For decades he was the eye in the brilliant culinary storm that was India Joze Restaurant.
Catering all over the county to the delight of special events and roving foodies, he then took his talents over to a tiny hole-in-the-wall on Front Street and continued to whip up meals that belied belief. King of Spices, Jozseph Schultz is also a cultural historian and eco-anthropologist who’ll be joining up with Judy Slattum and Made Surya for a Taste of Bali, its markets, spices and authentic restaurants.
Filled with temples and artwork, Bali is a mirror of Santa Cruz, and Santa Cruz is in many ways a mirror of Bali, “where everybody’s an artist,” says Jozseph. Its beauty will form the content and background of the August tour.
How are you handling the transition from restaurant chef to private citizen?
SCHULTZ: I had a restaurant for 50 years. That doesn’t even make sense! India Joze was my social life. So trying to recreate that, after the sort of disaster of Covid which destroyed everybody’s social life, well I haven’t really gotten my feet under me yet. The dream is to have my country place spiffy enough that I can have people come over, either for money or not. I don’t care, you know, I can cook for them, and we can hang out and talk and have the idealized, the platonic form of human interaction, which is talking and eating. And cooking.
What are the biggest changes you’ve observed in local dining culture in the past decade? Can we blame Covid, or the economy, or were big changes already happening?
This used to be a cheap place to live, [laughter]. So it was great for artists. Back when we had India Joze, everybody would come; those were magic times. Being a cheap place to live means you have a pool of workers who don’t need to make very much to make ends meet. Now it’s completely insane. Today I would have to pay restaurant workers $30 an hour, so that’s changed forever and that does not change back. My hat’s off to anybody who tries to keep a restaurant open today.
So that means that the great, deep social connection that is food is also falling away.
What would you like to be doing now? Continue catering?
I’d like to create an idealized society where people can get together and see each other and socialize. Catering is arduous. If you start from zero, it involves setting up something, and break it all down, put it away, and all that takes infinitely longer than doing it. In the restaurant, it was all there. The people, the money, the infrastructure. All I had to do was really cook. But things are in progress.
What are you looking forward to on this trip to Bali?
Food is a concrete thing, but it’s also a metaphor. I’m interested in how food works in Bali. There’s a deeply artistic strain in Bali. Bali has an integrated society. Everybody goes to the ceremonies, the very rich people and the very poor people. They’ll all mingle in Bali, not like here.
It’s beautiful and wonderful and extraordinary, but it’s a museum in some ways. When conquered, they slaughtered the aristocracy in Bali in the early 1900s. Then it reestablished as a self-consciously cultural museum. Bali is filled with rituals and spirits. There’s tremendous amounts of ritual. And it goes on all the time, ritual and ceremony and offerings. It’s absolutely inescapable to an extent. Yet there’s a kind of freedom available when you don’t have to question every single thing you do. And has a very, very high level of social cooperation, because they are a rice-field culture. They’re one of the only sustainable agricultural places on earth. The geography is much like the Big Island of Hawaii. In the cooperation that has developed, spirituality is a part.
The Balinese believe that paradise isn’t somewhere else. They already live in Paradise. As Phil Oakes said, in an ugly world, the only real protest is beauty, right?
Specifics?
As far as how the tour will happen, we will interact with the culture in coconut workshops, my cooking demos, temple sites, farm tours, visits to coffee and clove plantations, touring rice fields and palm sugar villages. Lots of tastings.And of course there are countless food stalls and restaurants. There’s an incredible variety of food, you can get great sushi in Bali.
 Photos, itinerary and details can be found at danutours.com. A Taste of Bali with India Joe Schultz – August 17-30
