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Smitten
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The Edge (Options), April 2003 Issue #11
COVER STORY
Elaine Tan falls for the sublime lust of Tetsuya Wakuda, giant-heart chef with the angel’s touch
Photography by Kenny Yap
He’s a roly-poly kinda man, “a gummi bear with stubble”, according to one observer. Tetsuya Wakuda is the perfect chef, with a girth that reflects indulgent appreciation of food and the principle that “great restaurants are nothing but mouth-brothels. There is no point in going to them if one intends to keep one’s belt buckled”.
Jet-setting, award-winning, accolade-laden chef though he is, Tetsuya somehow manages to remain accessible to mere mortal diners. His accent is strongly Japanese with an Ocker garnish. It makes listeners lean respectfully closer, afraid of misunderstanding something; but when he speaks, it is with a plebeian passion. His genuine friendliness and love of food and cooking combine to form a forceful restaurateur, manager and spokesman for good eats. He says deprecatingly that he could not venture into cooking shows “unless I have plastic surgery”, but as an acolyte in the temple of haute cuisine, I beg to differ. Like Jack Nicholson in acting, Tetsuya’s low-key fortitude, dedication and skill make him a very sexy chef.
Thus this writer was properly star-struck to be interviewing Tetsuya Wakuda, who routinely cooks in the exalted Michelin-star company of the likes of Alain Ducasse and Gordon Ramsay, in town recently for a one-night only guest appearance at Third Floor as a personal favour to the resident chef and one-time protege, Ken Ho.
Last year, UK’s The Restaurant magazine listed Tetsuya’s in its “Top 50 Restaurants in the World”. One of two Top 10 entries from Sydney, it reflects Australia’s rising impact on the world of wining and dining. While antipodean wines have been slowly establishing themselves for a few decades, Sydney seems to have suddenly exploded as a culinary capital in just a few years. Many of Kuala Lumpur’s top expatriate and executive chefs are either from or trained in Australia. (Ken himself was headhunted from down south back into town for Cilantro.) Top billing, however, went to EI Bulli in Barcelona, Spain—coincidentally also Tetsuya’s favourite restaurant; chef Ferran Adria’s food is a “joy” and an “inspiration”.
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Tetsuya mixes it up with cooking Malaysians
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On home ground, Tetsuya is regarded as one of, if not the, best chef in Australia. It can take months to secure a reservation at his Zen-like restaurant. Raves about him from fans and fellow cookies include Jamie Oliver (“I think we had 32 courses! It was a beautiful experience with food combinations I have never tasted before”); and Charlie Trotter (“his culinary philosophy centres on pure, clean flavours that are decisive yet completely refined. His amazing technique... and insatiable curiosity combine to create incredible, soulful dishes that exude passion with every bite”).
We managed to meet up just hours before the wait-listed dinner. Tetsuya and his team (his maitre d’ and four chefs) left Sydney just 48 hours ago, stopped for a night of charity cooking in Singapore, complete with representatives of chateaux grand cru in attendance, which ended at 2am, caught the first plane into KL and after a quick change into chef whites, appeared at the restaurant to oversee kitchen preparations and a round of interviews.
I wait nervously at 4pm, worried that as the last interviewer, I won’t have much of his time and attention. He comes over, sits down at the table for two, and reassures me that all is well. “Fortunately, Ken and I have had some vague discussions but I will be working mostly with ingredients he has prepared. I trust him.” The ultra-cool Ken Ho, no stranger to city gourmands, was once Tetsuya’s sous chef, “and he is a gentleman”, he says. “When something goes wrong in my kitchen, I don’t say I shout and scream but my voice tone certainly changes. In the 10 to 12 years I have I known Ken, he is always the same. I have never seen him upset.”
Tetsuya’s modesty and calm, resolute nature is at odds with my knowledge of chefs, mostly gleaned from Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, which would have you believe chefs are the tyrannical emperors of coke-snorting, sex-crazed, machismo-infused kitchen kingdoms. “Well, different kitchens have different standards,” is his comment, “but apart from the drugs, it is quite close to the truth.”
The story of his arrival in Australia, aged 22, no English and little money, to work as a kitchen hand is now widely circulated. It took eight years before he struck out with the first Tetsuya’s and only a couple of years since the city-centre relocation. Twenty-four years later, his dream restaurant is celebrated the world over.
“I am really flattered that people say I am a celebrity chef,” Tetsuya says. “Actually, with my background, I am very grateful to be in this business; I love this business. I am lucky to be working in a job that I love, that I want to do. I get to decide the way of cooking, serving and how to please the client, and then they say ‘thank you’ and they even pay me!”
The prodigious chef is known to be fiercely protective of “ownership”—from concept and décor to management and food. Tetsuya is appreciative that the mantle of “celebrity chef” gives him discretionary powers. However, the life of superstar chefdom is a hard one, with “phenomenal hours” and requiring Olympian dedication. “You have to be in this a long time to achieve success,” Tetsuya says, laying the credit of his own achievement more on hard work than flair. “You cannot do this just for one night, you have to continue, you have to do it for years—like now, I have not slept for two days; we had lunch at three [am], take-away har mee which we swallowed without chewing. You need commitment, physical stamina and mental energy to make it as a chef. It is not what people think. It is not so glamorous. Every chef I know, in the kitchen, it is rush, rush, rush.”
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Tonight’s dinner, he thinks, will end around 3am. He has to meet-and-greet dining fans after. He will then catch a morning flight to Hong Kong for a round of discussions before returning to Sydney. One wonders how a man who prepares an epicure’s indulgence of orgiastic proportions can subject himself to such a gruelling routine. The answer is deceptively prosaic.
“…basically, I just love cooking. In my ultimate restaurant, I don’t receive money. I have an upstairs kitchen in my restaurant and in my house where I entertain family and close friends. I get everyone involved, chopping, peeling, cooking... It doesn’t matter what is on the table sometimes—a bowl of pasta and a salad. It’s the company, your lover or whoever it is—nice conversation, yak-yak-yak, that’s my ideal weekend, my ideal meal. Good food and good company, what else do you want?”
You cannot eat this kind of food every day,” Tets waves towards the kitchen. “It’s for special occasions. The restaurant is part of the thought, the care, the giving. For me, it is a production – like a show. You go to a good restaurant for the whole experience – the setting, the service, the food. Eating is one part of it, but it’s also to share the time. You go to eat, but there is a t reason to it, like a date or business deal.”
Sipping his espresso calmly as the bustle of preparation swells around him, he leans over confidentially. “You know, in my restaurant, I see people on their first date… or last date – the lady is crying all night… 30-year anniversary to reunions… I see the boss and his secretary holding hands under the table… judges and lawyers together talking over a case… the politician and his mistress. I have had people calling up, saying ‘This is my first date, I told her I got a table at Tetsuya’s and she finally agreed to go out with me’. We understand this and will do a good job for them. I will give him the best possible chance to get ‘returns’ for coming to my restaurant. I know the first date is an ‘investment’ for him.”
“Hey, there’s no such thing as a free lunch!” Tets grins. “When he comes, I will go to him, call him by name, give him champagne, make him feel like a king and help him impress his date. It’s also my way of saying thank you for choosing my restaurant for the special occasion.”
Being Chief Executive Producer of Special Occasions is something Tetsuya is very serious about: “That’s why we have so many chefs – over 20. I also believe in sharing with my staff. Wherever I go, I always take somebody with me, whether it is a food conference or craft show. In some ways, this business is about luxury, and if you don’t know luxury, you can’t serve it. So I like to have my team stay in nice hotels, sit in the front of the plane and all that sort of stuff. I couldn’t do that myself not so many years ago, so that’s my way of thanking them.”
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Tetsuya and gregarious dessert chef Kristina Micallef
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He has been generous in taking in cheflets without formal training under his wing. Ken Ho was one of them. Women too are welcome in his kitchen; of his team in KL, there is a gregarious brunette, Kristina Micallef, who returned to Tetsuya’s after a sojourn in Europe and is now both dessert chef and researcher for his second cookbook. But there are relatively fewer women chefs than men, considering the kitchen has always been regarded as a female domain in the home... Tets wryly replies that any woman can be a chef, “as long as she is willing to dump her partner, her family and social life”. “It’s not work,” says Tetsuya. “It’s commitment.”
Nonetheless, he reminds me there are renowned chefs of gentle persuasion such as Stephanie Alexander and the late Mietta O’Donnell, who are regarded as shapers of the Australian culinary landscape, and talks about Roxanne’s in San Francisco, owned by chef, Roxanne and her millionaire husband Michael Klein, which has caused a stir in culinary circles with the raw, 100 per cent organic, vegan, non-profit approach to fine dining. He will be making a “day trip” there later in the year to check out the fuss and talk shop over how to create palatable and appetising meals from only fruits and vegetables “cooked” below 118°F, the point at which enzymes are affected.
“Chefs – we must always keep learning, we need to know how someone else is doing it. The same recipe is never the same in different hands. The Japanese [food] culture goes on about centuries of tradition and secret recipes, but there is no such thing. We should share the good things. Share the suppliers. Share the ideas.”
He compliments the Malaysian eating culture and compares it with the siesta and food-indulgent Mediterranean spirit – real food, everyday food, a lot of it, all day long. Haute cuisine, on the other hand, is a long, leisurely and luxurious affair; an art form that can be savoured by all the senses. Tetsuya recommends four to five hours for a lunch. In his book, he describes how in a good meal “one dish leads to another, and builds on the taste and structure of the one before”.
Tetsuya has been through Singapore so often (he has been known to fly in for lunch) that natives call him an honorary Singaporean, but he has only been to KL twice before. He pulls a moue, saying it is a bit difficult to bring food into Malaysia. He would love to do a “dirt” tour of Malaysian food and becomes quite excited and animated about the local har mee and kuih lapis. And he loves chicken rice, the boiled version. I try my patriotic best to I convince him these are all peninsular creations and that he must pay a visit to the culinary cradle of chicken rice, Ipoh.
Although many famous chefs like to incorporate Thai elements in their food – The Naked Chef, for one – the current chic Asian flavour, according to Tets, is Vietnamese. Japanese and Chinese cuisine is almost passé. Why, however, has a food-loving nation like Malaysia with three culinary heritages and its blends to offer, never made it onto the international web of gastronomic influence?
Ken offers the theory that the clean citrus subtleties of Thai flavours marry better with wines; Malaysian food with its oils and spices stand alone well but overpowers the appreciation of fine wines. Tets is diplomatic, talking about the laid-back food culture and lack of exposure. Still, he is a great proponent of matching wine to food: “Mature Semillon and shellfish never fail. I also love saké and oysters or, even better, very fine saké and caviar – it’s better than sex.”
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Tetsuya is a paradox of supreme indulgence and down-to-earth humanity. Of food, nothing but the very best (and most expensive) suffices, but when he talks, his favourite word is “share”. He uses it to describe every interaction and relationship; he tells about Valentine’s Day, when he decreed his restaurant would accept no couples dining together. With a degustation prix fixe menu lasting five hours, Tetsuya manages to convince strangers to eat together on a night when other restaurants make a killing catering to Cupid’s victims. “It is my way of saying share the table, share the happiness,” he says breezily.
Besides charity feasts, celebrity cook-offs, guest appearances and cookbooks, where does passion for food take the businessman in Tetsuya? Of the much-hyped “second” Tetsuya restaurant in London, he stresses that he was purely a consultant for the Mju restaurant in Knightsbridge’s Millennium Hotel as a favour to regular-diner-turned-friend, Kwek Leng Beng, chairman of Hong Leong Group.
There are apparently no concrete plans for more Tetsuya restaurants at the moment, but talks of building on the cache of the Tetsuya name with a line of gourmet food products are underway. Even in such commercial talk, Tets remains true to his love of food: “The quality must still be high, but mass cooking is different. I have to work out how to ‘save’ the taste, yet prolong the shelf life. It will be a challenge.”
It’s close to 6pm and while I’m enjoying the chat way too much for an interview, I begin to feel guilty knowing that the first seating for tonight’s dinner is at 7.30pm. We also ran out of tape more than an hour ago. Then Michael Chong, the Canto pop-star-looking partner of Third Floor, who plays wine merchant/sommelier to Ken’s culinary skills, dashingly dashes in. Tetsuya greets him effusively. Has he brought the shirako? Michael gives him the thumbs-up; he’s just driven in from Singapore with the precious cargo of snapper milt, freshly flown in from Japan, for tonight’s dinner. Roe, we all know, is fish eggs. The ovum of many creatures is commonly consumed, but milt, the male equivalent in fish, is not for the faint-hearted. Literally, shirako is the sperm sac of a male fish, usually snapper or cod.
I was extremely privileged and honoured to be invited to dinner at the end of the interview. It is the most expensive and famous meal of my life to date. James Beard, father of American gastronomy, once said, “A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart who looks at her watch.” It would seem that gourmets, like tarts, should also not watch the clock. My Tetsuya experience, with 13 courses, champagne and five wines, outpaced even my fairly well-honed gastronomic abilities at a marathon of close to eight hours.
I’ve discovered that I’m a food groupie of the worst sort. Given half a chance to dine at Tetsuya’s, that shirako would be down my gullet on a first date. Unfortunately, the sperm sacs never made it to the menu that night. So what does a good groupie do? The next day, I headed straight to the Matta fair and booked a ticket to Australia. I’ll be there in July. I hope that’s enough time to get a reservation.
Epicure madame Elaine Tan resumes her slightly less rarified but no less celebrated Almost Famous column next month. Reservations, Tetsuya’s, Sydney +612 92672900, Third Roor; J W Marriott Hotel, KL (+603) 2141 3363
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