Who's Lafite's Chef Kevin Cherkas?

Article about Kevin Cherkas from The Star ...

An air of change
By FRED LIM

The venerable Lafite Restaurant has been transformed!

With a lighter and simpler food philosophy, chef Kevin Cherkas tells FRED LIM how he plans to tease the palates of KL foodies. Brimming with enthusiasm, bursting with energy, Kevin Cherkas is the new (food) sheriff in town!

He has just taken over as Chef de Cuisine at Lafite, Shangri-La and already the 28-year-old is making changes. Lots of it. “What’s my style of cooking? That’s a very good question! Cooking is like music, there will always be a guitar, a piano and a violin as these are the basic instruments — tools — for all sorts of music. Cooking is all about the kinds of tools you use in the kitchen too.

I like working with new tools like liquid nitrogen to create new dishes!”Liquid nitrogen? For the uninitiated, Cherkas was a student for a month at El Bulli restaurant in Spain where he worked with Ferran Adria. Adria turned the world of food on its head with his scientific approach to cooking … instead of just a kitchen, he has a laboratory where he works with liquid nitrogen to turn out foam and the like. Together with London’s Heston Blumenthal of Fat Duck restaurant, Adria started quite a culinary revolution.“It’s true that there are many sceptics about Adria’s cooking philosophy but you can’t deny that he has come up with many innovative ways. I see my job as taking the middle road and to gently introduce some of these radical cooking methods to the general public,” explains Cherkas, who also spent a year in Spain honing his skills at the renowned Arzak Restaurant.

Back to the music analogy: Cherkas likens his cooking to rock ‘n’ roll. “It’s something that is hot and trendy today but it will live on for years ...like The Rolling Stones! My background and foundation is still in solid regional cuisine. Today we can get all sorts of ingredients from all over the world but we can try and cook it the French way.

That’s what I’d like to see... new ingredients married together by sound cooking methods.” As to the gentle introduction of Adria’s cooking methods to this part of the world, Cherkas gets philosophical and offers, “Can you imagine serving gnocchi (traditional potato dumplings) filled with foam or gravy inside to the Italians? Of course they will reject it! What happens if good old-fashioned gnocchi is served with a few of these gnocchi filled with foam? You have to ease palates and appetites into new flavours and textures.”

More than just bringing in fresh approaches to cooking and serving, Cherkas is unabashedly concerned about being healthy. He does not use butter and he cuts down on a lot of oil. This in itself is a great departure from the classic French way of cooking.“I believe that natural flavours speak for themselves. All this is better because of new cooking methods.”

His pan-fried sea bass is a real testament to his belief in cooking without butter as the clean taste of the white fish is nicely complemented by a myriad of flavourful vegetables such as earthy red radish, pungent fennel, and zesty orange while spare drizzles of garlic cream add just a hint of smoothness. It’s also about the cut as root vegetables such as the radish and potato are finely sliced to enhance the delicacy of their flavours.

As a new twist to a classic, Cherkas’s seared lamb with sautéed onions, carrots and celery and asparagus spears has a hint of local flavour in its curry “air”. Yes, this is the controversial flavoured foam created by Adria and now further innovated by Cherkas. Air-whipped curry gravy is drizzled around the lamb chunks for dipping and, it is kind of novel to taste “curried” foam but it makes for a fine accompaniment to the sweet lamb. The light spicy foam does little in disturbing the meaty texture of the lamb, it just adds deep spicy highlights to it.

Malaysia is the first Asian country Cherkas is working in so he is also geared up to find a happy balance between his culinary philosophy and the tastebuds of locals. “I am always tasting and trying new ingredients and local food because I am looking for the composition of these local dishes and what makes them so special to the locals. Then I can start using these familiar components in my own creations.”

So far the roti canai and the Mamak mee goreng have special places in his heart. “I think the roti canai is the best in food I have tasted here but the mee goreng is just out of this world!”

Lafite is on the ground floor of Shangri-La Hotel, 11, Jalan Sultan Ismail, Kuala Lumpur. For reservations, call 03-2032-2388.