Just Who Exactly is Erwan Heussaff?
By Thea Jessica Jala | In Partnership With Today’s Carolinian
To the world, Erwan Heussaff is a French-Filipino chef who’s the brother to model Solenn Heussaf and the husband to actress Anne Curtis – but he’d much rather be defined on his own terms. “Why does it have to say French-Filipino?” Erwan asks. “What does that have to do with the story that you’re writing about me?”
And for the record, he’s not a “chef.” He hasn’t cooked or commanded a kitchen as a chef does, and so he prefers to be called a “home cook.” “I wish there was a way we could do away with labels, and I wish people’s work could speak for themselves,” he continues.
So, who exactly is Erwan Heussaff?
- - -
Erwan describes himself on his popular food blog, The Fat Kid Inside, as a “French-Filipino content creator with a passion for good food, travel, and fitness.” The blog started out as a hobby years ago, but eventually became the catalyst for Erwan starting his own production company and launching the YouTube channel FEATR, which dedicates itself to “telling better stories over a hot meal.” Moreover, FEATR combines two of the things Erwan is passionate about – travel and food.
Travel is one of Erwan’s main passions, but he doesn’t exactly remember the trip that started it all. He acknowledges that he’s come from a privileged background and that he had more opportunities to travel than most people starting from a young age - from his childhood travelling together with his family to his solo travels as an adult to places like Shanghai, Ho Chi Minh, Rhodos, Bangkok, and Thailand, travel is a “part of his DNA”. Travel has been a staple in Erwan’s life, and he hopes to pass down his love of travelling to his daughter, Dhalia, and his family in turn.
To Erwan, travel isn’t just a leisure thing or a work thing but an opportunity to get out of one’s bubble and experience the world in many various ways. Travel, Erwan explains, gives you a sense of perspective. It shows that everything in life has duality – everything has a positive and a negative. Sometimes, travel is uncomfortable and highlights the disparities and inequalities that people from other countries face. “I’ve always [sought for] discomfort,” Erwan says, “and I really enjoy that, and I’ve always put myself in situations where I’m uncomfortable just because I know I learn so much from it.”
Another one of Erwan’s passions – perhaps the one he is most known for – is his love for food. His love for cooking began when he was eight. He was home alone and hungry when he whipped up his first dish, salpicao, a beef stir-fry dish. That childhood experiment blossomed into a lifelong passion for food that would be the driving force behind most of his career.
Like every career, Erwan’s culinary journey has had its fair share of ups and downs. He’s “gone through a gamut of emotions” when it comes to food, mentioning that he’s opened twelve restaurants and that six of those restaurants closed down. He recounts the story of when he opened a cocktail bar that ran successfully for five years until the decision was made to close it. To any other business owner that would have been a failed venture, but to Erwan, it was just the end of its life cycle. “I wouldn’t let myself ever stop or quit because of failing,” Erwan says, “and so it’s very hard for me to burn out, simply because I always kind of have a very clear objective and purpose, and I always come into things very clearly, with a clear understanding of what the risks are.”
When asked about how to keep the passion alive, Erwan answers: “For anything to be sustainable it can’t be something that you’re purely passionate about. It’s accepting that sometimes you’ll love what you do and sometimes you’ll hate what you do but understanding that it’s always necessary to have a bit of both.”
Erwan applies this philosophy to both of his passions, culminating in the passion that he shares with the world - telling stories about food. Before creating digital content, a majority of Erwan’s career was spent in catering businesses and restaurants all over the world. This started his interest in wanting to share culinary knowledge. However, he knew he wasn’t the right person to tell certain stories, referring to people who told him that he wasn’t “Filipino enough” to talk about Filipino food. So he built a team around himself that was passionate about the things he was passionate about. FEATR was then born.
With FEATR, Erwan hopes to tell stories important to Filipino culture. He mentions the disinformation floating around the Philippines and mourns the loss of culture in different places. He says that because of the sheer distance between each island in the archipelago, it can be hard for people to know Filipino food in an intimate way.
Filipino food, Erwan has learned, is a sensitive subject for many Filipinos. It’s another reason why it can be difficult for people to learn about it. It’s a topic that’s difficult for people to be arbitrary about. Filipino culture, and in turn food, is nuanced and layered because of the country’s varied history. “There’s a general closedness to it,” Erwan notes. “People aren’t necessarily very open to learning about each other.” There are 500 different ways to cook many iconic Filipino dishes and there may be a “mother recipe” at the heart of them all. To Erwan, however, one can’t simply pick the “right way” to cook them.
“Maybe a dish isn’t necessarily a structure in which the ingredients are put together, but more of an essence and an emotion that it evokes, then maybe we can label more things as Filipino food and be open to it, in general, being presented in different ways.”
At its core, FEATR is about showcasing Filipino food from every region in all of its different facets. Erwan loves every video that FEATR has released. From catching and trying frog meat in Nueva Ecija to telling the story of the asin tibuok tradition in Bohol, each video serves a purpose. To him, a story is a story, whether it’s an ad for chips or a complex feature documentary.
Erwan wants to keep telling those stories, and he has big things in sight for the future of FEATR. Currently, the channel is producing high-volume digital content to satisfy the algorithm and make sure that their viewers see their videos. The channel has quite the balanced programming slate, with content ranging from cooking videos, to documentaries, to how-tos. The team works hard to have content pre-recorded to keep their flow consistent.
Erwan looks forward to trying new things as a production and publishing company - all of those dreams for the future lead up to the vision of creating a high-quality piece of work (like an eight-episode documentary) for an international audience about a Filipino story that can then be pitched to big streaming companies like Amazon Prime.
But that idea is still far-fetched. What’s stopping him? “Ideas don’t fall from trees,” Erwan laments. “It’s also a lot of procrastination on our side.” He doesn’t want to pitch a highly sensationalized, dramatic story (although that would be the easy way out) but rather one that’s cultural and that someone can learn from.
Erwan has a strong philosophy of approaching life with intent. He tries to gain value from everything he does, whether it's his work documenting Filipino food and culture or following people on social media. He believes in always having a clear objective and purpose, knowing all the risks, and avoiding pushing blindly through tasks. “The number one person I don’t take bullshit from is myself,” he says.
And that may be the best way to describe Erwan Huessaff, aside from the many labels that he has - a man with intent, with passion, and who knows exactly who he is and what he wants to do.
Erwan and Mikael conducted the through Zoom on Tuesday, August 9, 2022.
Recommended Song: Come As You Are - Nirvana
Image from FEATR’s Facebook Page
