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Chef Marcus is a German chef with a capital C. He may
not know how to make the best of Appam from Kerala, but he knows how he
wants it done for the dish he has conjured up with Scottish scallops flown
that morning from Scotland. It had to be very thin and not too brown piece,
of a certain diameter to fit on the shell on which he planned to serve
the dish; he is a stickler for presentation. It was here and now that
he decided upon the number of pieces of scallops to be used for the dish-each
piece costing the hotel a princely Rs.210 but not a factor in his choice
of number of pieces.I had accepted the invitation of the Chef to come
to La Piazza kitchen on Thursday evening, a few days before the dinner
organised by the Delhi Wine Club to taste all the dishes on the menu.
Every dish was new, one-off and had never been made in the restaurant.
Said Marcus, 'the fusion of dishes has been in my mind. I will have to
taste the dish after actually making it now and tasting it and deciding
it what it needs to improve.' 'That is not all. We have to figure out
a way to present and serve the dish in 4-5 minutes to around 50 members
of your club'- a rather daunting task.
It was a novel experience of tasting food rather than
wine for a wine dinner. 'My job is like a winemaker where I have to put
to practice what is in my mind, 'said Marcus.
Indian food with western touch
A few days earlier and before he had reached this penultimate
round of the 'wine dinner in the making', Chef Marcus had spent two hours
with Chef Rakshit Sharma, the head chef of the Indian cuisine at the Aangan
restaurant, deciding on what dishes to conjure up. We did not want the
regular kebab and kurrie type of Indian cuisine. He has a penchant for
making Indian dishes with French and Italian style of cooking, with the
result that the presentation and cooking style is mostly western but spices,
ingredients and flavours remain Indian.
Making of the Chef
The journey from working in a small family owned restaurant
near Frankfurt, serving fresh-cooked, simple but honest German food, to
working in Delhi has been quite circuitous for Chef Marcus, taking him
through several fine dining restaurants in Düsseldorf, Hamburg, London
where he worked for a year. This was followed by another year's stint
in Le Meridien at the Piccadilly where he picked up his culinary skills
in preparing French food.
From French bistro to an establishment handling 2000-3000
hungry stomachs at a go in banquets, he ended up with Hyatt Regency- opposite
the Dome in Cologne where he really got into 'fusion foods' during the
3 years, which he was in charge. The next stop at a Hyatt in Perth as
a sous- chef for two years and finally 3 years as the Executive Chef and
our man Marcus had 'arrived'.
He arrived in India about two and a half years ago and
has been enjoying looking over the preparation of around 450 dishes in
the menu at the 5 restaurants at the Hyatt, serving about 800-900 guests
every day; a number that goes up to an average of 1500-2000 counting banquets.
Chef the Artist
Of course, it is not every day that a totally different
and unique menu is designed, like he had done for the Delhi Wine Club.
'Making a menu is a very creative exercise. Sometimes you may not be in
the mood at all to make or think of one. I may need a walk or even open
the fridge to look at the ingredients to get me in the mood.
After all, to a chef like Marcus, it is a passion and
not just a job. It would be dull, boring and killing if I looked upon
it as a job. I must be in a happy mood to cook –only then I can
give my best,' he says.
As might be expected of a chef, Marcus prefers to be
'on the stove'. 'I prefer to be in the kitchen and not on the computer,
as I have to at times.' A substantial part of his job is to look at the
costs and quality of the ingredients. 'Surprisingly we don't need to worry
much about meats- they are bought fresh daily and we can tell the quality.
But I don't understand why the wholesalers are always trying to trouble
us with the quality of fresh vegetables and fruits- this is always a big
challenge for us.
Customer is the King
'I believe that our cuisine must be as authentic as
possible with little compromise. That is why we hire an Italian chef for
La Piazza and Chinese chefs for The China Kitchen. But we always have
to adjust to the local tastes. Risotto and pasta are glaring examples
where the classic style is 'Al dente'. We have had so much trouble where
the food would come back to the kitchen with the comments that it was
raw.
Now we even ask the customer whether he would like it
'Al dente'. Still there are some customers who apparently even travel
abroad and insist on having that style but when the food reaches them
on the table, they complain it is not well cooked. Once, we even had a
customer who ordered Al dente and was furious with the serving. Where
was his al dente in the dish he had ordered, he wanted to know? Well customer
is the king. Rather than arguing, we put some condiments on top and he
accepted it happily.
Talking of authenticity, I asked him if they changed
the menu or the style of the dish often. 'Half of our dishes are signature
dishes, the ones people order often. We cannot touch them. 90% of our
desserts are like that too. In fact, I tried to change some salad and
antipasti in La Piazza as they had only a passing similarity to the authentic
Italian dish. The customers were so upset that we had to revert to the
original, non- Italian style.
Chef Marcus is equivocally against changing the style
of classic dishes. 'I would never modify Tiramisu in La Piazza, for example.
No fusion food in this restaurant, though I won't mind experimenting with
a strawberry Tiramisu, for example in the banquets.'
Food in the banquets
Why is the food in the banquets indifferent at times?'
I asked the Chef. That seemed to upset him,' that is not true at all.
All the dishes served are supposed to be as delicious as those in the
restaurant. Of course, we have live stations for pasta, risotto and other
stuff that loses flavour fast. Granted the tandoori rotis can be an issue
but unless we have the whole room filled with tandoors, this problem cannot
be resolved,' he says wryly.
The bigger problem he says his chefs face is that the
number of expected guests go haywire at times. It is not uncommon to have
a thousand guests descent when the hosts have given an indication of six
hundred. We do the best we can on those occasions, but that may not be
good enough for the client.'
Chef and I
Chef Marcus and I spent over three hours going over
all the dishes in the menu, tweaking and tuning for the Indian palate.
He took mental notes of some of my suggestions. No wonder when the D-day
came a few days later, the members and guests loved the food – the
Indian with western presentation.
As on earlier occasions, no one missed the Indian bread
or the daals even though we had made them optional and kept ready in the
contingency plan.
Not many in the gathering that evening could have guessed
that the menu had been designed and the food crafted under the watchful
eyes of a full blooded German Chef from a small town near Frankfurt.
Subhash Arora
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