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My Past, Present, and Future
A letter from Chef James Noble
What a joy to see so many people subscribing to my humble newsletter. It’s an honour to share my thoughts on food and all things related with you.
To those who know me personally, I thank you for your support now, then and forever. For those who don’t know me, I welcome you into my wibbly-wobbly world here in the kingdom of Thailand.
For those who are wondering?
Ikigai = Life Worth
It’s the way I have been living my life for many years now. Indeed the four circles have become my life tattoo.
When we collectively wake each day, we all seem to be reaching, pushing, and running headfirst to the future, we have been programmed to overachieve and to get ahead by any means, to climb to the top only to see another mountain bigger than the one we are standing on and the circular life begins.
In my house it’s the opposite, we try to stand still, not to go back but not necessarily to go forward, not to overreach, commit or over-promise.
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My journey before I found my ikigai was to do all the above, causing a lack of sleep due to worry, stemming from huge anxiety and snowballing into stress and anger.
Now add that into a commercial kitchen environment with all its petrol to throw on to my fire and you have a James Noble of old and that made me look for my own personal balance.
Remember this. Sleep is the key. The key to sleep is ikigai, life worth, and life balance. You can’t sleep well if your mind is preoccupied.
Once I had found my inner ikigai and changed the way I thought I then started to add this precept into our menus, work environment, and my team’s personal wellbeing as well as mine and my families.
There’s a huge amount of greenwashing out there, companies spurting all that they do, all that they stand to get you into their hotels or indeed restaurants. The bottom line is that it’s a load of eyewash and smoke and mirrors they use it as a marketing tool.
At Ikigai and at my home we believe in building from the bottom, building healthy mindful teams who understand the ideals and embrace their own ikigai, you can’t build a house on the sand as one day it will subside.
We believe in correct working hours, correct salaries, and correct food that our teams eat so as to perform and understand the need for balanced fuel for the body, not working 16 hours a day, not eating standing up between orders, and certainly not pushing so hard they break, we work smarter so we don’t have to work harder.
My house and my workplace are now finally united in a city house — The Home of Ikigai — and here my children and I can work in harmony getting our life balance. A space where the team is a part of our family and where we can all move forward as conscientious, kind people creating seasonal, balanced, and tasty menus for you.
Every month we will offer our advice and experiences combined with what we have planned for the month ahead and advise what’s in season and what you should be used to support the farmers and the artisans of this world.
Nancy Noble
Let me introduce you to my world, my biggest success, and my best recipe.
Nancy is fast approaching 10 years old and from a very early age has only known Daddy as a farmer and a cook. Nancy is growing up the ikigai way, not wasting food, eating seasonally, and losing the word “want” from her vocabulary,
Nancy is growing up cuddled by our philosophy and embraces joyfulness, fulfillment, and creativity here every day. She's lucky to have chefs next door who welcome her into the kitchen and mealtimes so she can get the correct fuel for her everyday life and her ikigai.
Nancy understands the need to be humble, the need to respect others, and the need to embrace every day with open arms not filled with digital devices but with things that create mindfulness and creativity.
The Home of Ikigai
It is important to me to pass on my biggest skill and that’s knowledge, an asset I’ve been honing over the last 50 years. Here at — The Home of Ikigai — in Chiang Mai, Thailand we have adapted two large townhomes to accommodate all our needs, The apparel shop and library, the restaurant, and of course Chez Noble.
Apparel and library, a shop selling cookware and ikigai-designed kitchen clothing for the discerning chef and a library corner of cookbooks available to take away on loan free of charge, and a place to hang out and talk to fellow chefs, free coffee of course.
The Home of Ikigai restaurant is a place where the 5 Blue Zone countries combine into one exciting seasonal menu that is cooked by Chiang Mai chefs and me for you.
It’s important to look at countries that build their longevity on lifestyle and food, the freshest ingredients including processes such as pickling, fermenting, and aging to give the body what it needs without sacrificing flavour.
At The Home of Ikigai, we don’t use saturated fats and we don’t use MSG. We do not use any chemicals to make food do what it isn’t supposed to do. We use only 1% salt and natural unrefined sugars when needed.
Ikigai is a small plate restaurant allowing you to try more and conduct a sharing mentality one that creates harmony and conversation.
In each newsletter I will share recipes off my menu, dishes for you to learn and replicate, once we have done the menu together, I will change it, and there will be recipe videos to look at and a private one 2 one tutorial to book through a platform I will inform later in next month’s newsletter.
I look forward to going on this journey and telling you how our month went and asking your advice about our future and menu items.
Blessings and let’s find your inner ikigai together, there’s lots to be grateful for.
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