Taku Condo makes delicious meals outside with ingredients that he forages or catches in the wild.

He documents his cooking creations on his YouTube channel, Outdoor Chef Life, which features videos of

Taku harvesting the ingredients and preparing meals back at camp. Before

Taku became a full-time youtuber, he worked for three years as a high-end sushi chef. Now he brings

that restaurant experience out into the wild and shares his culinary creativity with the world.

I'm Shelby Stanger and this is wild ideas worth living on

REI Coop Studios production brought to you by Capital One.

Taku Kondo was born in Japan and came to the US when he was a young kid.

He spent a lot of time camping and fishing, but on a typical evening at home,

Taku also loved helping his mom make traditional Japanese meals like

Okonomiaki and Oyakodon.

He especially loved using a knife, so he would often chop vegetables and help her with dinner prep.

Takukano, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living.

I'm so excited to talk to you because I love food and I love the outdoors and you've figured out a way to combine your love of cooking and the outdoors.

Thank you Shelby. Okay, let's just start like where did your love of cooking begin?

I think it started with cooking with my mom.

Just as a kid, I would help, I'd watch her cook and she'll have me peel onions. I remember peeling like a whole

onions but you know just trying to get my fingernails under there and later on like now I just cut it in half first right and then cut the ends off and it's so much easier.

I think like why did my mom use to make me do that just to probably keep me busy?

So your hands could smell.

Yeah. That's amazing. Okay, so did you always

know from a young age that you wanted to be a chef? Well, yes and no. You know, towards the end of high school, I went to one of those orientation kind of things for like

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