While we think it’s perfectly logical to follow up any restaurant venture in Salt Lake City with an encore performance in Bali, some of you may be wondering how it is that Mist ended up on the opposite side of the planet after our fabulous 6 weeks in Utah. As is often the case with Gavin, the answer is complicated and involves our stars aligning with many amazing people. Here are the 7 degrees connecting Mist:SaltLake with our current project, Mist:Bali.
1. Towards the end of the 90s Gavin wound up living in Thailand, cooking for a spear fishing yoga commune (don’t ask). It was here that he met, Marit, a gorgeous Swedish-American expat, life-long friend and fellow adventurer.
2. Some years later Marit met Andrew, a ship-builder/diver/explorer/dreamer. They fell in love and have been together ever since. In 2004 they started building Misool Eco-Resort, a dive resort and conversation center located in Raja Ampat: the most bio-diverse area of marine life on planet earth.
3. In 2011 Gavin joined Marit and Andrew at Misool to help elevate the cuisine and service of the resort’s food & beverage program. He loved the people, the place, the culture, the food, the experiences… really there wasn’t anything he didn’t love about Misool.
4. While on the island Gavin met Thorbin - master builder. Thorbin built the entire resort at Misool using reclaimed resources from the island. With local help, amazing sustainable structures like this were created:
5. Gavin and Thorbin discussed Gavin’s plans for traveling Asia with a moveable feast called Mist. Among the list of options for making this dream reality was the idea of using a boat to transport the kitchen, crew, supplies, etc. Thorbin connected Gavin with Tresno, a yacht designer based out of Bali.
5. Tresno discussed boat plans with Gavin, but ultimately decided that his mother, Patti, might have some useful suggestions due to her experience building, managing and sailing her own traditional Phinisi boat, the Silolona.
6. Gavin and Patti met via Skype while Gavin was still in Misool. Once Gavin returned to the states, he immediately purchased tickets and left the next day for Tucson, Arizona, where Patti happened to be staying. Patti and Gavin spent all night discussing her amazing travels through the Indonesian archipelago over the past 30 years and the many food traditions that remain hidden or on the brink of extinction. Gavin knew he wanted to spend more time discovering Indonesian food traditions and ingredients.
7. Months later, during the research and development phase of Mist:SaltLake, a long time friend and supporter of Mist happened to be picking a friend up from the airport and decided to bring him to the test kitchen to meet Gavin. After about 6 hours of short rib trials, beers and conversation it was decided that James (Executive Producer for Odyssee Pictures) would be producing a documentary chronicling the Mist journey. Odyssee wanted to document not only the feat of creating a guerrilla restaurant in the course of a few months, but also the deeper goals of the project to research and reinterpret indigenous foods. Naturally, Gavin and the Mist team decided that Indonesia was the perfect location.
Despite twitter banter about Mist:SaltLake leaving the project so wealthy that our logical next step was Bali (we wish that were the case!) we instead have James Martinelli, Patti Seery, and Marit + Andrew Miners to thank for this incredible opportunity.