Rock Star on a Plate
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Qatar People, Qatar Interviews|
QH catches up with one of the international top chefs at the Sharq Village and Spa’s Good Life Festival to find out what makes good food, and what it takes to be the tattooed wunderkind (or red headed step child) of the cooking world. | |
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Company: The Langham, Huntington Hotel and Spa
Designation: Executive Chef
Date:
12/01/2009 | |
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Chef Michael Voltaggio knows good eats. With budda beads, spiky hair and tattoos, he looks more like The Lizard King than a top chef – but that’s exactly what he is.
Recently competing on season six of Bravo’s Top Chef, he’s also the cuisine virtuoso at The Langham, Huntington Hotel and spa in Pasadena, California. He brought his unique brand of food to Doha as part of the Sharq Village and Spa’s Good Life Festival last month.
“I do modern food with a global influence. I take food from all over the world, but apply new techniques,” he said. “So I take a food you may have had before, but in a way you’ve never had it.”
You can say that again. For the opening cocktail reception of the Good Life Festival, where all the participating chefs tried to wow the crowds with their signature dishes, he took liquid nitrogen to gazpacho, making something the consistency of tomato ice cream in front of the guests.
“For me, food is like art- I’m an artist. I express myself on the plate,”
he said. “That’s like asking someone why they made this type of music or that kind of poem – I cook for expression. I don’t just cook for consumption; I cook for an experience.”
It’s an experience he wants to bring back. He says too often he sees people coming into a restaurant as a pit-stop on the way to the rest of their evening – eating strictly to keep their bodies moving before they head off to the movie, the play, the concert, or the night out.
“I want the evening to start in the restaurant,” he said.
To do that, he’ll try just about anything. Which makes him perfect for Doha, where many other chefs have been challenged by the selection of fresh ingredients, and restrictions on cooking with alcohol or certain meats.
“That’s what’s fun about it- taking their traditions and applying it to your food. It should inspire you to be more creative,” said
Voltaggio, folding him arms so the Chinese fish on one get cozy with the knife and fork inked on the other.
He says his tattoos do more than just set him apart from similarly accredited chefs (he’s won the AAA 5 Diamond and Mobil Award, as well as receiving a Michelin star and being a finalist for James Beard’s ‘Best New Restaurant’ award)- they almost represent what he does behind the stove. The Chinese fish design crawling up one arm was drawn by hand by a tattoo artist – a one of a kind piece of art without a net.
“I’ll cook with root beer if I have to. And I have!” he said. “So if Pinot Noir smells like root beer and cherries, why not just make a sauce with root beer and cherries?”
Other things he’s brought to Doha is a complete disregard for the laws of god, man, or physics; presenting dishes like a white chocolate ganache that looks solid, but can be bent before it melts on your palette. Oh, and just because that wasn’t impressive enough, he topped it with caviar (to counteract the sweetness of the white chocolate) and a passion fruit sorbet, all in a bed of dark chocolate ‘soil’.
But he’s also plotting to take some things back to the States with him.
“Every single meal I’ve been eating the spreads, the hummus, the labnah.
Basically anything that can go on pita bread, I’ve been falling in love with,”
he said “I’m really excited to see how the people here eat, so I can go back to the states and apply that to my cooking. When you’re an artist, you fall in love with other people’s art.”
And while he’s been dining at the Sharq, he’s also keen to sample some of the other local flavours – even if they come out of a shack. According to Voltaggio, good food doesn’t have to also carry the label ‘haute’.
“You taste authenticity, authenticity of skill. There’s the term ‘that person’s fake, that person’s real’- you can taste that on a plate,” he said. And authenticity is something that doesn’t necessarily come with a price tag or complicated parsley mountains.
Nor does it necessarily have to look like what we think it should.
He’s one of the top chefs messing with the public’s culinary perceptions by presenting dishes that fool the senses, either in texture or flavour combinations. And he’s getting accolades from diners and other chefs alike for his foodie houdinism.
“They start to speak to me in French because they think I’m French because I know what I’m doing!” he said. “They tell me it’s rare to meet an American
chef with such passion.”
That’s what he says sets food apart.
“I think what makes good food is when you can tastethe passion and soul of the person who made it. Think of a bowl of cereal- it’s flat. But if someone
made something with care and passion, even just a sandwich, you can taste it,” he said. “As a chef you have to figure out a way to make it exciting for that person, even if they’ve ordered something like porridge. It reminds you you’re alive.”
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