Erika Tangari - Food Alchemist

Erika Tangari doesn´t really consider herself as a chef much as much as she considers herself an alchemist. Her main desire is to understand how life enters into specific elements, how these elements manifest as food and how she can combine these elements creating a culinary epiphany, reconnecting people to their souls.

Having grown up in the kitchen with both her Nonna´s, Erika found the joys of spending time together with people she loved, creating magic in the kitchen to fill hungry bellies with love. 

After school and studying to become an interior designer, she found herself at the age of 24 living in Dubai. During the day she would spend her time working on drawing the interiors of yachts, which she experienced as being disconnected from life and mis-aligned with her soul leaving her unfulfilled. At night she would host dinners at friends houses, cooking and sharing love around the table, which is what she actually loved to do most. 

After realising that interior yacht design would result in her getting sick as she was not following her true passion in life, she made the decision to go back to Italy and step into the role of the food alchemist. 

Once again living a double life for a period of time in Italy, Erika would earn what she needed to get by through her day job, whilst in the evenings she was lead chef of pop up events around Milano to gain experience and grow her network.

A client who tried her food absolutely fell in love with the way Erika approached her culinary creations, offering her a job as the lead chef in a startup restaurant.

That was the beginning of her career at the restaurant Santarea in Milano, where she lead the team serving different types of events from feeding families of 25 people to 250 people for a buffet brunch.. She swiftly left the day job jumping with both feet into this exciting new project, working at Santarea during the day and doing chef school at night to learn as quickly as possible. 

Over the next 4 years Erika took the opportunity to grow the team, as well as attract other chefs from around the world to collaborate with, all lending to her expedited growth, creating a name for herself in the Milano culinary world. 

In search of deeper truths once again, Erika´s interests turned to the world of the East and how chef´s were at service in temples, with food being the “prasad” or the medicine of the soul. Stardom and money were far from the focus, so when new opportunities presented themselves offering Erika more money and status, they felt misaligned.

Instead, Erika opted to set off on a year-long journey to learn more about the way of life in countries like India, Nepal and Bali, where she discovered their way of cooking was focused on accepting the life in food, through processes like fermentation and activation, collaborating with good bacteria. A totally opposite approach to the West, which was focused upon death, defending against bad bacteria, implementing rigid controls, essentially perpetuating the disconnection from the planet and life itself. 

The year abroad brought many learnings and adventures. A new way of being for Erika, pushing her towards living a more spiritual and consciously connected life outside the rigid mindset of the city. When she returned to Milano and was offered to collaborate on a project on the island of Ibiza, she bought her ticket straight away and she was off once again.

Life Now

It's been over 10 years since Erika has been on the island of Ibiza having immediately fallen in love with the red soil, the green pines and blue skies. There is a kind of magic on the island that demands creativity along with the residing truth seekers that call Ibiza home. 

Good word spread quickly on the island with Erika receiving many offers for work. Her first big project was called Roots, which was an alternative menu in an italian restaurant offering people a more healthy plant based option using local produce only. 

As this was an experimental project, Erika became the alchemist she knew she was, applying all the life focused techniques she had learnt from her time in the East. 

In Erika´s view, restaurants are based on consumption, profit and status, which is not really sustainable leaving her asking the question, “How can we nourish guests if the focus is always on consumption?”. Her answer, “You can´t because it´s based on scarcity. Scarcity is used in order to create consumption when the truth is that life is abundant, which we all have access to”. 

Leaving the world of restaurants for now, her focus lies in working with wellness retreats and private events where she feels aligned with the message or educating people who are interested in living from abundance and not buying into the illusion of scarcity that modern day society loves to tout. 

Erika describes her current work as sharing the principles of consciousness through understanding the consciousness of food and how it is cultivated, with Ibiza being one of the richest environments on the planet to do her work right now. 

Her key takeaway for anyone who engages with her work, be it at a live educational event, her private retreats or reading about her is this, “Question everything and always be in search of truth. It will show itself, as truth is love and is the only thing that will ever remain”. 

Future projects for Erika will involve how she can incorporate her learnings further into regenerating the soil and expand the lessons of consciousness through understanding the consciousness of the land.