The Fat Kid Inside: An Interview with Erwan Heussaff

Erwan Heussaff has always loved food. But in his younger years, he overindulged. Poor food choices, coupled with a sedentary lifestyle, made him balloon up to 240 pounds. He was prepared to make changes, but knew that the path to better health would be tough. “In truth, there is no easy way to lose weight”, Erwan says. Echoing Team Manila’s philosophy that positive change doesn’t happen overnight, Erwan focused on “pure dedication, tireless hours of hard work and yes, food.” He cooked his way to fitness. In four years, Erwan shed 91 pounds and now tips the scale at a lean 149 pounds.

He also found a new passion in triathlons, and recently had an impressive finish at the Ironman 70.3 in Cebu. “The fat kid still lurks inside of me”, says Erwan of his food blog, where he shared his “passion for food and life.” In his recent photo shoot for our collaboration, “The Fat Kid Inside x Team Manila”, Erwan admitted that he still indulges from time to time. Erwan still eats donuts, but “only on Sundays”, he laughed.

Erwan Heussaff shares more about his passion for food in this interview. Watch this space as we reveal the full collection and release information for The Fat Kid Inside x Team Manila collection. You might get a chance to meet and greet Mr. Heussaff himself, so stay tuned!

When did you start being creative about cooking?

When i was around 8 years old. I realized that everything could be recreated through memory alone and enjoyed the intricacy of it all.

How has being part of a French-Filipino family influenced your cooking?

Being exposed constantly to two cultures, traveling within different countries, have greatly influenced the way i look and interact with food. Food is blurring border lines more and more and i love being able to see people who don’t speak the same language, able to understand each other through different dishes.

How do you describe your cooking style? Is it more of a technical (formal) approach or creative, inspiration based?

Definitely creative and inspiration base. Pick up a couple cooking books, study some basic techniques and recipes from all over the world to have enough knowledge to be able to assemble things without necessarily following strict rules. Knowing that it makes people smile and that there is always room for creativity and improvement.

What dish do you consider to be your best creation yet?

I like messing around and localising classics. Take a Bahn Mi and replace the filling with some crispy pork belly, zucchini pickles, fresh kesong puti, lots of local herbs, lathered in sriracha. I usually do these swap outs at home and they never fail me.

Share something about The Fat Kid Inside.

It’s my passion expressed through a web site. It started as a blog for friends, to show them that cooking was actually really easy and has grown into something else completely nowadays. I love receiving emails from people in Iceland for example who have absolutely no link whatsoever to the Philippines and having them participate in the blog.

With so many food blogs these days, what makes The Fat Kid stand out?

I do video posts, i think in the food blog world, we are very few who actually do video recipes. I will get more experimental with the formats ranging from interviews to just pure food porn videos, to really stretch what we can do. We also focus on not only reviews, recipes, practical how-tos but also really get into food writing, exploring the importance of food through the written word.

How have you grown as a person from when you started out with cooking to the present day?

It has made me more interested in everything. I mean, we put these things in our mouths and our bodies but we have no idea what they are and where they are from. When you start cooking you understand the provenance of the ingredients and it makes you want to know more. You start actually being interested in the little things and trying to learn as much as you can on what particular subject. It’s perfectly maddening.

To know more about Erwan, visit his site: thefatkidinside.com

Categories Lifestyle