Chef Christian Duhalde Shares Impactful Experience On Pizza Making At GTCO Master Class, Urges Aspiring Students To Work in Restaurant Or Hotel Before Culinary School

A renewed Lagos base Chef, Christian Duhalde, Who is also the owner and Creative director of La Taverna, an esoteric Latin American and Spanish restaurant, based in Lagos, Nigeria,  

He shared his technical and Impactful experience on Kids Pizza making at the 2025 festival of Foods and Drink organised by the Guaranty Trust Holding Company (GTCO) themed “A Shared Experience of Culture, Cuisine, and Enterprise” held at Plot 1 Water Corporation Drive, Oniru, Victoria Island in Lagos.

The Chef also advise the children and the audience to work in restaurant and hotel before attending culinary school

He stated this during the 8th edition of Africa’s most anticipated celebration of food, drink, and culture GTCO) which highlighted on how every meal tells a stories of culture, community, and tradition that unite people across generations and geographies.

In his presentation at the Master Class of Kids Pizza making, disclosed his wonderful experience with kids and family members across the states about the most important things to have as ingredients before making Pizza.

He shared that the right ingredients begins with the sauce, a kind flat bread with some toppings on top.

“This is a kind of food like a growing art around the world and It's in many places, in different toppings, with different techniques”

“We are making this exactly the same recipe that we have been making in the last 12 years”

“First, we are going to start mixing the dough and it is important to take time with it”

“We will add the yeast depending on how you want it to bigger in the machine with all the ingredients together. This Is a kind of a long process because we need to make the dough. Mostly for the pizza and the process takes around like 10 to 15 minutes in order to make the dough”

The ingredients includes; Olive oil and it is very important in the process; a pinch of salt inside to amplify the flavour; Tomato; mozzarella cheese and also the bread. Basically, in the end, the process is like making a bread of different different type”

“We can not use eggs to make Pizza, it only the flour, water and yeast. But my secret is, the water I use today is soda water”

“We will add a little oregano, salt, and olive oil, add some pepper, black pepper. you can fry it with anything; half buttermilk and half tomato to give more flavour”

“Most of the people, companies that are making mozzarella in Nigeria are actually quite very good”

The Chef Christian also stated that it’s important to make accurate measurements like 1.8 kg of flour; 25g of cheese; 8g of salt; little bit of olive oil like 3 spoons and water which is going to be between 750 to 850 Celsius. This has been my recipe for over 12 years”

He stated that when when you leave it in oven for a little more long time. In our case, in the restaurant, we use a firewood oven. So, the oven is over 350 degrees. But in your oven, it can take around 10 to 12 minutes.

He noted that some part of world used cassava as their recipe especially with west African, brazil, Colombia as well as part of the Caribbean but we are sharing a lot of the ingredients together always

He added that he has been interested to work with children because he believed in future and the young age of children

He said that when you try to teach them about this hospitality business of cooking baker, they are like spongy.

“They are more interested to learn and it's very good to start teaching the children earlier, even they don't want to become a chef, at least they have the knowledge about the food and It's very important”

“As a child almost 30 years actually has been expressed for just about three decades with a passion and love”

“ I considered myself very lucky to choose what I love, many people sometimes following Careers because your father or your parents or your brother or maybe they want to follow someone and you realised that it's not yours”

“In my own case when I went to school fo cooking at school, we were like 28 in numbers and right now, we are about 5 in numbers “

After all, these years, many people realised the time to say that they like cooking but they don't like to be a Chef. “My own motivation was always the passion for Cooking, I love the ingredients and I love to serving people”

“I love to see people happy With my food even though my food required to sit down together and eat and i think it's very important”

He further added that there is a potential in some kids when talking with them earlier and there is a tendency that one or two of them will want to become a chef in the future

“I will give this to you as a take home, if you want to aspire to become a chef, the first advice I want to give to you is to love what you are doing, a chef, a real chef be like a priest”

“Do not get tired to dealing with people, cooking, always have passion and be motivated “

"Before, trying to go into Culinary School make sure you work like two or week hotel or restaurant to see what the really life of a chef is” 

 “Believe me, it is not am easy thing and it very very difficult from the beginning”

“ The really thing is to have love in what you do if want it to be easy for you “ Chef Christian added