TRUTH OR DARE

On one of his thrice-yearly visits to his Hong Kong restaurant, PIERRE GAGNAIRE shares his fearless approach to food with CHRISTINA KO

PIERRE GAGNAIRE, CONSIDERED by some to be one of the greatest chefs in the world, is missing. He’s supposed to be seated opposite me at his restaurant in Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong, talking about ingredients and his empire and whatever else I deem fit to grill him on (pun very much intended), but he’s nowhere to be found. Things at the Mandarin almost invariably run like clockwork, and the windswept-grey-haired chef is not holding up his end of the deal today.

Celebrities – and often, celebrity chefs – normally come with handlers, the personnel charged with getting them to the places they need to go at the times they need to be there. Gagnaire could use one of those. Having spent the missing minutes finalising his menus, Gagnaire saunters into Pierre a little over half an hour late, and steps into the spotlight (literally) to have his photograph taken. As our man snaps away, the chef sidebars to the Director of Communications, “By the way, I’m not coming to lunch,” referring to a meal with journalists that has been organised in his honour, due to start in less than an hour.

The man’s got gall; I’ll give him that. Not only is he spurning the hotel PR directive, he’s doing it in the middle of an interview, and in front of a journalist. I practise my powers of invisibility while they duke it out, and admit that while normally I stand on the side of the beleaguered PR person, today he has a point – being that people come to Pierre to eat his food, not look at his face. Being seen hobnobbing at a long table of media types might naturally upset regular patrons who expect dishes created by the hands of the master himself.

Gagnaire is a rarity in the culinary world, a master chef who’s as hands-on as you can get when you own 12 restaurants in locations as diverse as Paris, Las Vegas, Dubai, Moscow and Hong Kong. He visits his restaurant here a minimum of three times a year, staying for 10 days at a time. “You must live with the staff, live with the guests, you must try to take time to go outside. For example, yesterday morning, I was with a friend who lives in Hong Kong, he picked me up at 7.30 and I went to smell and feel the city. If you stay two days, that’s impossible. You have jet lag; you’re tired. You need time to involve in the restaurant, city, hotel.”

And he seems to have a fairly clear understanding of what makes Hongkongers tick, in a general sense as well as from a gastronomical perspective. “You have the spirit of the city, the story of the city, it’s absolutely fantastic. The city is very clever. Hong Kong is a Chinese city, however there is a lot of autonomy. You live without China, and I am impressed by this,” he notes.

“When you are in Hong Kong, the guests want to eat French, Chinese, Italian. But when you’re living in other cities, you can have a mix of different food. [Here], when they want French, they want French, not French mixed with Japanese influence. If they want Italian, they don’t want Italian influenced with a New York bistro. They want pure.”

But it’s difficult to mix the pure with the progressive, and Gagnaire is nothing if not adventurous. His brand of cooking has never been quite definable, except perhaps under the broad terminology of “modern French cuisine.” You could also call it classic Gallic with a twist, but that still wouldn’t define the twist, which is a constantly surprising melee of ingredients specifically intended to tax the definition of normal and erect a pleasant cacophony of tastes – think lobster fricassée with ginger, endive fondue and white balsamic vinegar (still normal), “bisque creamy like curry” (huh?) and black forbidden rice (say what?). Or blue velvet sherbet, diced cuttlefish with sticky citrus juice and Thai grapefruit: chewy, tangy, bitter, fizzy and utterly bizarre, a peppy and discordant mixture that somehow grows on the palate with each bite.

It’s hard to say whether Gagnaire falls more into the category of poet or scientist. He’s definitely not a mathematician, if the financial failure of his first restaurant says anything. But while the flavours of his dishes are highly calculated, and there is occasionally the sense that these are arranged marriages, there’s also the fact that behind the heavy orchestration is an innate lyricism. It’s telling that, at the press lunch, Gagnaire alters dishes in the moment, adding side servings in fits of postulation that sometimes outshine the main affair. “Don’t bother looking at the menu,” instructs the restaurant manager, Julien Gardin. There’s no point.

“For me, it’s impossible to define,” says Gagnaire upon being asked to describe his culinary style in his own words. “We try to do the best, we try to be honest, we try day after day to offer something that’s not standard. We change often the menu, we pay attention to the seasons, we pay attention to details.” If there’s one thing we can define, it’s that Gagnaire is not one to be controlled by trivial matters such as PR objectives, printed menus or journalists seeking to put him in a box.

Even as he notes that he doesn’t mix tastes or ingredients to cater to the local market – “there is no sense to offer dim sum” – he adds, “but there is some local touch. Sea bass with a small preparation of abalone. But very simple.”

Tailoring menus for his now 12-strong empire of restaurants is no easy task, and Gagnaire relies on a simple system of ignorance in juggling the many balls in the air. “When I’m here, I’m here, I’m not there. When I’m living here, I try to forget the other problems and focus on this restaurant.”

For all his genius, it’s Gagnaire’s directness that makes him a man worth interviewing. Chefs aren’t generally renowned for their discourse, and why should they be? It’s the food that counts. But Gagnaire clearly, and admittedly, enjoys the fame game, the interactions with media, the chance to wax on about food and philosophy. He’s also quick to remind that, after decades in the business, he’s earned all of this. And none of that detracts from his first and foremost goal as a chef: “I’m not stupid. I know we need you. But the chef is cooking. The truth is in the kitchen.”