes where the fusion of Asian and Caribbean ingredients, flavors, and textures predominate.

Who is Pedro Fernández? 
I consider myself a person who is looking for his inner peace. From everything I have had to live, I have been building it in some way but I have also realized that it is a daily job.

I believe that your mother plays an essential role in awakening your passion for cooking. For my mother, cooking was an act of love towards us, and towards her family, which is what it means to me as well. She, who was Spanish, for example, on a Saturday she could make arroz a banda, callos a la madrileña, and paella at the same time. A dish for each of us. I grew up with that at home and I always wanted to be a cook.

When did you decide to take the step to become a cook?
When I was studying, my father, who was a very important architect in Bogota, asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I told him I was going to be a cook and he told me that it was for sissies and that I had to dedicate myself to the business world. The following year, in sixth grade, my mother died. That was a hard blow for me and he asked me the same question again and I told him again that I wanted to be a cook. He discarded that option again and I put my dream aside and began to study business administration.

When was the first time you hit rock bottom?
I decided to go to Boston to escape from my father, I tried to study in different universities without success and I felt so, so frustrated that I tried to commit suicide by cutting my wrists at the age of 22. I returned to Colombia and went to work with my father for a year in his construction company but I argued with him a lot. So one day I told him that I was not happy, that I did not feel fulfilled, and that I was going to study cooking with the inheritance I had from my mother.

And it is at that moment that your career as a chef began...
Yes, I went to Paris to study and graduated as one of the best chefs in the school. There, cooking and learning, I felt for the first time connected with my essence. I met the mother of my children, we got married in Argentina and I went to London for a few months to learn fusion cooking techniques. I returned to Argentina where I opened my first Asian-Caribbean fusion cuisine restaurant called Kalú, which is the name of a Buddhist monastery whose monks were recognized for their magical powers. 

How would you define that stage of your life? 
The restaurant soon became very successful and I began to grow professionally on the one hand, but also to have problems with my wife. I started to withdraw into my world and to consume alcohol. It was like a social alcoholism in the first stage and I did not see or accept that I had a problem.

I decided to open a branch of the restaurant in Punta del Este in an 18th-century house and turned it into a boutique hotel with a restaurant with an open-fire kitchen concept. All very rustic, wood-fired ovens and grills. If it rained we could not cook. The first season worked very well but the corralito came in 2000 and the business went bankrupt.

How did that economic crisis affect you?
We decided to go to Miami where I was hired in the banquet section of the Ritz-Carlton. I already had two daughters but my relationship with my ex-wife was not improving and I was still drinking alcohol. I didn't like Miami as a place to live and looking for that connection with my mother and my Spanish roots, I decided to go to Valencia. There I opened the Navoa restaurant which, again, was an incredible success. Again, the business was doing very well but I was still very bad on a personal level. I spent three years in Valencia. I also started using cocaine and ended up getting divorced. I was alone and in a kind of limbo of personal self-destruction.

I went back to Colombia and spent a few months in a rehabilitation program but went back to work in Valencia. One day, I decided to have a glass of wine at an event and the fall started again which was a very painful situation. Back in Colombia, I decided to stop and start a new rebirth in my life. That was 11 years ago. I mended the relationship with my father, who died after three years and, from that moment on, I started to rebuild little by little the Pedro Fernandez I am today.

And that's when "The Chef is back" was born?
Yes. One day, a friend came to me and asked me to organize his 40th birthday party and cook for him. The event became a success and people started asking me what the name of my company was and I didn't have a company or a name or anything. And then I told them my name was "The chef is back". At that time I was building a house in Medellín and, as a result of all this, I decided to include my workshop and dedicate myself to cooking from the heart for groups in my house. That was four years ago and everything flows now. I work in what I am passionate about, cooking and advising restaurants and organizing very important events. I don't drink anymore and I am happy and in love with my wife Marcela.