KA: First of all, I live in Philly—any chance that goop Kitchen will expand anywhere close to me?
KF: We will eventually go to New York, as well as LA, San Francisco and other markets that would love goop kitchen.
KA: Can you tell me about what you did before goop Kitchen?
KF: I was mainly focused on three star Michelin restaurants and worked at Per Se, the Restaurant at Meadowood, and I did a two year stint in Spain, at El Bulli and Mugaritz. [Those years] were a huge passion project. I wanted to experience ultra fine dining, and then I wanted to take a break. I was in San Francisco and found myself private cheffing, then decided that was not for me. But I really feel people should experience it, because it can be harder than a restaurant.
I got a call from Donald Moore, goop kitchen’s CEO, that Gwyneth Paltrow wanted to start a food brand, and we could do something fun.
[Editor’s note: Moore and Paltrow created goop Kitchen together; it launched in March 2021. Floresca started in her role at the end of 2020.]
Gwyneth really wanted to take clean food and democratize it, make it more available to people. And I said, “I don’t really do gluten-free or sugar free.” But I came and met the team and started to understand the ethos of what they were doing. I liked the idea of having the autonomy to create new but familiar foods, like our teriyaki bowl, though it was never something I ever thought I would do – that is, to-go food.
KA: What was it like going from Michelin-starred kitchens to goop Kitchen? How different is it?
KF: It’s a complete 180. But a challenge has been, how do you make really good food for delivery? During my interview I got that exact question. I said, “I’m not interested in just putting out delivery food.” They said, “Let’s do a teriyaki bowl. Let’s see how creative you can be.” We created an umami brown rice with shiitakes and lots of other mushrooms, caramelized onions. But teriyaki sauce is usually 90% white sugar, so how do you clean that up? We use no white or brown sugar in our recipes, only honey maple syrup and coconut sugar, which we used to create our teriyaki sauce, with a miso glaze over the chicken.
We’re getting more delicious food out to people and really owning the fact that we’re chefs. We need to make this food more chef-driven, not like takeout where there’s no emotion behind it.
Our challenges have also been finding better ingredients, changing food systems, changing what we think about hospitality because we’re totally digital, there’s no hospitality. But we built a system of “GEMs” or guest experience managers, humans that reach out to customers to make their experience with goop kitchen better.
KA: So you really work closely with Gwyneth Paltrow?
KF: I interviewed with her and she was at home and she said, “Tell me about your food.” I’m not really starstruck, but seeing her in her natural state was really inspiring. She’s a big part of what we do and she does the quarterly menu changes and tastings with us. She gives us a lot of autonomy, but it’s nice to have a check-in with her and ask, “How are we feeling about the food? What are you inspired by right now? What are you seeing trending out there in your travels?” There’s a lot of open communication. A lot of people think she’s not involved, but she’s very much involved in goop kitchen and she’s a great partner and listener.
KA: Can you share a trend she spotted on her travels that you brought to goop Kitchen?
KF: You’re going to laugh at this, but actually we just launched a burger in one location. Five years ago, she said, “We’re looking for this person who’s a mom and busy, she just wants to get dinner on the table, and she wants it to be good. We’re looking for the person on a business trip who wants food that’s better than what you can get at a hotel.” And she mentioned a turkey burger. But we could not, for the life of us, find a gluten-free bun to save our lives. I had no experience in gluten-free foods but was like let’s just figure this out. It’s a great challenge as a chef and it’s so humbling, when you realize you don’t know something. And we’d talk [to Gwyneth] and she said, “You forgot about the burger.” But we didn’t—you can’t send most gluten-free burgers out for delivery because they have a 40-min window. The humidity soaks into the bun, it just gets super soggy.
So I got into a headspace of geeking out about it and wanted to learn everything I could, and now we’re testing this burger, we only make 30 per day in one location for lunch only.
KA: Well, what’s the bun made of?
KF: I can’t tell you.
KA: How about just one ingredient?
KF: Okay, it’s rice flour-based. But with a blend of other grains, too.
KA: Where do you like to source ingredients?
KF: We go to markets, we talk to vendors, and we’re constantly looking for new companies to work with like Burlap & Barrel. Co-founder Ori Zohar now lives in Venice and he’ll come in and bring things. His pomegranate molasses—that was amazing. It’ll go on a salad we’ll launch this fall that needs acidity but not from citrus. Everything they do is amazing but he also brought us rosemary from France and I was like, “This is so delicious. Let’s just grind this up and use this as our seasoning for a potato chip alongside our burger. And we did, and it’s just like finding those little niche really cool brands that are doing some really amazing things which we’re willing to pay a little bit more for.”
KA: What’s your personal favorite goop Kitchen dish—the one you never get tired of?
KF: Our tofu summer rolls—we take an incredible, spicy, high-protein tofu and wrap it up with sweet potato noodles and vegetables in rice paper. It comes with a cashew dipping sauce and I could eat it every day. Whenever I’m craving something not too heavy, that’s what I go for.
