COMMENTARY, Jan 6 — Once upon a time (last weekend, to be precise), my friend Chai and I were having brunch at a café in Cheras. I had ordered their special that day – Australian wagyu skirt steak, with a yuzu-beetroot-arugula salad and twice-fried potatoes. It was delicious, or so I thought.
My gym buddy took one bite and announced his verdict –
CHAI: Kinda tough, bro. Isn’t this supposed to be wagyu?
ME: Yes, it is. But it’s skirt steak. More for flavour than tenderness.
CHAI: Shouldn’t wagyu be well marbled and melt in your mouth?
ME: Ah. Where do I begin?
To be fair, I wouldn’t know where to start. I’m no hardcore steak chaser. I’m not a connoisseur who can differentiate between a T-Bone and a Porterhouse.
I did my best, explaining you get what you pay for. We’d get better grades of wagyu, perhaps, at a fine dining restaurant but the price would also be adjusted accordingly.
Chai, who is known for his fondness for roast chicken (more protein to fuel his gym workouts, you see), can always be relied on to be an indefatigable questioner of my food choices. Suffice to say, he’s not convinced.
He’s not entirely wrong. Wasn’t it only yesterday that you could only get wagyu beef in Michelin-starred restaurants? Now there are roadside pop-ups and Instagram businesses selling wagyu burgers and wagyu bentos. So what is the value in fine dining?
How do I explain the merits of neatly ironed, white tablecloths versus those of a wooden picnic table? Or do I remind him that his favourite food trucks might be run by folks who had their start in top kitchens, the way Jon Favreau’s chef character in his 2014 film Chef did.
Maybe it’s easier to demonstrate with an illustration.
I tell Chai about the trinity of starters that I once enjoyed at Jaan, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Singapore some years ago (with apologies to Executive Chef Kirk Westaway if I’ve misremembered any details; time isn’t always kind on one’s memory): venison tartare, laced with kohlrabi, on lotus root chips; crackers of tapioca with linseed hummus; and macarons...
ME: … the colour of snow, filled with a decadent truffle and foie gras cream.
CHAI: Aren’t macarons supposed to be sweet?
ME: Well, they typically are, yes.
CHAI: White some more. Too pale lah. Nicer if got pink and blue. More colourful. More appetising.
ME: …
Well, I did once wonder what a rainbow might taste like.
Undeterred, I continue by describing the amuse bouche. Imagine an earthy hued consommé, made from truffle bouillon and shiitake mushrooms. Poured carefully into a bowl of potato espuma (that’s “foam” in molecular gastronomy jargon; and I can see him rolling his eyes already)...
ME: … and studded with shavings of black truffle.
CHAI: That’s basically mushroom and potato soup, right?
ME: Well, not quite though the basic elements are the same..
CHAI: I could also just open a can of cream of mushroom and add some potatoes.
CHAI: So much faster.
ME: …
Moving on. Time to bring out the showstopper: an organic chicken egg that has been slowly cooked for 55 minutes at precisely 64°C, then brought to our table in a basket of curling mists...
ME: … before the runny egg is poured into a bowl filled with buttery mash, chorizo iberico and buckwheat chips.
CHAI: So the eggs are, like, half boiled?
ME: Yes, sort of.
CHAI: How’s that different from half boiled eggs we get at the kopitiam?
ME: ...
Am I being too precious or pedantic with my report, I wonder? That fantastic meal now sadly watered down with my inadequate recounting, a crime against the poor chef’s craft and perfectionism.
One more attempt. (Fourth time’s the charm, maybe.)
The main course. A confit of wild snapper, accompanied by carrot purée, mussels and sesame seeds...
ME: … then drizzled with a reduced consommé made from the bones of the snapper.
CHAI: Wouldn’t some steamed fish be more syiok?
ME: ...
ME: Yes. Yes, probably.
Somehow I found myself trying to explain fine dining to my friend – demystifying it, if you will – and quite failing to. Doing quite a stellar job of not explaining it, to be honest.
I confess I’m beat. I’m utterly defeated. Chai has made all the right points and his reasoning is sound. My answers seem flawed and feeble, even to me.
I guess I favour fine dining as the occasional treat, given the dear expense that it is. A luxury for anniversaries and birthdays. A meal at a fancy restaurant ought to be a celebration.
A meal like one Monsieur Bagnols, the floor cleaner in Peter Mayle’s 1989 memoir A Year in Provence, would have when he made his annual pilgrimage to Michelin three-star restaurants in France after working and saving up all year for.
To feel pampered, to dine like a king for a day. But for the other days of the year, we don’t have to eat poorly either. We are blessed to even have food on our tables. We say our thanks for that.
On a whim, I try one more time.
ME: Remember that scene in The Devil Wears Prada where Miranda catches Andy snickering because she couldn’t tell the difference between two belts? That they looked exactly the same to her?
CHAI: Yeah.
ME: And then Miranda points out how a lumpy blue sweater Andy is wearing might owe its existence to a 2002 collection by Oscar de la Renta of cerulean gowns. And how other designers then followed suit, till one day that same shade appeared in the department stores... as that lumpy blue sweater.
CHAI: Uhm... yeah?
ME: So this means the wagyu we order here, at this tiny café, probably started as a dish by some chef in Paris or Tokyo, perhaps a better cut, but much the same. Then more chefs started featuring it on their menus. Then one fine day, like today, we find ourselves tasting it and wondering if it’s too tough or just nice for its price.
CHAI: Oh.
CHAI: Oh...
CHAI: Why didn’t you say so in the first place?
ME: …
Perhaps there is some truth to the saying, “If at first you don’t succeed...”
CHAI: Bro.
ME: Yeah?
CHAI: You watch way too many movies.
Well, that one? He’s got me there.
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