Emmanuel Stroobant was running Saint Pierre and Shoukouwa in Singapore when we spoke for The Luxury of Attention. He appears in three chapters, and in each he says something plainly that the surrounding argument has been working toward.
The first is about hiring and the trust that follows it. Chapter 5 is about giving a team real authority, and underneath every method for doing that sits a prior question: who was hired in the first place. Stroobant answers it in one line. For him, he told me, the right attitude will always trump skill, because skills can be taught. A leader who has hired for character has earned the right to empower the team broadly. A leader who hired for credentials and now hesitates to hand over authority is facing a hiring problem, and empowerment will only reveal it faster.
The second is about perfection. Chef after chef told me the same thing in different words, and Stroobant’s version is the one I kept returning to. There can never be a perfect dish, he told me, but there can be perfect moments. He described the craft as a process of continuous evolution, in how a dish develops, in a person’s life, and in the direction of the company. The chapter sets his line next to Joan Roca’s, and together they give the working definition the book settles on: the moment of care between the maker and the eater, delivered often enough that the diner does not notice the distance from the abstract ideal.
The third is about where the field is going. In Chapter 14 he describes what he was already seeing from his own dining rooms in Singapore: guests trending toward the vegetarian selections, and a coming generation of Michelin-starred vegetarian restaurants as more people embrace vegetables as the center of a meal. He expects the next generation to arrive at the table with different habits already formed.
“In fact, with school curriculum now covering sustainability and environmental protection, the future generation will perhaps readily welcome a more wholesome lifestyle and we in the culinary world will just have to follow suit.” Emmanuel Stroobant, chef, Saint Pierre and Shoukouwa, Singapore
The chapter takes his forecast seriously and argues that a chef preparing to lead now should be able to cook a serious vegetable menu with the same sophistication as the primary cuisine, even if that cuisine remains built on protein.
In the book, Emmanuel Stroobant appears in Chapter 5, Giving the Keys, on attitude over skill; in Chapter 7, In Pursuit of Perfection, on perfect moments in place of perfect dishes; and in Chapter 14, The Future of Luxury and Craft, on the shift toward vegetable cooking in serious kitchens.