From charring his first grilled cheese in a toaster to learning the finer points of gourmet chewing gum in Australia, chef and kitchen consigliere Alexander Bitterling took a long and winding culinary journey to get to China. All those stops along the way have given him some truly eclectic tastes, which he is currently sharing at Fuxing Bakery. Today, he tells us how hunger and boredom can lead you to a rewarding career.

What got you into food?

I grew up in the countryside in Germany, and my parents were working. So I would come home from school, and I was usually bored and hungry, and, you know, we didn't have Eleme back then. I couldn't tap an order into my mobile phone. So that often meant getting creative in the kitchen. That's how I got interested in cooking.

What did you cook?

Well, one time I thought I could make a grilled cheese sandwich in the toaster. I mean, when you're a kid, that logic makes sense, right? Of course, I just burned a bunch of cheese and messed the toaster up.

So, anyway, when I got older, I went to Frankfurt for culinary school. I basically just went through my three years, and I ended up working in a bistro. I learned a lot there. A lot of the other cooks I worked with had worked in lots of high-end places. It was very eye-opening, just seeing what was out there – different techniques, different ingredients. You know, it's completely the opposite of what you just learned in three years of culinary school. I had to unlearn a lot of what I learned and be open to new approaches. Then I had to go to the military, I had to do military service. So, I worked as a chef for the Navy.

What was it like cooking for the military? Did you have to do push-ups if you put too much salt in the sauce?

Ha! No, not really. It's really structured. Come to think of it, it wasn't that different from working in a well-run civilian kitchen.

What happened after the Navy?

I used my job to travel. I found that agency that was recruiting chefs to work in Australia, and I got placed in Brisbane and I worked in a restaurant on Hayman Island. This was a great opportunity to meet chefs who worked in some incredible restaurants. Mugaritz, The French Laundry, Alinea – places like that. I learned a lot working with these people. I mean, we were making chewing gum from scratch. We could flavor it however we wanted. Pretty cool.

So, at some point, while I was in Australia, I got a call from a friend. He won a restaurant on this TV show. It was in Munich. They paid for two years' worth of rent and gave him some cash. So, I joined him for a while. We were doing sushi. Then I went to Thailand for the holidays. All that sun and warm weather made it hard to go back to Germany. So, I got a job as the sous chef at the Langham Place on Koh Samui. I learned a lot about Thai food there.

Let's talk about your time in Shanghai

I got brought on board at Hunter Gatherer. Remember that place? I ran the kitchen at Octave's Thought for Food for a while. Then around 2018, I worked with Craig Willis, helping to develop menus for places like Something, Baker & Spice, and Funk & Kale. Then, last year I started a consulting company. Consulting is great. You get to solve a lot of different kinds of problems. But I also like having a place I can come back to. Which is why I work with Fuxing Bakery.

Tell us about Fuxing Bakery.

We wanted to do something with a bistro feel. But we didn't want to limit ourselves in terms of the cuisine. We wanted to leave it a bit open for interpretation. "Fuxing" means "renaissance" in Chinese, so we wanted to incorporate this idea of renewal. So, think: classics with a twist. I'm German, of course, so you'll see lots of German flavors as well. I love seafood, for instance. And you'll see that in dishes like our pickled mackerel. But we're also combining Japanese and Italian elements, like rigatoni with some bonito flakes, kombu, mentaiko cream, and a bit of salmon roe for texture. Or there's our duck teriyaki. We did that with hot pot spices and dried figs. I'm also having fun with ingredients like black garlic. I love that stuff. We put it in our tartare, and it adds this distinctive sweetness.

What kind of food trends do you see that are you excited about?

I just want to see more local chefs for example being a little more creative with their own cuisine and cooking. It doesn't even have to be high-end. Something cool and affordable is great. There is so much interesting stuff you can do. I recently made Maotai and orange gelee the other day, for example. It was a nice combination.

What kinds of Chinese cooking techniques are interesting to you?

The fermentation processes we already use seem similar in some ways to the local food traditions in places like Yunnan. For example, the way they prepare ham or fermented bean cakes and use them to add flavor, like in a chili stir fry, is really interesting. The salty, fermented flavors are quite intriguing.

So what's next for you?

For now, it's really just the consulting here. Getting this place more known right to people. Sharing it with more people. The location is really cool. The park has so much history. I have some other projects that I'm trying to work on at home too. I'm trying to build a productivity tool for chefs. It's one of those things that chefs will say, "Where has this been all my life?"

If you go...

109 Yandang Rd (Inside FuXing Park) 雁荡路109号,复兴公园内

You'll need to go INSIDE Fuxing Park. It is in the same building streetside that houses the massive nightlife complex INS.