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TASTE
tastes like team spirit
restaurants with a conscience
THE EXPRESSION ‘YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT’ TAKES ON QUITE A DIFFERENT MEANING when your meal is fortifled with good deeds. Here are four eateries across the region that give back to their community:
1. SIEM REAP: Singing Tree Cafe
An all-in-one restaurant, fair-trade shop, yoga studio and event space. Within the tropical garden setting, visitors can sample Cambodian and Western delicacies while learning about any issues facing the local community.
Street 26, Wat Bo Village, tel +855 (0)92 635500, www.singingtreecafe.com
2. BANGKOK: Cabbages & Condoms
Mannequins donning latex superhero costumes make an interesting flrst impression at Cabbages & Condoms. This quirky, safe-sex themed restaurant is a must-see in Bangkok – and the fresh, authentic Thai cuisine it serves is top-notch. 6 Sukhumvit Road Soi 12, tel +66 (0)2 229 4611, www.pda.or.th
3. PHNOM PENH: Friends The Restaurant
Former street children are trained in hospitality and culinary arts at Friends The Restaurant. Run by charitable organisation Mith Samlanh, the students learn and earn, while diners enjoy tasty tapas-style fare and inventive cocktails. 215 Street 13, tel +855 (0)12 802072, www.mithsamlanh.org
4. LUANG PRABANG: Tamnak Lao
This cooking school and restaurant supports the Luang Prabang Government Orphanage School (www.lao-kids.org) by running a book exchange, selling cards made by the kids, and accepting donations. Tamnak means “three elephants”, and the facility also goes by this name. Sakkarine Road, tel +856 71 252525, www.tamnaklao.net – Karryn Miller
twin kitchens
chef haikal johari’s tale of two cities
BETWEEN OPENING A NEW RESTAURANT in Bangkok, and winning a reality TV show in Singapore, Haikal Johari is a very busy chef. His resume reads like a list of Singapore’s best-loved restaurants – Les Amis, Pierside and Coriander Leaf are all there, along with stints at Raffles Hotel and Four Seasons. The 33-year-old Singapore-born Malay flrst moved to Bangkok three years ago to become executive chef and co-owner of Ember Bangkok, a little-sister restaurant to the successful eatery at Hotel 1929 in Singapore.
Johari specialises in what gourmands diplomatically call ‘contemporary cuisine’, a euphemism for a more familiar but carefully avoided F-word: Fusion. Still, he beat five of his contemporaries to win The Perfect Meal, a reality TV cooking competition aired on Singapore-based Channel NewsAsia last September. In the show, top chefs reinvented classic regional dishes to create the so-called perfect meal. Johari’s East-West recipes (braised grain-fed beef in sweet soy sauce, and chicken rice with arancini-style rice balls) proved that fusion dishes, despite their bad reputation, can be delicious when they’re executed correctly. As part of the prize, Johari served his winning four-course menu to Singapore President SR Nathan and 15 guests.
Here, he talks to Amy Van about hometown favourites, Bangkok’s best, and his upcoming restaurant project:
Tell us more about your new restaurant.
I’m still scouting for a location in Bangkok, but I know it will be an intimate 40-seater and we will
serve a degustation menu based on seasonal produce sourced from all over the world. It will be a reflned French-influenced menu with Japanese and other Asian touches.
Will you incorporate Thai ingredients into your dishes?
Yes. I will use things like fresh tamarind, coconut, lime leaves, lemongrass, chillies. Anything that Thais use in their cooking, I will use as a supporting component.
What differences have you noticed between diners in Bangkok and diners in Singapore?
Thai food is more flavourful and spicy, so diners there have stronger taste buds. If you serve them ‘natural’ food, they flnd it a little bland. Aesthetically, Bangkok diners pay more attention to the restaurant’s design and grandiosity than Singaporeans.
How have your chef skills evolved over the years?
My cooking style is now much flner and produce-driven. I prefer to let the produce speak for itself and let people appreciate the natural flavours. Presentation is more elaborate. I’m using a lot more French techniques, such as sous vide, where ingredients are placed in airtight plastic bags, and slow-cooked in warm water. I also incorporate a few molecular gastronomic touches. I don’t want to label myself a celebrity chef. I just want to be known for my cooking.
What local Thai food would you recommend to travellers?
A good introduction to Thai food is the yam woon sen, or glass noodles salad. You can vary the level of sourness and spiciness, and add seafood, chicken or pork. Thai seafood is very good. I usually go to Bangkok’s suburbs to eat seafood such as deep-fried sea bass with flsh sauce.
Which Singaporean dishes do you miss when you are in Bangkok and vice-versa?
I miss Singapore’s laksa, chicken rice, nasi lemak (coconut rice served with flsh and an omelette) and nasi padang, and when out of Bangkok I pine for Thai fried rice.
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