Deep Dive with La Boîte's Lior Lev Sercarz
Lior Lev Sercarz is the chef, spice blender and owner of La Boîte, a biscuits and spice shop in New York.
Join Chef Lior for an in-depth deep dive into spices, including the importance of sourcing and storing, the best spices to use in cooking, and how to extract the best flavor when using fats or liquids, toasting and grinding.
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Chef Lior always found the culinary world intriguing and decided to make it a career after working with Israeli Chef Gil Frank and enrolled at the acclaimed Institut Paul Bocuse in Lyon, France. During that time, he did an externship with chef Olivier Roellinger in Cancale, France. Roellinger became known for his rare understanding of spices, blends, oils and pastes, areas Lior found the most interesting.
In 2002, Chef Lior brought his newfound understanding of spice blending to New York, where he landed an opportunity with Chef Daniel Boulud at his flagship restaurant Daniel as a sous chef and catering chef. He left Daniel in 2008 to start La Boîte, originally making and selling a line of French biscuits as well as experimenting with spices. In 2011, he opened La Boîte Biscuits & Spices, an art gallery and spice shop in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen on and 51st street 11th Avenue. Today, Chef Lior collaborates with chefs from around the world, developing custom blends for restaurants including Daniel, Le Bernardin, Zahav, Marc Forgione and Michael Mina, among others.
Chef Lior has written three cookbooks including "The Art of Blending," "The Spice Companion" and "Mastering Spice: Recipes and Techniques to Transform Your Everyday Cooking," which offers 250 recipes informing readers on how spices change the way one makes every meal.
Up next for Chef Lior includes the expansion of La Boîte’s presence in Manhattan with a new wholesale headquarters and test kitchen on West 46th Street.
Originally from the north of Israel, Chef Lior lives in New York with his wife Lisa and their two boys.