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MANILA, Philippines - Who is the Australian-born, UK-based chef best known for celebrating great Japanese cuisine as former head chef of Nobu London. He is known for mixing Japanese food with foie gras.
Born and raised in Rutland, Australia, his introduction to cooking was somehow unconventional. When he was 14 years old, a friend of his mother’s owned a small hotel with a Chinese restaurant. His mother, herself a good family cook, suggested it would be an ideal place for him to get a Saturday job.
Rather than playing drums like his friends, he would sit there chopping vegetables during weekends. Western Australia was to provide a more informative culinary base years later when he found himself working in a French kitchen under a former sous chef of La Gavroche
Passionate about cooking and dessert-making contests, he was quickly recruited by one of the best hotels in Australia, the Hayman Resort, on the Great Barrier Reef. He then discovered Asian cuisine in other establishments while traveling for and promoting Hayman resorts in Singapore and Taiwan. His career then took him to Canada and to Europe working for Asian restaurants.
Recruited by the Nobu chain of restaurants that was showing shown the entire world a new wave of Japanese gastronomy, he became head chef of Nobu London.
“More and more western chefs are definitely discovering, admiring, referring to, and being inspired by Japanese cuisine,” he says. “That’s because it offers a new look on food, with a heavy dose of healthfulness. Japanese cuisine offers food combinations and ingredients that have interesting results in terms of health of digestivity. Take the grated daikon sauce that goes with tempura, as a good example. It’s both delicious and excellent for digesting meats or fried fish.”
His signature dish, Beef Tataki with Onion Ponzu and Garlic Chips, has been a hit with customers for years. It’s good quality beef fillet seared briefly, then plunged into iced water to stop the cooking. Essentially the beef inside is raw, like sashimi. It is then thinly sliced and served with an onion Ponzu, a citrus based soy dressing. Mixed with diced onion and garlic it is then topped with spring onions and crunchy garlic chips.
He worked for Nobu for seven years before opening his own restaurant Wabi in the UK. Careful planning has gone into the restaurant’s food and wine, for which a specialist sommelier was hired. Special attention goes into the sourcing of ingredients, which include beautiful, pearly pink salt made from cherry blossom.
Pushing the boundaries to create new recipes not previously tried and tested, his prime directive at Wabi is to “provide unexpected contrasts of flavors and textures. Nothing is what is seems. The idea is to provoke surprise, and delight the diner. Our customers go back to Wabi, not just to eat, but to enjoy umami, which is a Japanese word that means “good flavor.”
Believing that foie gras and Japanese cooking are made for each other, he serves foie gras in sushi; with Nambau Zuki, the Japanese version of escabeche; and in a popular dish called okonomiyaki, which is sort of an omelet. In 2006, he published a book with 56 recipes of this surprising match.
He has enjoyed meeting and cooking for former President Bill Clinton, and celebrities like Michael Jackson, Renee Zellwegger, and the Beckhams.
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Last week’s Question: Who is this architect known as the godfather of Italy’s post-war architecture?
Answer: Gio Ponti
Winner: Scarlet I. Taguibos of Baguio City
