for three weeks at fourteen restaurants and seven first-class hotels downtown, including the Conrad Hotel near City Hall. The summit is famous for its renowned chefs, who come from all over the world to cook and satisfy appetites and teach master classes. You can taste the works of Michelin-starred chefs and converse with them without flying all the way to Europe. Anyone who works at Nove for at least six months can attend for educational purposes.
This year Chef is leaving Manager Park in charge of the restaurant and going to the summit with the most junior cooks, Choi and Kim. It’s rare for Chef to accompany them, and it’s even more surprising that he suggests that I attend a wine workshop. There is always more to learn, Chef says. I know this, but hearing it pains my heart. His voice reveals that he knows I’m wavering in the kitchen between chicken and duck, eggplant and onion. Or you can just take some time to rest, Chefsays. I don’t recognize this version of Chef—I’m looking at someone who’s usually curt but who has suddenly turned very sweet. A man who is stern and standoffish should continue to be like that until the day he dies. It wouldn’t be as sad. I’m not saying you should go to the summit and just rest. You have to eat something different for every meal . I nod. Chef might be more worried about my eroding sense of taste than about my well-being. When a cook starts to lose his sense of taste, the best way to cure it is to leave the kitchen and eat food prepared by other cooks. Just as the best way to treat someone with an eating disorder is to bring him into the kitchen and have him make something. Three days. It’s also a chance to test myself, to see if I can go without thinking about Seok-ju. As we board the plane I mumble, At least it’s not an entire week.
We’re staying at the Metropol, which is a seven-minute walk across the bridge from City Hall, where the five-star hotels are clustered and where most of the events will be taking place. Chef and Kim are sharing one room and Choi and I will share the other. As soon as we get to the hotel we disperse according to each person’s schedule of events. Singapore in April is busy and humid and congested. I change into a cotton skirt, a white T-shirt with sleeves I can roll up, and light sneakers. If Seok-ju were here he would tease, All white again? Even when I wear sky blue it has white polka dots on it; if I wear a striped T-shirt, the stripes are white. You always have to wear white, like a birthmark! he’d say, smiling as if he’d discovered something amazing. I wear white in the kitchen, to feel at home. I smooth the front of my clothes and decide to go eat laksa.
Singapore bursts at the seams with gourmets from all around the world. To determine who is a gourmet and who is not is as uncertain a dilemma as figuring out where a duck’s head starts and its body ends. It’s not important whether someone is a gourmet. Everyone wants to eat and knows that food is crucialto live. But everyone has his own special reaction toward food. One person can become so excited about a certain dish that his eyes sparkle and his muscles harden, while someone else shovels in the same dish without paying any thought to what he’s eating. A gourmet appreciates beauty. Gourmets eat slowly and thoughtfully experience taste—they don’t rush through a meal and leave the table as soon as they’re done. People who are not gourmets don’t see cooking as art. Gourmandism is an interest in everything that can be eaten, and this deep affection for food birthed the art of cooking. Other animals have limited tastes, some eating only plants and others subsisting solely on meat, but humans are omnivores. They can eat everything. Love for delicious food is the first emotion gourmets feel. Sometimes that love can’t be thwarted, not by anything.
Foie gras is the most popular gourmet food, but it isn’t always easy to come by. In the 1970s, America banned the
This year Chef is leaving Manager Park in charge of the restaurant and going to the summit with the most junior cooks, Choi and Kim. It’s rare for Chef to accompany them, and it’s even more surprising that he suggests that I attend a wine workshop. There is always more to learn, Chef says. I know this, but hearing it pains my heart. His voice reveals that he knows I’m wavering in the kitchen between chicken and duck, eggplant and onion. Or you can just take some time to rest, Chefsays. I don’t recognize this version of Chef—I’m looking at someone who’s usually curt but who has suddenly turned very sweet. A man who is stern and standoffish should continue to be like that until the day he dies. It wouldn’t be as sad. I’m not saying you should go to the summit and just rest. You have to eat something different for every meal . I nod. Chef might be more worried about my eroding sense of taste than about my well-being. When a cook starts to lose his sense of taste, the best way to cure it is to leave the kitchen and eat food prepared by other cooks. Just as the best way to treat someone with an eating disorder is to bring him into the kitchen and have him make something. Three days. It’s also a chance to test myself, to see if I can go without thinking about Seok-ju. As we board the plane I mumble, At least it’s not an entire week.
We’re staying at the Metropol, which is a seven-minute walk across the bridge from City Hall, where the five-star hotels are clustered and where most of the events will be taking place. Chef and Kim are sharing one room and Choi and I will share the other. As soon as we get to the hotel we disperse according to each person’s schedule of events. Singapore in April is busy and humid and congested. I change into a cotton skirt, a white T-shirt with sleeves I can roll up, and light sneakers. If Seok-ju were here he would tease, All white again? Even when I wear sky blue it has white polka dots on it; if I wear a striped T-shirt, the stripes are white. You always have to wear white, like a birthmark! he’d say, smiling as if he’d discovered something amazing. I wear white in the kitchen, to feel at home. I smooth the front of my clothes and decide to go eat laksa.
Singapore bursts at the seams with gourmets from all around the world. To determine who is a gourmet and who is not is as uncertain a dilemma as figuring out where a duck’s head starts and its body ends. It’s not important whether someone is a gourmet. Everyone wants to eat and knows that food is crucialto live. But everyone has his own special reaction toward food. One person can become so excited about a certain dish that his eyes sparkle and his muscles harden, while someone else shovels in the same dish without paying any thought to what he’s eating. A gourmet appreciates beauty. Gourmets eat slowly and thoughtfully experience taste—they don’t rush through a meal and leave the table as soon as they’re done. People who are not gourmets don’t see cooking as art. Gourmandism is an interest in everything that can be eaten, and this deep affection for food birthed the art of cooking. Other animals have limited tastes, some eating only plants and others subsisting solely on meat, but humans are omnivores. They can eat everything. Love for delicious food is the first emotion gourmets feel. Sometimes that love can’t be thwarted, not by anything.
Foie gras is the most popular gourmet food, but it isn’t always easy to come by. In the 1970s, America banned the
Similar Books
