Welcome to Traveling Through, a podcast hosted by David Prior, where we trace the places, encounters, and unexpected discoveries that have influenced some of today’s most creative minds. Listen on Apple Music, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Chef Flynn McGarry sprang into the spotlight with his supper club, Eureka, before going on to stage at Eleven Madison Park and Alinea—all before turning 16. Yet his conversation with David Prior in the latest episode of Traveling Through has surprisingly little to do with cooking.

Instead, the chef behind Cove—his newly opened downtown Manhattan restaurant that braids together Californian, New Nordic, and East Coast influences—reflects on the trips that have changed the way he thinks about hospitality. There was the tiny kitchen in Oslo where ten people taught him how a restaurant should feel; Dries Van Noten’s home in Belgium, where acorn doorknobs and untreated chestnut walls expanded his idea of luxury; and a night alone at a Kyoto ryokan where looking at his phone “felt gross.”

Running through the conversation is a simple question: What makes a place worth traveling for when work feels inescapable and one’s time is at a premium? “People are willing to travel for a point of view,” he says, describing destinations where food is only one part of the draw.

For McGarry’s part, traveling has become an integral part of his business, which also includes a chic little homewares store. We learn how Japanese set lunches and Malibu’s beachy elegance have influenced Cove (which he designed himself), why he thinks the marathon tasting menu is fading into irrelevance, the reason his job is now “more design than actual cooking,” and the surprising project he hopes will define the next chapter of his career.

Watch the full episode above, or listen by subscribing on Apple Music or Spotify.