People of Ibiza: Erika Tangari

‘I was born in Milan, but as a child my grandparents lived in the countryside in Emilia-Romaña so I grew up between the two places - one fast-paced city, one slow and traditional. Milan has a lot of great attributes – I studied interior design and have a Master’s in yacht design and it's where my career began, but I always felt a sense of disconnect. Even though I was part of a cool, arty scene and there were good, creative vibes, I felt I was disconnected from the pulse of my own internal energy. There is no balance to big-city flow  - it is incoherent with the energy of the planet and I always felt very sensitive to that. At one point, I was working for an interior design client in Dubai and they wanted to have vast amounts of Italian marble shipped from Italy for their home. I suddenly saw what was happening in the design world and how incongruent it was with my inner truth. I didn't want to be part of this destruction of the planet. I was only 24, but I could already see it wasn't my path. 

 My grandparents had a farm and I’d always loved cooking since I was a child. It was through my grandparents that I developed a passion for produce and provenance and preservation. My friends were always telling me I should cook for a living so back in Milan, I decided to give it a go. I took internships at the butcher, the baker, the grocer – I worked for free at all these places to fast-track my skill set. I’m a very visual person and if I observe something I will learn it, fast. At the same time, I went to night school to study cookery techniques. I was offered the role of chef at Santeria, one of the first spaces in the city to fuse food, art, music and co-working. Santeria had a bit of a Berlin vibe in Milan and it became a cult success. By the end I was working 80 hours a week with a queue of 250 people outside. After four years, I couldn’t do it anymore. I was drained. The experience had been amazing but it was time to move on. I left for the East and spent a year traveling between India, Nepal, Thailand and Indonesia. Asia was a calling. I needed that shift in energy and something inside me was looking for death of the ego. It was challenging for me at first to relinquish control; I remember when I arrived in India, one of the first temples I visited was the Hanuman temple in Delhi. I was reluctant even to take off my socks. But during that trip I took responsibility for my own growth and I learned what it meant to be content. The Erika that left Bali one year later was a totally different person.

Ten days after I returned from Bali a friend told me she was going to Ibiza. I wasn’t done with adventure yet and I decided to go with her. We drove from Italy down the Cote d’Azur and into Spain. It was April and everything was so beautiful. I will never forget arriving in Ibiza by boat at 6am, as the dawn light illuminated the walls of Dalt Vila. It was love at first sight. The colours of Ibiza reflected the colours of Sicily and Sardinia, the islands of my childhood, as though a fil rouge was running through my life. I fell for the warmth of the island, the people and the extraordinary energy. I couldn’t believe this place existed in the Mediterranean, just a one-hour flight from where I had lived all my life. Most importantly, I fell for the farmers and their produce, their integrity and their way of life. My connection to the island’s country people is profound – I work alongside them; I respect them and I speak their language. My grandparents come from the same culture of the land. In Ibiza I am able to bridge the gap between the consumer and the farmer, the worlds of the ex-pat and the payés. It’s this gap that is causing the disconnect between people and the planet. We have lost the stories of our food.

After 20 years on this path, I created the SOL method. SOL - Secret of Life - is a framework for reconnection through food. A series of tools and techniques and principles to re-establish an energy flow between cooks and the planet, between humanity, our past and our future. A lot of chefs create beautiful, Instagrammable images, but that is not the story of that plate. How did you engage with the person that grew that product? Where is the story of respect between you, the farmers and the land? Of course I make food that looks beautiful, but it has deep roots. Some of my ingredients take months of fermentation. Often, I will get a call from a payés saying, ‘I have too many of these, can you help me save them?’ I’m at service to the planet and its growers, so of course I help. I’ll spend the winter nights by the fire with the farmer, peeling and cleaning and preserving vegetables and fruit. The SOL method is about growing, preparing and serving ingredients which are local, seasonal and karma free, whether that’s Indonesian food or Italian or here in Ibiza. By unlocking these principles, we can live and eat in a way that’s of the highest benefit to all life. We have the choice, three times a day for our entire life, to be part of the problem or part of the solution. The decisions we make now about what and how we eat will shape the future of our life on Earth.’