Talk about a labor of love. The new baby of Franco Brodini, the executive chef of the Makati Shangri-La Hotel, was also nine months in the making.
It also consisted of a P25-million investment on the part of the hotel, which went to the purchase of most up-to-date culinary equipment, and remodeling its kitchens.
Last week, Brodini, who’s Italian, finally showed off his pride and joy in the culinary equivalent of a baby shower—over 200 sumptuous dishes in a banquet dubbed “Culinary Evolution.”
Guests were first treated to cocktails such as lychee martini with tuna and cucumber ribbons, along with smoked salmon with arugula and Grand Marnier, braised barbecue pork belly and peach saffron chutney.
Then as the curtains were raised for the night’s main event, guests were met with a myriad of chocolate truffles and other desserts like fresh strawberries, strawberry marshmallows, cookies and sponge cakes, all to be thickly coated with the flowing strawberry, chocolate, white chocolate and caramel fountains. There were also torched sushi and sashimi with wasabi sabayon, mayo caramel and champagne sabayon; and smokey curry laksa.
There was an espuma and caviar station, as well as one dedicated to foie gras offering chocolate-coated foie gras with celery salt, foie gras and sorbet with mint strips, foie gras soup lolies with pistachio, foie gras panna cotta with floss candy, foie gras pralines, and Parmesan cornet with foie gras custard.
There was a healthy ice bar station of avocado, tomato and wheatgrass; a risotto station with summer truffles and condiments; Peking duck and suckling pig; blueberry and strawberry ice cream; homemade macaroon and mini French pastries; a selection of sorbet served in their skins of pineapple, passionfruit, kiwi and lemon; and a siphon berries station.
Brodini and his staff were preparing the food on the spot, seeing to it that every dish, especially those that were best served hot, were freshly cooked, almost steaming from the pan.
“Passion can only take you so far,” Brodini said in his speech. Hard work and perseverance, he said, are also necessary ingredients in order for his passion to take shape into something tangible.
Since he was 13, Brodini had already started cooking, inspired by his grandmother’s gnocchi or Italian dumplings. And for the last 26 years, he has been working in various hotels around the world from the United Kingdom, Switzerland to Egypt and Dubai.
What made Brodini’s new banquet unique from his other previous creations was the way he and his staff worked together, focusing their attention to detail, beginning with the best ingredients that were to be used, down to the final preparations and how each dish would be presented.
“We take the basics and we build upon them,” he said.
And, of course, the most important factor of all: the intense passion translated into every core of each dish, allowing him to transcend his cooking beyond just mere food preparation and into his very own language of love.
“For me, it started with love, and there is nothing else after,” Brodini said.
In Photo: Balik salmon and green apple mustard cream Atlantic Prawn and nori wrap on preserved daikon
