#yaran

first editions of dahi and yaran!

dahi/yaran summarised

dahi - he/they

a prince banished to another universe, who remembers absolutely nothing of his past life, has lost his identity, and is starting all over again

yaran - he/him

I closed every social media account I had in December 2020.

There was no farewell post. No announcement. I did not write a piece explaining why. I just stopped. Logged out. Deactivated.

Covid had pulled the emergency brake on everything. The hotel I was running had emptied out. The kitchens I had spent my life inside had gone quiet. And for the first time in almost two decades, I had something I had completely lost track of somewhere along the way.

Time. Proper, uninterrupted, mine.

I am a chef. Have been since I was thirteen. I started as a pastry apprentice in a small bakery in Istanbul, carrying flour up five flights of stairs because that was what apprentices did. I am forty-nine now. I have run kitchens and hotels on four continents. I have cooked alongside Paul Pairet, Pierre Hermé, Joël Robuchon, Frédéric Anton. I hold a Guinness World Record. I have competed at the Culinary Olympics. I run a luxury hotel in Singapore.

And for most of those years, I had no idea why some of the most talented chefs I knew stayed broke while others quietly built lives that would outlast them.

Talent was never the answer.

Knowledge was.

That is what the silence taught me. In those five years, I started connecting dots I had been collecting for thirty-six years and never had time to look at. I went back through my own career, my friends' careers, the careers of people who had walked into kitchens with me at twenty and disappeared by forty. I started writing.

Five years later, in January of this year, the book came out. Rich Chef Poor Chef. It became a number one international bestseller faster than I expected. The forewords were written by two people I am proud to call mentors at different points of my life — Paul Pairet, and Cetin Sekercioglu, who runs Upgrading.CC and is one of the most respected leadership voices in our industry. Both of them said yes when I asked. I am still slightly surprised by that.

The book is now in four formats. Hardcover, paperback, eBook, and audiobook. I narrated the audiobook myself, with my Turkish accent intact, because that was the whole point. The voice is mine. The story is mine. The accent is mine. There is no version of this where someone else reads it for me and it still feels honest.

I am back on the internet now, slowly. A YouTube channel. A newsletter. This blog. One post at a time.

If you are a chef, a cook, a hotelier, or anyone who has ever wondered why the most talented people in the kitchen do not always end up the most financially free, the book is for you. If you are not, that is fine too. Some of these posts will be for you anyway.

Thank you for being here.

📖 Book: https://www.richchefpoorchef.com/category/all-products

📺 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@yusufyaran

🌐 Website: https://www.yusufyaran.com/