There are women who enter your heart without asking permission, women whose energy wraps around you like a warm hug on a cold day, whose presence is as strong as waves breaking on a shore. Women who are a reminder of what a privilege it is to be a woman. Yarden Shi is one of them. She is the burning fire on the stove, the one who cooks not only dishes but also dreams. She enters a room, and everyone there knows – not because she tries, but because she is simply there. Her food is a story, but Yarden herself is a poem. A rare combination of delicate power and bold creation, written anew every day.
When we thought about a woman who would represent our Women's Day, the answer was clear: Yarden Shi, an esteemed chef and one of the most prominent figures in the culinary world.
On this day, we celebrate a woman who is an inspiration: strong, unapologetic, feminine in her own special way, and creative to the core. The one who shows us all that anything is possible – if only we allow ourselves to burn.
At Volver, we celebrate everything that is unique and feminine, and through Yarden, we express the power, softness, and strength to unite the two. Join us in celebrating Women's Day with a woman who embodies everything we believe in – courage, creation, and the ability to reinvent ourselves.
You are remembered by many from your breakthrough in MKR, but I want to go back for a moment – when did you first feel that the kitchen was your place?
Well, I always loved to eat and cook, it went hand in hand. My mother is a cook, and I had a long romance with the refrigerator. I really loved to eat, I would sneak to the refrigerator, combining flavors. I would sit with everyone who came to eat with us. Our house is very hospitable, and I would always sit down and eat too.
I remember myself just sitting and not wanting to stop eating, indulging myself. The romance with food was always also from a place of craving and passion for food and eating experiences.
As a child, I would write recipes and prepare them for Friday night dinners with my mother. I always cooked with my mother who didn't follow recipe books, everything was improvisation and intuition.
And even when they bothered me – "Stop eating from the pots", "Stop touching food with your hands" – I didn't care. At home, I was completely free to deal with food in any way I wanted, and yet I learned basic foundations through my mother's comments. My romance with food starts from both eating and cooking. Everything was very free, very allowing for my creativity to burst out.
If you had to describe your culinary style in a few words, how would you describe it?
I always think that I am really at the beginning of my culinary journey. As an actress, creator, or writer who entered the world of the kitchen, my motivation is to make people feel something.
Emotion opens up, in my opinion, when it's tasty, pleasant, and creative for you. Now I cook Spanish cuisine, because that's the restaurant I entered, and it suits me very well – my Moroccan roots, the European class, working with fish, aging, sauces. I can't say I have a defined style yet. There's a nonchalance in my cooking, but also a lot of emotion. Even if I do fine dining as defined, it will be exciting, feminine, wild, and elegant food – just like me.
You lead large restaurants, manage teams, and break new ground in a field where women are not the majority. Were there moments when you felt you had to prove yourself more than others?
First of all, of course. And I think that's something inherent and folded into being a woman in this career world in general. Now, if you ask me, I won't talk to you about feminism, that kind of "I'm a woman so this and that," I don't see it that way, but there are times when I suddenly catch situations and say, if I were a man it would be seen differently, or I would even see it differently, and I'm really working on the need to prove myself.
Today I am with partners in the work who are men, but not necessarily, there are many women in key positions here at Chakoli, crazy women, we understand each other in motivation, perfectionism, and emotion, and I understand that this very place of "working to prove myself" stems from the fact that I am a woman, and I had a very strong need to prove myself in the field and show that I am strong and I fillet fish, carry heavy things, and touch things that are supposedly more masculine. I gave up this need, because I understand that on the contrary, the more I work on myself not to prove that I deserve it, that's where everything happens. You'll carry this pot for me now, because wow, I want to bring children into the world. That's logical and it doesn't stop me, and I'm a fighter, I'm the biggest fighter there is.
Many women dream of reaching management positions in the culinary industry. What is the most important advice you would give them?
First of all, don't give up your femininity. My cooks know that I like to dress up, and on my days off I'll wear high heels, I'm a woman, and I care about my complexion, and really, I don't need to dress up as a man or curse (I don't think men need to curse either), but I, I'm a woman, I'm Yarden first and foremost, and I have my identity, which is my gender identity and that, where I came from, what interests me, and what I like to do. First of all, don't give up on that. Meaning, it's not an obstacle, and it's not something you need to put aside, it's just what it is. And beyond that, there's a quality of a woman cooking, a different quality, and it's a lot. There's a certain giving, certain depths that a woman has in her hands. That's what I think. Because a woman is a mother, and a mother comes to give, and a mother feeds, and a mother breastfeeds, breastfeeds and gives. So first of all, don't give up on that, use it and connect to it, don't run away from it.
One of the things I think about a lot is like, wow, one day I want to get married and have children and wait, how do you do that? So I always tell myself, wait. When it comes, it comes, and you can do everything, and nothing will stop us. Meaning, when you put a trait of yours that is part of you aside, and let's take femininity as a trait, and you put it aside because it's in the way, then you're already in trouble, you're not bringing your whole self. No. You're a woman, and that's part of it. Take this thing, it's part of your identity. It's like I'm half Moroccan and that's relevant to food, it's part of my culinary cultural identity. Right, that's what will be felt in the food? Because that's my culture, so the same goes for my femininity, my emotions, and things I've experienced.
This year was full of professional successes, but also heavy personal loss. How did you find the strength to continue and build a new restaurant?
I had no choice. I felt I owed it to my father, and also after my father's death, just a few days before we opened, my cousin Amitai was killed in the drone disaster, he was in the Golani reconnaissance unit.
And I realized that... first of all... wow, that's a tough question.
Life is intertwined with this pain. My father's death also came as a surprise to me. And it really sent me, I withdrew into myself and realized that my father had sent me on a mission to love myself. If there was anyone who was proud of me and watched me working or on stage or anything else with tears in his eyes, it was my father. He is my number one fan to this day, even from above, and I know I owe it to him. And that sent me inward, I really went through a process where I didn't meet so many people and didn't go out much, and I withdrew into many books and cookbooks. There I learned more depths of creation, I discovered how important it is to put the ego aside and put creation at the center and how much it confronts me with the ego. How much it confronts me with difficulties, with myself, with things I hate about myself and with things I love about myself. And all this sent me deeper into creation and this is only the beginning.
I realized I had no choice, this is exactly what my father would have wanted. This is exactly what he still wants. And you know, it's daily.
I remember the last thing I told him, the day before I flew, I hugged him really tight, and I told him, "Dad, I'll make you happy, you'll see." He still sees. I have no doubt.
Chakoli is a restaurant born out of great passion. What is your vision for it? How is it different from everything you've done so far?
First of all, I joined a different and new group, of amazing people. Who actually took the Spanish world they brought in "Helena" in Habima and brought it to Chakoli and the sea. There are people here with a very glorious past in this world of hospitality, kitchen, and restaurant. And I realized that together we could build something that is beyond a restaurant by the sea, beyond a fish restaurant,
And beyond a Spanish restaurant, something I didn't know my connection to until I traveled, tasted, tried, and cooked.
We talked today about iconic things and I can't say about myself that I'm an iconic person, but iconic things really speak to me.
Meaning, iconic figures, things that are ingrained, things that are very strong and unapologetic to be ingrained in consciousness. Iconic is not necessarily trendy in my opinion, meaning, iconic is iconic. It's something you can hardly translate into words. You can't translate Marilyn Monroe into words, she's many, many, many things but she's her and she's so ingrained and I think that's what I connected to in "Chakoli" to create a restaurant that is something unapologetic, a big, happy, sexy restaurant, by the sea, not a small place, not trendy and not a food or wine bar.
A restaurant like they used to open, in the most beautiful location in the world with a sommelier and tablecloths and yet an open kitchen and pulsating food. And this brings with it many challenges, because today what's trendy are the small, personal restaurants and that's very appealing to me, but I understand that this is a restaurant like restaurants used to be, places that weren't afraid to say "we're a restaurant on the beach" and that's very iconic in my opinion, I don't know why, the oysters, the fish, it's iconic, and it connects with me a lot, meaning iconic in the sense that it's something that isn't ashamed to be something very big and yet, with its own unique language, that maintains a level, a class. That's the answer I currently have for you, that's what this thing feels like to me and I'm also discovering it all the time as I go and still learning it.
If someone comes to your restaurant for the first time, what dish must they order?
Tomato salad. It somehow combines Spain, because in Spain you will always eat tomatoes, and its interpretation is very me - peeled tomatoes, with a raspberry vinaigrette, which goes with it incredibly, pistachios, green onion from the Josper, I incorporate the Josper into many cold dishes, its aging because it's very Spain and very Chakoli, I have something I like to use, a kick from the raw shallot, you have to order it when you're here and also the sashimi praline.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
I think I don't know. And maybe it's better that I don't know.
Sometimes I say, maybe I entered the kitchen by mistake, maybe I won't be a chef, maybe I'll be a chef with another place. Look, I'm not at my final destination yet, that's clear to me. Things are brewing in my mind, because I say, really, what's your cooking style? Who are you? And I realize, the more I delve into it, that I have my own style, the nonchalant, but very fine, beautiful, and creative. I have something that I still find hard to put into words, but something is brewing that is also very much related to my personality. Because my food is my personality, specifically for me. I'm also a female chef, and I'm also a chef who comes from the worlds of stage, theater, writing, creation, painting, all these worlds will somehow have to connect for me, in the thing itself, you understand?
If you could go back to Yarden ten years ago, and whisper a small something about life to her – what would you tell her? Let go. Really. (And now I'll start crying) Let go. Because you hold so many dreams. I am a very dreaming person, and that's amazing. But dreams will come true in so many different ways. Let go of this place where bad things will happen to you. Don't try to fix it immediately. Give yourself a moment to dwell in that place. It's okay. It doesn't mean you're not good, that it's the end of the world, or that God doesn't love you. On the contrary – embrace these places. Don't push them away.It's not simple to be so perfectionistic, and then realize that difficult things will also happen along the way. And don't try to fix the world for everyone – for your parents, your family, or for yourself.
There's nothing to do. And everything will be fine.
