Life> Delicacies

European stars descend on city to offer a heavenly feast

By Ye Jun (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-06-27 14:11

French chef Rene Meilleur showcases his culinary skills at Le Pre Lenotre in Beijing. Yin Yafei / For China Daily

Italian chef Igor Macchia will offer a three-course set lunch priced at 188 yuan ($29) per person from June 24-31 at Aria, China World Hotel's modern European restaurant. For dinner a la carte, Macchia will prepare five starters, five main courses and three desserts, along with chef Matthew McCool.

Macchia has come to China a few times, but this is only his second visit to Beijing.

"Ten years ago, Italian food to most people was just tomato, garlic and pasta," he says. "But now, in Italy, food is all about simplicity. We don't want to confuse people with too many ingredients."

He says it is the same with service - "no more white gloves". At his restaurant in Italy, he tries to be as approachable as possible.

The chef enjoys experimenting. His offerings at Aria will see the inclusion of coffee beans, smoked mash potato, and foie gras on beef fillet. He will also use an ingredient commonly used at home, hazelnut oil, to give flavor to fresh asparagus and agnolotti.

The agnolotti is served covered in napkin, as it has been for the past 100 years in Italian tradition. Italy, like the rest of Europe, is seeing a growing return to tradition.

Macchia's restaurant La Credenza in Torino earned one Michelin star in 2006. It is a small restaurant of just 35-40 seats. He describes his cooking style as "contemporary", although he does offer traditional foods - albeit treated in new ways.

One of Macchia's secrets is to combine contrasts: cold with warm, crisp with soft, and sour with sweet.

"A new dish should first of all be a balance of ingredients and flavors, which will leave you thinking about it after finishing it," he says. "Ideally, it should have some kind of history and culture behind it, so people will remember it."

Novelties of his spread include asparagus salad with mashed potato and carrot juice, hazelnut oil, beef and spinach agnolotti with Parmesan cheese, beef tenderloin with smoked potato and foie gras.

Meanwhile, 61-year-old French chef Rene Meilleur will showcase his culinary skills at Le Pre Lenotre from June 23-30. His five-course spread comes at 688 yuan per person, and the 7-course one at 1,088 yuan per person, plus a 15 percent surcharge.

The veteran chef's Michelin two-star restaurant La Bouitte is located near the French Alps at Saint Martin-de-Belleville. Meilleur says he has always liked discovering new tastes since he was young. He turned a chef at 23 and started with very traditional foods such as local ham and cheese. But after working in Paul Bocuse's restaurant in Lyons in 1981, he began thinking of new ideas.

A dish prepared by Italian chef Igor Macchia. Provided to China Daily

His search for seasonal produce and new recipes often lead him to search for herbs in the Alps.

"Some of the herbs are sweet, some are bitter. But like in Chinese cuisine, if you put the bitter one with other ingredients, it will taste stronger," the chef says.

He says 10 years ago in France, cooking became more complex as people began pursuing trends such as molecular gastronomy. But now they are back to seeking out the authentic taste of a dish.

"Working with meat and fish is easy, and anybody can do it," he says. "I try to work with herbs, and vegetables, which give the dishes much more flavor. But I always try to find my own way of doing it."

One salad in Meilleur's restaurant has 42 herbs, served with a chopstick so that customers can pick out each one to try.

Meilleur says he knows the exact taste of each and every ingredient and before putting a new dish on the menu, he tries it up to 10 times to get the taste absolutely right.

The chef wants to share with people in Beijing "the real taste and cuisine of his region". So all the dishes he will present will be those he can find ingredients for locally.

Besides old favorites such as pan-fried duck liver, corn pancake and honey sauce, he will bring to Beijing snail "pot au feu" served with countryside bread and tomatoes.

Meilleur is confident of wooing his Chinese customers with his hot chocolate mousse, and potato soup with black truffle and potato powder. But he also recommends wagyu beef fillet, with pan-fried artichokes and truffle emulsion, something he makes a lot at home.