Gourmet Summit Diary

This is my fourth World Gourmet Summit in Singapore.

In previous years, I have heard the best chefs in the world discuss their cuisines, interviewed some big names (Ferran Adria was here two years’ ago) and eaten some amazing meals.

 

   This year, much of the summit is being held in the new Resorts World Sentosa, a development that had not opened when I was last here two years ago and which had not even been dreamt of when I attended my first summit. This has its advantages: most events are walking distance from each other. And it has its downside: I am not staying in one of Singapore’s many excellent hotels but in a family-style property designed to service the resort’s theme parks, which is full of screaming children and has a cheerfully down-market look about it.
Day One

 

   My very first event on Sunday night, a few hours after I land, is dinner at Tung Lok Classics, one of the many restaurants run in this city by Andrew Tijoe, the king of Singapore’s restaurant scene.

 

   Tung Lok Classics is one of Andrew’s Chinese restaurants and he is hosting visiting chef David Zhang from Xihe Yayuan, one of the best-known Peking duck restaurants in Beijing. Andrew says that the food on the mainland is subtly different from the food in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan, so I am looking forward to see what David will come up with.

 

   We start with foie gras, not a terribly Chinese ingredient but because the sauce is made from fermented rice wine, the liver has a Chinese edge to it. The soup is one of those Chinese classics that get conservationists so agitated: double-boiled sharks fin with abalone. I am not a fan of abalone and avoid sharks fin unless it seems rude but I can tell that this is a superior soup with a deep and intense`flavour.

 

   If sharks fin is politically incorrect, then the next course is just generally dodgy. The name sea cucumber has a suitably salad-like ring to it. Which is just as well, because the so-called cucumber is really a large slug.

 

   David Zhang braises his slug and then serves it with an unusual sauce made with millet, a grain that is not normally used in Chinese restaurants outside the mainland. A slug is a slug but this is much better than I had dared imagine.

 

   Next comes a dish that I recognise at least vaguely. It is Japanese kurobuta pork with a familiar Sichaun pepper sauce. It is the highlight of the meal so far. Then comes David’s celebrated Peking duck. People always tell you that the Peking duck you get outside of China is nothing like the real thing. I have to disagree. This duck is very like the Peking duck that the Hyatt serves at its China Kitchen restaurant in Delhi. The difference lies in the duck itself which has a little more fat than the Hyatt duck. And while the Hyatt serves its duck with sugar, garlic paste and Hoisin sauce, David does a dozen accompaniments, each slightly more unusual than the last.

 

   The most surprising accompaniment is a children’s sweet that is variously described as pop rocks or space dust. In essence, it consists of small particles of candy that fizz on your tongue once you try and eat them. When you dip your duck into space dust it does lend a slightly unusual touch but I am not sure that it adds very much to the experience overall. But then, David is one of the world’s greatest Peking duck chefs and I am just an ignorant Indian, so what do I know?

 

   A few more courses follow before the dessert arrives. It is a glass of chilled Hashima jelly with wolfberries topped with a lime sorbet. I have no idea what Hashima is and Andrew refuses to tell me about the dish until after I’ve eaten it. Later he chuckles: “On top of the jelly we had the Fallopian tubes of a female frog who was in her fertile phase. This means that the Fallopian tubes were full of eggs.” He pauses to laugh loudly. “If I had told you that, you would never have eaten it.”

 

   He is, of course, entirely correct. But as much as my brain rebels at the thought of eating frog spawn, I have to admit that the dessert was fine. I’m still not sure why it was necessary to slaughter Kermit’s sister and to extract her Fallopian tubes. The dessert would have been fine even without it.

 

   Afterwards, David emerges from the kitchen and Andrew and he settle down to many glasses of a liqueur they call Ergutou which is 56 per cent alcohol and tastes like it. I take a solitary sip and abandon my glass but Andrew and David continue knocking back the alcohol. “So,” I say, “the Chinese clearly have a great capacity for alcohol. Which nation do you suppose has the least capacity? Who gets drunk the quickest?”

 

   Andrew doesn’t have to think about that one. “Indians,” he says flatly.

 

   After that, there is no way I’m going to touch another drop of this motor spirit masquerading as a liqueur.

 

Day two

 

The summit has organised what it calls jam sessions at Universal Studios, a theme park which is part of the Sentosa complex. These consist of talks and demonstrations by some of the celebrity chefs who have flown in for the summit. The day I attend, the jam session is packed out with people who have paid good money for tickets mainly to hear and see Marco Pierre White, the biggest star at this year’s summit.

 

   In his heyday, Marco was the most respected chef in the English-speaking world. He was the first of the bad boys from the kitchen (Gordon Ramsay was one of his underlings at Harvey’s, his first restaurant), threw his weight around, fancied himself as a stud and delighted in being rude to guests.

 

   He wouldn’t have got away with this except for two redeeming features. The first was that women found him irresistible. It was not uncommon for female food writers to include some reference to his saturnine good looks (“eyes that can glaze a crème brulee at 20 feet” was a typical description). Men were generally more scathing about his looks (rival chefs called him “the greasy-haired one”) but what nobody disputed was that he was an excellent chef, bringing a fresh British take to French cuisine. He was the first British chef to get three stars from Michelin and Ramsay is only one of his many sous chefs to have found success later.

 

"Nobody in the room has heard of Curley before but there is no doubt that, this afternoon at least, he is the chef and Marco is a pitch-man."

   But somewhere along the way, Marco decided that cooking bored him. So, he returned his three stars and closed his main restaurant. (Up to this point, he was only repeating what Joel Robuchon had already done.) But then, things began to unravel when the restaurants that Marco (backed by various faceless investors) had opened began to flounder. He took over the classic Mirabelle on Curzon Street and ran it to the ground. He opened the Italian Luciano with much fanfare, only to have it close soon after. Other ventures including partnerships with sporting figures and steakhouses have fared marginally better but it is fair to say that few chefs take him very seriously these days while simultaneously acknowledging his historical importance. In that sense, his career progression has differed from Robuchon. The great French chef is now the head of a flourishing international restaurant empire while Marco struggles (my guess is that Gordon Ramsay will go the Marco way).

 

   What has finished Marco off in the eyes of many chefs is his current role as pitchman for Knorr chicken stock cubes. Marco appears in Knorr ads declaring that the secret of his cuisine is a stock cube, a claim that horrifies serious chefs who pride themselves on their own stocks and surprises many of his old colleagues who do not remember Marco being excessively reliant on stock cubes in the days when he actually cooked. Clearly, Knorr pays him handsomely and this, in turn, breeds more jealousy and envy.

 

   Marco is at the summit as a brand ambassador for Knorr so I am intrigued to see which dish he will demonstrate. Will it be one of those Marco classics that so transformed British cuisine in the 1990s?

 

   Well, actually no. Marco has decided to make pepper steak, a decent enough dish but not one that you want to learn from a former Michelin three-star chef. Besides, Marco’s pitch seems a little surprising. He advises us not to put salt and pepper in the seasoning of the steak. The salt, he says, will dry out the steak by extracting the juices and the pepper will get washed off in the cooking.

 

   This runs counter to the conventional wisdom on the subject but Marco might have a point. Sadly, he then causes our eyebrows to rise when he says that instead of salt and pepper we should use Knorr seasoning which is so much better. The steak is cooked in the usual way (seared in the pan and then placed in the oven) but it is Marco’s pepper sauce that causes some consternation. He pours two-thirds of a bottle of Worcestershire sauce into a pan (he keeps referring to it as Lea and Perrins so I am not sure if there is a commercial tie-up) and then reduces the sauce before adding cream. Then comes a little more Knorr seasoning and the dish is ready.

 

   Ah well, at least the good people at Knorr will be happy.

 

   Marco departs and Ian Curley from a Melbourne restaurant takes over. Curley clearly has no time for Marco, refers snidely to the great man’s commercial commitments and sets out to prove Marco wrong. He cooks his steak the old-fashioned way with salt and pepper in the seasoning and goes on to demonstrate that no matter what Marco claims, the pepper does not wash off in the cooking and the salt tenderizes the steak. He is leery of Marco’s sauce-from-a-bottle approach and prefers a simpler but authentic approach.

 

   Nobody in the room has heard of Curley before but there is no doubt that, this afternoon at least, he is the chef and Marco is a pitch-man.

 

   I have dinner at Osia, a nice casual restaurant, a stone’s throw from the jam sessions where Fergus Henderson is the visiting celebrity chef. Henderson is the chef’s chef. Nearly every chef you speak to will sing Henderson’s praises and will talk about the simplicity and honesty he brings to his cooking at St John in London, which now has a Michelin star but routinely makes it to the upper reaches of most lists of the world’s greatest restaurants.

 

   Henderson’s speciality is what he calls ‘nose-to-tail eating’, which is a nice way of saying that he uses a lot of offal and creates his best dishes from the part of the animal that other chefs throw away. His gourmet summit menu, however, goes easy on the offal but includes his most famous dish: bone marrow salad with parsley.

 

   This consists of two large chunks of beef bone. You are expected to extract the marrow from the bones, put it on a charcoal-seared toast made to his own bread recipe and to top it with fresh parsley. I am not a lover of marrow but even I have to concede that once you’ve buttered the toast and added a little salt, this is an amazing dish. By the time I had finished my plate, I was ready for another.

 

   My main course was a perfectly-cooked lamb shank, intense and unctuous at the same time. For dessert, there was the best rice pudding I have ever eaten served with crème anglaise.

 

   There was no ponciness to the food. It was simple, hearty and honest. Each ingredient tasted of itself. And there were no fancy cooking techniques employed. I am scheduled to meet Henderson the next day and intend to discuss the meal with him.

 

(There are still three more days to go, so this diary will resume in a day or so. This version is specially written for the site but there will probably be a shorter article on the summit in Rude Food in a couple of weeks.)

 

Day three

 

An interview with Fergus Henderson at Osia, where he is the visiting celebrity chef. Fergus is called the chef’s chef because he is so highly regarded by his peers. It helps that he is a nice guy, almost entirely devoid of ego or ill-will.

 

   It is clear for instance, that his style is far removed from Marco Pierre White’s. But while Henderson will concede that Marco is more pitch-man than chef these days he will not say anything critical or rude about the Great Man.

 

   Surprisingly, Henderson’s influences are traditional French chefs. He venerates the late Ferdinand Point, both for his reinvention of classical cuisine and, or so it seems, his personal style. (“He was a big fat guy who drank a magnum of champagne a day...”) And he says that he was heavily influenced by Paul Bocuse. Henderson may have his reservations about the food that Bocuse is currently serving but once again, he is impressed by the French chef’s style. (“Even at this age, he stands tall and proud...”)

 

   We talk about the tendency of chefs to shout and scream in the kitchen. Henderson says that he is horrified by foul-mouthed chefs who take pride in berating those who slave in their kitchens: “It only happens in England. Some of the things one hears about chefs and how they behave are appalling.”

 

   I tell him that I liked his food and he is quick to cite its origins. The rice pudding recipe, he says, is not his own but is a variation on something that Simon Hopkinson first did. As for offal, he says, that the dishes only work if they are crafted carefully: “I went to a restaurant in New York where the chef had just lightly grilled a whole sheep’s head and served it. That sort of thing just doesn’t work. Chefs think that they are being macho by cooking offal. But that was never the point.”

 

   For lunch, I venture out of Gourmet Summit territory and try a local Italian restaurant that is recommended by Jen (Jennifer Wee-Almodiel), who handles the media for the Summit. It is her favourite restaurant, she says.

 

   Jen has good taste. Otto, run by chef-owner Michele Pavanello, is a smallish Italian place that is off the tourist trail. The chef brings many of the dishes out of the kitchen himself so it has the air of a family-run trattoria.

 

   Except that the food is far too sophisticated for any trattoria. We start with cocoa-encrusted foie gras which is cooked to a fatty firmness. Then, there is slow-cooked slipper lobster which is a triumph of taste and texture before we eat Otto’s signature dish. This is a slab of suckling pig, with a perfect balance between crisp skin and a richly melting flesh that tastes like the pig rolled around in butter for 24 hours before ending up in Michele’s kitchen.

 

   This is easily the best meal I have had so far. If Otto was in a city with a Michelin Guide, it would certainly get a star.

 

   For dinner, I escape from the Summit again to try the Malaysian Food Street at Resorts World. I have shot in food streets in Malaysia before (for the Asian Diary series on Travel and Living) and I love Malaysian hawker fare. I know that anything in Resorts World will have a theme-park feel to it but that does not worry me unduly. Singapore has a tradition of kidnapping its hawkers and relocating them to specially-designed food centres. But even then, the food is incredible.

 

   What comes as a surprise is not that the food is so bad – that was always a risk. The real surprise is that the Food Street is so badly organised. Everything in Singapore runs like clockwork – except, apparently, the Food Street. There are long queues for everything. The food runs out quickly so that even when you get to the top of the line having queued up for 15 minutes, all you get is a number. They tell you to come back half an hour or a full hour later when your number is called. I spend a lot of time standing in line and eat a lot of rubbish in the hope of finding one decent dish.

 

   It is a disappointing end to the day.

 

Day Four

 

It’s all very odd. I am to eat at Song of India where the visiting chef is my friend, Vikas Khanna. I have always refused to go to Indian restaurants at these summits on the grounds that I would much rather use the opportunity to discover something new. But I am told that the Song of India people have made a special request and besides, I would gladly go anywhere to eat Vikas’ food.

 

   So, it is strange that when I show up at the restaurant, the man behind the desk refuses to allow me into the dining room. There is no booking in my name, he asserts, and anyway, the restaurant is fully booked. I explain to him that perhaps the table is booked in the name of the World Gourmet Summit or media or something like that. He examines his list again and announces, in the smug tones of a petty bureaucrat in a small-town municipal corporation, that there is no booking of any kind. I am tempted to turn around and go somewhere else but out of regard for Vikas, I persist.

 

"Though Bruno has held three Michelin stars, he is largely unknown in the West because he won his stars in Tokyo, serving top quality French food to well-heeled Japanese clients."

   I call Jen at the Gourmet Summit while the bureaucrat peers at me with scarcely-concealed suspicion. Jen says she will sort it out but I make one more attempt to persuade the municipal clerk. Is Vikas in the restaurant, I ask. He will vouch for me. Yes he is, I am told. So, can I speak to him? “No, he is busy with guests,” says the clerk, indicating that I am not a guest and therefore not worthy of meeting the chef.

 

   Finally, Jen gets through to the owner who is appalled by the mix-up. They find me a table and offer champagne to make amends. (I don’t drink at lunch so this is not much help.)

 

   Now that I have made it past the bureaucrat at the door, the experience improves dramatically. The food is as good as I would expect from Vikas: a light soup of vegetables and edible flowers; baigan chaat; an intense jamun sorbet; and mirchi-flavoured lamb chops.

 

   There are many Indians in the restaurant who cannot control their excitement at being in the same room as Vikas Khanna. And they are not disappointed. Vikas goes from table to table talking to guests and poses willingly for photos with entire families. The real surprise, however, comes in the dishes that are not cooked by Vikas but by Manjunath Mural, the restaurant’s own chef. Manjunath’s menu takes in food from every part of India (he is a Bombay boy, half Maharashtrian and half Kannadiga) and most dishes are flawlessly executed. Manjunath is also a very nice guy, modest but quietly passionate about food. His manner reminds me of a humbler M.S. Dhoni.

 

  Later, I try and work out how they got the greeting so wrong. Had the bureaucrat really lost my reservation? Why did he refuse to tell Vikas that I wanted to speak to him? Why was his manner so unfriendly and suspicious? Even the claim that the restaurant was full was false. There were three tables near mine which stayed empty all afternoon.

 

   It is always a shame when a good chef is let down by the ineptitude of the front of the house staff. This restaurant deserves a greeter and a manager, not a municipal clerk.

 

   In the afternoon, I interview Bruno Menard. Though Bruno has held three Michelin stars, he is largely unknown in the West because he won his stars in Tokyo, serving top quality French food to well-heeled Japanese clients. He has now moved to Singapore where he will open two new restaurants this year.

 

   Why has Bruno resolved not to stay on in Japan? Why is he walking away from his stars? He loves Japan, he says, but the Japanese expect perfection on a daily basis. One slip and you are out. No mistake is ever forgotten. Finally, he concludes, the pressure just got too much for him. Better to cook in Singapore with no stars than worry about retaining three stars in Tokyo.

 

   Dinner is cooked by a two-star Michelin chef, Michel Sarran, a legend in his native Toulouse. Sarran’s food is patchy tonight. There is an interesting foie gras soup with oysters and a darkly delicious pigeon. But the fish course is disappointing and borders on unacceptable while the dessert is pretty pathetic.

 

   More interesting than Sarran’s food is the restaurant itself. My Humble House is yet another of Andrew Tijoe’s ventures. (He collaborates with ITC for the Delhi Humble House.) I first went to this My Humble House years ago at a previous Gourmet Summit and remember it as being quite different. Now, Andrew has spent a fortune on giving it a complete facelift and it looks like an elegant Paris restaurant.

 

   Though the My Humble House cuisine is Chinese, the kitchen has gone all-French for the Gourmet Summit. The regular menu has been suspended for the duration of Sarran’s residency. But My Humble House is still packed out day and night and they have had to stop taking bookings once they have passed the 80-cover mark because Sarran cannot cope.

 

   Perhaps the great Toulouse legend’s food is usually of a higher calibre and this is an off night. But this dinner time at least, the restaurant is better than the chef.

 

(This is the second blog post from the Summit and is exclusive to the site. There will be an article on the Summit in the Rude Food section in two weeks time.)