Culinary catwalk

Culinary catwalk

Fire Dragon Breathing On Beetroot may not be a martial arts fighting stance, but it kind of describes Joshua Skenes - a nod to his kung fu instructor past and his mastery of a primitive cooking form that is key to the painstakingly crafted compositions that land on the tables of his restaurant Saison in San Francisco.

Case in point: the humble beetroot - cooked and suspended for two days over the perpetually glowing embers of the kitchen hearth until dehydrated, then cooked in beetroot juice until it rehydrates and achieves an amazing, intensely-flavoured chewy, gummy bear-like texture. Paired with roasted bone marrow, sour red berries and fir needles, it's a crimson-hued still life on a plate and an epiphany in the mouth.

Mind you, it was already dish number 10 in a long evening of highs at a restaurant once dissed for serving pricey US$248 menus but which now offers US$398 Discovery menus without a whisper of dissent. Now that Saison has been named 'the one to watch' at this year's World's 50 Best Awards, it's getting a lot more buzz, not that it affects Chef Skenes in any way. Instead, he's much more interested in perfecting his craft and sourcing the best ingredients, whether it's vegetables grown on the restaurant's own farm, or fish and abalone caught and harvested specially for them.

Taking locavorism as far as he can, Chef Skenes is obsessed with using ingredients only from the Bay area. "To me, it's thoroughly representative of where we are. It's been very difficult to find all of these items and we have been sourcing for the last 10 years, even though Saison has only been open for five."

Even though he uses ingredients such as shoyu, seaweed, bonito, fish sauce and miso which are associated with Japan and Asia, he doesn't buy any of his ingredients from there. "We make everything here. The dashi is not dashi, the shoyu is not shoyu, and so on." His soya sauce, for example, is made from fermented grilled grains and salt; fish sauce is made from smoked and raw fish; kombu (seaweed)comes from Mendocino and is dried according to his specifications; and so on.

Ironically, it was a recent trip to Japan where, even though he was introduced to some of the best fish suppliers, Chef Skenes "made the decision that when I got back I was going to drop everything from Japan and elsewhere and only use products from the Bay Area".

Although he uses Japanese-inspired ingredients, "I don't see (my cooking)as Japanese in any way," he says. "I see presentation as a shape, arrangement of negative space and as a way to show the natural beauty of a product and its materials. And to present it in a way that makes it easiest to enjoy its taste (for example, little dishes on the side so as not to mix flavours."

In that sense, it's a highly disciplined approach - perhaps honed by his childhood training in martial arts and his years spent as an instructor before he decided to cook full-time. With his emphasis on purity of flavour, using a wood fire as his main heat source rather than pan frying or oven roasting, his raison d'etre is to be as natural as possible, but also delicious.

And is it. A meal here is a veritable catwalk of beauty and brains - with an effortlessness that belies the amount of work behind it. At the word go, we are greeted with a ceramic cup decorated with a tiny bouquet of herbs and flowers (grown in the restaurant's garden) tied to a long string. Hot Meyer lemon water is poured into the cup and the fragrant bouquet lowered into the liquid makes an enticing herbal aperitif.

Next, a mound of trout roe massaged in sake atop silky sweet corn puree, slippery poached okra and wobbly tomato water jelly intensified by candy sweet roasted tomato possesses an elusive quality you can't put our finger on - like simplicity intensified with its focus on clean, pure flavours layered on top of each other.

Crispy beignets of fresh anchovy, artichoke, chrysanthemum and Celtuce blossom look like tempura but are not, because of its very western, fish-and-chip like batter, but elegantly presented with citrus soya sauce and curry salt. Diamond turbot sliced sashimi-style comes from local waters, and you eat it with pickled chrysanthemum petals, mountain yam strips and nori minced with toasted fish oil.

Sea cucumber as you've never seen it before is next - the delicacy is cooked till soft, dehydrated into thin discs and then deep-fried - expanding into luxurious keropok. That's followed by lightly smoked river trout from Battle Creek, a tributary of Sacramento River. The delicate sashimi-like denseness is enhanced by the juices the fish sits in - tangy, with the light liquorice fragrance of anise hyssop flowers.

Sea urchin from Fort Bragg is layered with avocado and toasted sourdough bread soaked in a shoyu and brown butter mixture that tastes almost Marmite-like, the saltiness seasoning the avocado and tempering the brininess of the sea urchin. It's hard to pick this over the buttery-soft abalone - taken live from the restaurant's tank, cooked immediately over the fire and served in a sauce made from its liver, seaweed and brown butter, amped up with the distinct but muted flavour of capers.

The highs pile up - from a smooth, savoury toffee-like mixture of duck liver, bread, milk and beer, studded with toasted sourdough bits. Milk custard and caramelised white chocolate are whipped into the mixture with kalamata olives - a multitude of contrasts in a magical union. And how about thin slices of tender red deer layered over melting soft eggplant and dried raspberry that mixes with the juices of the eggplant into a tangy sauce, or house-aged duck that cuts like butter, flavoured with honey and soya sauce made with the bones of the duck?

It's no wonder that Chef Skenes' star is shining bright in the industry. He agrees, too, that recognition "is great for morale and for the restaurant as a whole. The most important validation is our guests that come back week and week, month after month. To see them so interested and engaged and enjoying themselves is a big part of why we cook."

Just don't expect Chef Skenes to hop on the celebrity chef route towards TV shows, endorsements or other lucrative deals. "Whatever I am called and however successful I become, my long term goal is to spend more and more time at Saison and to just cook," says the soft-spoken chef. "It's really what brings me peace."

jaime@sph.com.sg


This article was first published on July 26, 2014.
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