All or Nothing: How Culinary Dedication Paid Off for Chef Thomas Danigo
On March 3, 2020, Thomas Danigo opened his first restaurant, Galanga, in Parisian boutique hotel Monsieur George. Two weeks later, it closed—an early dining casualty of the Covid-19 pandemic. “It was horrible, honestly,” Danigo, 32, tells Observer, sitting in the restaurant’s bar before the dinner service on a chilly November evening. “It was my first place as chef, and I started with a lot of complications. I got a lot of experience, good and bad. But ultimately, it was good for the future.”
Looking back, the French chef recognizes that the challenge was all part of his journey, which has seen the restaurant reopen, evolve and earn its first Michelin star.
Danigo, who worked his way up to sous chef at Laurent over seven years before joining Monsieur George, originally imagined Galanga as a more casual eatery. It was “a little bit fancy,” but not the gastronomic fine dining experience the restaurant has become. The hotel’s location, just off the Champs-Élysées, attracts a customer base who want an extended evening in one place, rather than popping in for an abbreviated dinner.
By the end of summer 2021, after the restaurant was allowed to reopen, Danigo altered the menu and service into a five- or seven-course tasting menu experience for 30 diners per night. His goal was a Michelin star, which Galanga won earlier this year.
“It’s amazing when your job is not just a job, but your entire life,” he says. “To accomplish something like that is incredible. It was the most powerful feeling I’ve had in my life, and now I feel comfortable in my professional circle. Before the Michelin star, I was the rookie chef, a new chef, a young chef. Now, I am part of that family.”
Although Danigo is relatively young to helm his own restaurant, he’s been cooking since he was 17 years old, often working an intense 16 hours a day. It’s hard, he admits, because he has devoted his entire life to the culinary industry, which means he has “no girlfriend, no kids, no pets.” It’s a rare admission from a chef, although something that is often true in the culinary industry. This is not to say that Danigo doesn’t have a personal life at all–on his one day off each week, he goes running and cooks with his best friend, who also happens to work at Galanga. “It’s all about intensity in my life,” he says, acknowledging that even his personal life leans towards his career. “It’s all or nothing.”
Still, being laser-focused on cooking means Danigo can put all of his energy into creating the absolute best dining experience possible. “I don’t know why I put all my energy in my job,” he says. “I want to do it perfectly, and I don’t know why I am like this. But it’s my way to express myself. As a young guy, I was very shy, and very in my bubble. I didn’t talk to people. And since I started to cook and became a chef, I talk to people. I can express myself with food and with my plates.”
Becoming a chef wasn’t inevitable for Danigo, who grew up in Chartres, France. Early on, he wanted to be a ski instructor, and even went to Canada to study at a ski sports school. But something about cooking called to him, because food had always been something he found soothing when life got hard.
“I had a difficult childhood and my father was not was not here, and I was alone with my mom,” he recalls. “At every difficult moment, I ran to my grandma’s house and she was always welcoming me in the kitchen and cooking my favorite things to make me feel better. When I came back to France from Canada, I had to choose what to do. And in this difficult moment, I was afraid, and so I ran again to the kitchen and decided to be a chef.”
“At the beginning, I was very bad, but with time I fell in love with it. I decided that if I was going to do something with my life, I would do it perfectly.”
After years of practice, Danigo now embraces a less-is-more sensibility at Galanga. A chef once advised him to keep dishes to only three ingredients, and it’s something he’s thought about since. His style is not showy or overly obsessed with technique. “Yes, we have a lot of technique, but you don’t see it in on the plate,” he explains. “I just want you to eat and to say, ‘Oh, my God, it’s so good.’ I want it to look simple, but it’s not simple at all. There’s always some little surprise or taste. Like comfort food. Like a grandma’s food.”
The menu is refined but not uptight, with moments of enjoyable whimsy. Danigo rotates the dishes seasonally, but never changes the entire menu all at once. Instead, he introduces something new every few weeks based on what produce is currently available. And while many dishes feature a hero protein, like beef or scallop, the focus is on the best quality produce the chef can source from markets or suppliers. Danigo discovers new ingredients everywhere, from social media to cooking shows to the market near his home in Boulogne. But the things come from the people he connects with.
“I love products, for sure, but I love humans more,” he says. “I love to share and to talk with people because [it is] all about emotion with me. I can have emotion with a product, but I have more emotion with people. If there’s an apple, it matters who it comes from.” He adds that an idea for a dish, like the current apple-centric dessert, can arrive simply because he has that emotion with the person selling it. “I want to keep the emotion and give it to my customer,” he says.
Although the menu emphasizes French cuisine, Danigo also incorporates Italian and Asian flavors. Japanese barbecue sauce garnishes the steak, which is currently served with corn, while the scallop arrives bathed in a citrus-laced dashi. Presently, there is not a dish offered at Galanga that features only three ingredients—as Danigo was advised to do—but many focus on only one or two primary ingredients. The burnt leek, a standout on the current tasting menu, gets a hit of salt from dusted pecorino cheese and a creamy boost from smoked sabayon. But ultimately, it’s all about that leek.
“At the end of the meal, I want you to feel light, so my food is always delicate,” he says. “There’s always acid and sour because it makes you salivate and you digest faster. I try to have three stars of the dish, like leek, guanciale and pecorino. Anything else is to make it look beautiful and push the flavor. So if there’s a little bit of caviar on the squid, it’s not about the caviar.”
Creating these dishes is so all-consuming for Danigo that he lies awake at night thinking about them. He wants to keep up the challenge and continue to push himself, both as a chef and as the leader of his team in the kitchen. When he launched Galanga in his late 20s, Danigo had no idea how to be a good manager. At first, it was admittedly difficult—and not something he’d had time to learn while working at Laurent because the days were so intense. Now, five years in, the chef feels more at ease.
“You have to manage [people] one by one to be a good manager,” he says. “You don’t ask them to adapt. You adapt yourself to your team and you try to get the best from each person. When you’re young and you start, you don’t know this. I will not say I am the perfect manager, because it’s not true. We have a lot of pressure. Sometimes I scream a bit. Sometimes I am tired. I am not a robot. But I have changed a lot and I understood that I had to adapt to my team.”
Next, perhaps there’s a second star in Galanga’s future. But Danigo is not impatient. He knows it will take time and he’s willing to put in the work to get there.
“We enjoyed the first one,” he says. “We will continue to grow. And with time, we will go on to the second one. But I will not tell you I want it next year or in two years. For now, I am proud that the restaurant is full almost every night. And I am proud because my cooking style has changed a lot and will continue to change.”