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  Taiwan Panorama: A New Fusion Style: Taiwanese... - Taipei Mission in Sweden 駐瑞典台北代表團 :::
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Taiwan Panorama: A New Fusion Style: Taiwanese Chefs Create Downhome Cuisine

pan Hero Restaurant head chefs Hsiao Tsun-yuan (left) and Lin Kai-wei (right). Pictured in the center is Ascend, the owner of the Taipei coffee shop Kopi Ibrik. (photo by Chuang Kung-ju)

In recent years a number of young chefs—perhaps on returning from overseas or after comprehensive training in a high-class restaurant—have independently made the same decision: to open a fusion-style restaurant. They use the cooking techniques of Western cuisine, but their flavor concepts draw on the tastes of their homeland. In this movement to develop Taiwanese takes on Western cuisine, there are hidden questions that chefs cannot avoid: Who am I? Where do I come from? Where do I want to go?

Ascend, owner of the Kopi Ibrik coffee shop, which opened just this year, says: “In the past, if you mentioned Turkish coffee, no one would think it had anything to do with specialty coffee. But now people have started using the language of specialty coffee to talk about Turkish coffee, and to explore such things as its extraction yield, the types of coffee beans used and their places of production, so it is beginning to draw the attention of coffee aficionados.”

The same logic applies in the culinary world. Food and beverages have developed to a point where Western cuisine is a generally recognized international language. But at this point, led by Nordic cuisine, there is a trend toward local style and seasonal cooking. Chefs around the world are drawing on their own cultural DNA and flavor experiences, and using local ingredients to express these within the format of Western cuisine. This enables diners to directly experience local cooking through their own senses, and from there to understand the source of a particular cuisine, without having to draw on outside knowledge.

Innovative dishes with logic and foundations

Today there is a group of rigorously trained chefs who are experimenting with adding Taiwanese or Chinese ele­ments to French cooking, or with creating Western-style foods that meet the dietary habits of Taiwanese. The “creative cuisine” that was popular for a while in the past cannot compare in terms of presentation, combination of flavors, elegance, or completeness, says Ascend. “I categorize these innovative dishes as ‘Taiwanese-style Western cuisine.’”

But what is the biggest difference between such “innovative dishes” and “creative cuisine”?

“The difference is in the ‘foundation,’” says Ascend. In the world of professional cooking, there are no shortcuts, only repeated practice and experimentation, so that a person can build a solid foundation that has stood the test of time. Only then can you add things in a logical, grounded way; otherwise you are just acting blindly.

You will only do this if you miss home

Besides the Hero Restaurant, which opened in December of 2013 and launched this wave of fusion cuisine, Ascend also mentions other representative restaurants, including Akame and Lovely Casual Dining Room. Independently, they have decided not to set up in Taipei, on the front lines of high-end ­restaurants. He says: “Maybe people do this because they miss home.” These chefs have been through rigorous training, but they have ­decided, like a school of migrating fish, to leave the noisy city and return to their hometowns to open restaurants that are entirely their own, in order to fully express their personal characters and depth.

Nicola ­Cheng worked in established Western restaurants like Rialto Cucina Italiana and De Loin Restaurant, while his wife Joelle Chen worked on the service side at De Loin. Together they moved back to Tao­yuan and remodeled the family home into the Lovely Casual Dining Room. In this warm little space, the chef prepared for us a dish of dried scallops and fresh shrimp, prepared with Shao­xing wine, on linguine. In it he used three basic sauces. Besides the not-uncommon French-style shrimp sauce and chicken broth, he marinated the dried scallops in the Shao­xing wine overnight, removed them to steam and shred them, then marinated them again, which provided the main strand of flavor running through the dish.

Joelle Chen is especially fond of old things, so ­Lovely’s foods are mostly served on tableware passed down in her family, or on antique plates. The meal wraps up with Taiwanese tea, served using a tea set passed down from Chen’s grandfather. Taking inspiration from Western herbal teas, guests are welcome to add rose petals, chamomile, and mint. The wafting herbal fragrances add a great deal of pleasure to the meal.

Why use the concepts of Chinese-style cuisine? Nicola ­Cheng responds: “Because I like Chinese food.” Gentle memories of his mother’s signature dishes have become the hidden stream underlying his meals.

Seeking oneness with nature

When the Hero Restaurant moved to Tai­chung from Nan­tou in October of 2016, ­Hsiao Tsun-yuan, the original owner and chef, brought in Lin Kai-wei, who had been a classmate of his in the Department of Chinese Culinary Arts at National Kao­hsiung University of Hospitality and Tourism, to create a dual head chef system, making the whole team more complete. The two had both decided even in university that in the future they would go in the direction of fusion dishes. ­Hsiao has been through a ­baptism of restaurants including Du ­Xiao Yue Taiwan Seafood Cuisine in Yi­lan, L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon in Tai­pei, and the Bulgari restaurant in Tokyo. Lin, on the other hand, after graduation went to the Institut Paul Bocuse in France for advanced training. Even early on in his career, when he was head chef at the Yet-sen Mansion restaurant in Taichung, he was attracting attention. “When I was at Yet-sen, you had to use high-grade materials to show your stuff. There was no emphasis on local ingredients, but some dishes had a Chinese flavor to them.” Lin adds: “Today it’s more comprehensive.”

Of the seasonal dishes at Hero, the one that really catches Ascend’s attention is one made with local prawn, Yun­lin white asparagus, wild mullet roe, and lily bulb purée. The basic idea comes from the Chinese dish of lily bulb, asparagus, and shrimp, but unlike in the traditional dish, where all the flavors are blended together, Western cuisine is particular about preparing ingredients separately, and respecting the flavors of the ingredients themselves. Allowing all kinds of textures and characters to mix in the mouth makes the entire dish carry a message of freshness and richness.

The Hero Restaurant has its own vegetable farms in Nan­tou and elsewhere, and the whole team participates in the planting and harvesting. Ascend makes a point of mentioning the two foreign chefs so much appreciated by ­Hsiao Tsun-yuan: the Frenchman Michel Bras and the Japanese Eiji Ta­ni­gu­chi, head chef at L’Évo in To­yama, Japan. Ta­ni­gu­chi started out from French cuisine, but combined it with local ingredients from To­yama and worked with local handicraft artists, to create refined local dishes.

Version 2.0 of the Hero Restaurant has felt its way through the initial teething troubles that any new ­business faces, and has passed the test of several large dining events. With the upgrade in its resources, things have moved much closer to the ideal that is in ­Hsiao Tsun-­yuan’s mind. For example, the dessert on the day of our visit was ice cream topped with Musann Blanc grapes. These are wine grapes from the Weightstone vineyard and winery, which is also based in central Taiwan. We later heard that they came from the last bunch of this year’s ­harvest. In addition, Hero uses ceramics made by Nan­tou ceramicist Lin Yong­sheng.

What about the core dishes? Ascend gives the following evaluation: “Compared to the past, the flavors are much more rounded.” He also points especially to the last item on the menu: minced pork on rice. “In the past they had starches like Italian pasta and risotto as main courses, but now they serve the rice last, in order to place more emphasis on the fish and meat ingredients. This is more like the Japanese format.”

Anticipating a culinary peak in five years

The climate for contemporary downhome Taiwanese cuisine is gradually taking shape. In these best and worst of times, some chefs are focusing their attention on injecting Taiwanese flavor into haute cuisine, while others are pursuing the role of short-term guest chefs. But culinary professionals should look inward and realize: only with true motivation for doing this can you go far. “After waiting through this transitional period, everyone will be clearer about what they are doing and what they want to do,” says Ascend.

In this stage when things are still evolving, the main challenges for Taiwan chefs today are how to blend the strong points of Chinese and Western cuisines, give form to their own style, and incorporate their own stories into their food.

“This is a period when it is worth pondering what we are doing. When this period passes, there will be something amazing, something that transcends Western cuisine.” Five or ten years from now, what heights will this group of Taiwanese chefs have reached? We wait with bated breath.

Read the article on Taiwan Panorama here.