San Diego, CA, USA
Name: Andrew Ryland Spurgin
Age: 53
Nationality: English
Country of Residence: USA
1. Your Restaurant/Business: Campine Catering
2. About Your Kitchen: We have one main kitchen, it services all the catering needs and does prep for our cuisine to go shops (both of them do finish work on site). Our bistro has a state of the art kitchen and is blessed with an 3/4 acre organic garden, the produce from the garden is served at that venue
3. Your Favorite Chef Works Item: Dishwasher shirts and anything Egyptian Cotton
4. First Job: Working as a slave in my aunt’s kitchen and uncle’s butcher shop in London
5. Your Cookbook: It’s in my head, now I just have to put pen to paper
6. Your Awards:
2011 Chefs Hall of Fame – San Diego Home & Gardens Magazine
2011 50 People to Watch – San Diego Magazine
2011 Star Award Catersource
2009 Ace Award
2004 Spotlight Award Event Solutions Magazine
7. Your Cooking Inspiration: Passion, Season, Aunts, Grandma, and Uncles who were chefs, restaurateurs and butchers
8. Your Speciality Dish: The one I haven’t thought of yet, stupid answer; but true
9. Favorite Dish To Eat: Oysters and Sancerre or Sardines on Toast
10. Weirdest Thing You Ever Ate: Cactus Grubs, Brazilian Leaf Cutter Ants, Horse Udon, Scorpion, Fermented Fish Bladders, Mosquito Eggs
11. Favorite Ice Cream Flavor: Single Malt
12. Favorite Drink: Water
13. Favorite Wine: Bandol Rosé
14. Who Would You Most Like To Cook For: My Aunts, Grandma and Uncles, they have passed
15. Who Would You Least Like To Cook For: Condescending, self-Important, culinary twits
16. Favorite Things To Do When Not Cooking: Have someone else feed me
17. Your Latest Project: Sustainable Seafood Lectures and The Blue Ocean Institute’s Green Chef Blue Ocean Project (OceanFriendlyChefs.org); School Lunch! Project (cooksconfab.com)
18. Favorite City and Why: Tokyo, Japan – amazing people, epic cuisine
19. Your Greatest Indulgence: L’Ambroisie in Paris 1999, eating Bernard Pacaud’s Feuilleté de Truffle Fraîche “Bel Humeur” – Whole Truffle layered with Foie Gras and ensconced in Puff Pastry with Truffle Bordelaise – insane!
20. Your All Time Best Culinary Tip: Travel, go to markets, get in as many great kitchens as you can. When you’re young, eat everything.