Hi, I'm Alex 👋
I'm a chef from Utah. I've lived in France, cooked in Paris, and now I plan bike trips around the best places to eat.
I grew up in Orem, Utah, in a big family with 8 kids. My mom cooked for everybody, my older brother loved to cook, and I naturally ended up helping in the kitchen. Three of my siblings were born in Europe, and our last name, Blosil, comes from the Czech name Plašil. Growing up, I heard my uncles' stories about traveling the world to eat at great restaurants, and I always dreamed of doing the same.
France
When I was 15, my family sent me to spend a summer with a family outside Carcassonne, in the south of France. I'd prepped by watching Rick Steves videos and dreaming about the villages and everything I'd eat. That summer showed me the world was so much bigger than where I came from. I picked up French, kept studying it through high school, and later went back to live in France for two years. All told, I've lived there about three years, and I speak French fluently.
Galettes, Paris and pop-ups
Back home, I couldn't stop thinking about galettes, the buckwheat crêpes from Brittany. So I started making them at farmers markets and catering weddings, and people loved them.
At the end of 2019 I went to Paris for proper training. I'd sent letters to all the restaurants I dreamed of working at, and none of them could take me. So I made a list of about 100 restaurants and went door to door. The second one was Maison. Chef Sota Atsumi had opened it a month earlier, and they took me on.
What I loved most wasn't only the cooking. It was meeting the guests, then taking them to my favorite spot for lunch the next week. That's when I figured out my favorite part of food is the people around the table.
When I got home, I turned my parents' house into a restaurant for a 7-course Valentine's pop-up: about 150 guests over three nights. That led to years of pop-ups, brunches with lines down the block, and private cheffing, and later developing recipes and food products for Ballerina Farm.
Why bikes
A few years ago my mom and I rode RAGBRAI, all the way across Iowa. Seeing a place slowly, town by town and meal by meal, stuck with me.
I've been saving Google Maps pins for years. There are thousands of them. This year I had a cluster in Skåne, at the southern tip of Sweden, all within about 70 miles of each other. I was going to road-trip to them, and then I thought: why not bike? I posted the rough route and people lit up. I rode it in July, then rode through the Basque Country in October, and I haven't stopped thinking about it since.
See photos from my past trips →
What these trips are
Cooking introduced me to the world of chefs and the secrets they keep: where to eat, where to stay, who's doing something special. These trips are how I share those secrets. Small groups, good roads, the best local cooking I know, and a group of new friends to share it with.
Come ride with me. 🚲
See you out there,
Alex