Remembering falling in love with Asia and its cuisine

ON FALLING IN LOVE WITH ASIA AND ITS CUISINE

After my transfer to Washington DC, I was granted a 1-month cross exposure to the Legendary Mandarin Oriental Hotel in mid-late 2009.

On arrival, I remember it was like landing on Mars. Everything was different, no one spoke English, and the people were of small stature, very polite and smiley though.  Later I would come to know that Thailand is widely known for as “the Land of Smiles.”

I was on a special program to expose me to Chinese and Thai cookery.  I spent four weeks tasting absolutely everything I could while taking notes and menus that I still have to this day. It was at this time though as I ate, I got a full-body rash It was determined I was allergic to both sharks fin and the entire family of Guava. I am glad to have shark fin allergy as this is a horrible practice. Snake fruit (related to Guava) which I ravenously consumed one day only to repeat the rash again.

One thing that was most amazing was the fine skills Asian chefs have in their hands makes European chefs actually look clumsy.  They have incredible attention to detail.  They also manage amazing teamwork, I came to realize that Asian Chefs as a whole, are much better at teamwork.  They all worked tirelessly at incredible speed and accuracy for up to 12 hours a day doing 2 busy services in both the Chinese Restaurant and Thai Royal Cuisine Sala Rim Nan at the Mandarin Oriental in Bangkok.

Another amazing thing that was happening at the time was the Chinese Moon cake festival.  The Oriental kitchen had a production kitchen to handle this in coordination with the Chinese kitchen for the magnificent fillings such as black sesame, lotus seed, Egg yolk Red Bean, Green tea, etc.

These are traditionally purchased as gifts for family, friends, business partners, etc.  An important part of this is the design of the box usually containing 12 moon cakes of various flavors textures. The Mandarin Oriental was making up to 14000 pieces finished baked, cooled, and ready for packing the next day. This goes on for about 20 days. It was at this moment I became dedicated to getting to Asia fulltime Somehow.

More on my culinary adventures in Thailand and my big move to China in upcoming blogs.