The Malaysian Insider :: Food

Shattered plates — but not broken dreams

Posted: 21 Dec 2011 10:47 PM PST

(Left to right) Lyn Chai, E&O Group Communications and Investor Relations director; Dino Ferrari; Maria Brown, co-founder and managing director of AFC and Chef Bruce Lim.

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 22 — Ultimately the guy who kept his cool at the most crucial point of the competition won. Dino Ferrari was in tears all over again watching himself in the last, concluding episode of E&O Search for AFC's Next Celebrity Chef, where he was declared the winner. Diane Montecillo, a culinary teacher, and the other finalist was eliminated.

We were at St Mary's Residences in Kuala Lumpur yesterday for the preview, as the challenges, the kitchen chaos and the high emotions played out in the final cookout on the screen. It decided who had the edge to be AFC's Next Celebrity Chef.

Dino's Pan Seared Cured Salmon with a White Chocolate Wasabi Cream Sauce and Saffron Cauliflower Mash and seasonal vegetables was the winning dish, over Diane's Beef Wellington with a Port Wine Truffle Sauce. The deciding factor lay in a charity dinner both cooked for 300 guests at the E&O Hotel in Penang.

Chef Bruce Lim was there at the press conference after the preview; larger than life but not brutish as he appeared on the show — breaking plates and striking fear in the hearts of the contestants. We missed another stern and exacting judge but who's really a sweetheart — Michael Saxon, CEO of The Delicious Group and E&O's director, group hospitality and lifestyle. Guest chefs Emannuel Stroobant and Anis Nabilah, as well as Maria Brown, managing director of the Asian Food Channel also presided over the event.

Asked if he is scary, Chef Bruce said: "A lot of people don't know the real me. When I get into the kitchen environment, the bad me comes out. If I drop a plate, it's to say you mess up, don't do it again! I keep my standards extremely high. They have to be perfectionists. It's my way of doing it."

Winner Dino Ferrari kept his cool at the final challenge and won!

Dino admitted that he had hoped Bruce wouldn't throw his plate. "But if he had done it, I wouldn't have felt so bad. It would just push me to excellence. I know he means well; he pushes you to do better.

"You have to understand that a lot of the contestants were working chefs. I was just a student (though he's a private chef on the side). Some of them didn't take it too well. If it had happened to me I would take it positively. Bruce found a way to push us."

Bruce 'fessed up that three days ago in a dinner he cooked at his restaurant in the Philippines, a diner didn't like the chicken he cooked and threw the plate on the floor! "I stood back a bit and asked him why he didn't like it and he said it was his personal preference." The diner was also drunk!

"I'm classically trained," said the chef who graduated from Le Cordon Bleu in London and worked his way into some of the best French kitchens in the world. He even had a stint under Gordon Ramsay. Just as well he didn't use his kickboxing skills on the contestants! He himself has been physically kicked in the butt during his training and while working in the kitchen.

"It's like disciplining a child. Dropping a plate is so dramatic that you would never make the same mistake again. It was always about the food, nothing personal!"

When asked about the three in the final four who lost, Bruce replied: "It's really tough. It's about how you perform and how you have the grace to learn from losing. I would love to work with Shinith, Stanley and Diane. I had a close relationship with these people but they didn't fall into what we were looking for."

His advice to Dino: "When you are up there, try to look down. I promise I will always be following you, pushing you."

Chef Emannuel had this to say: "We're looking for the next celebrity chef and we need the right attitude, respect, ability to cook and able to lead the team. Dino could hold the team and drive them to battle. He has a good knowledge of food, and character and personality."

Nabila, the host of AFC's Icip Icip, said she was stuck between Mike and Bruce. "I was the Paula Abdul of the show, and I understood where Mike and Bruce were coming from. But Dino had a positive attitude. Whenever Bruce screamed, he would say 'Yes, chef!'"

For Dino, it was the happiest moment of his life winning the title of AFC's celebrity chef. "That perky, fun guy you see on the show is 100 per cent me." About that "chemistry" with Diane, he kept his cool even when she "trash talked" him. "Sometimes I answer her back, but that's it. It was her strategy to distract me but I zoned it out."

His winning dish was a result of brainstorming between him and his best friend in the culinary school where he is still studying. "I'm a private chef on the side and I had to come up with a menu. The white chocolate and wasabi came in a pannacotta. I put in a cream sauce, tweaked it and it became my signature dish.

"It was close to hell in the last round, with the chefs moving around and screaming at you. It was the first time I was cooking for 300 people. My biggest ever dinner was for 60 people."

Even at the age of 10, he knew he wanted to do something with food. Out on a dinner with the family, he ordered escargots and loved them. He tried caviar and liked it too. No one in the family was into food like he was, though his eldest sister went to hotel management school in Switzerland and taught him how to fold napkins, and make a crème brulee. He's the youngest, with another older sister. His father is Swiss, and is a consultant to various government projects in the Philippines; his mother is a teacher.

He has lived in the US, where he studied business administration, on a tennis scholarship grant, at the insistence of his parents. He didn't finish his course, and as he had always wanted to go to culinary school, he went to hotel and management school in Lausanne, Switzerland.

"It was the second happiest day in my life, after this one!" But he had to go back to the Philippines, and had his credits transferred to the Enderun Hotel Management School there. "I have three more semesters but now I have to put it on hold."

He will take up the post of creative director and chef with the E&O and Delicious Group in January, coming up with seasonal and permanent menus, following food trends and doing promotional work for AFC. He will be based in Penang.

"It's always an experience going to a place where the food is amazing. I can't wait!"

What would he have been if he had not been a chef?

"I would have been a professional tennis player." He had after all been competing nationally and internationally in the sport, and playing semi-professionally as well.

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Kredit: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com

Khamis, 22 Disember 2011

The Malaysian Insider :: Food

The Malaysian Insider :: Food

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