AsiaLIFE

With a new à la carte menu, special degustation menus, a weekly lunch menu and daily suggestions, AsiaLIFE thought it time to talk with the Papa behind Topaz. Words by Johan Smits.

“What last meal would you choose if you were about to be thrown to the lions in the amphitheatre in ancient Rome?” I ask veteran French Chef, Alain Darc, across the table at his exclusive restaurant, Topaz. “I’d eat the lion,” he replies quick-as-a-flash. The sixty year-old executive chef, better known to his staff as ‘Papa’, does not beat about the bush when talking about his biggest passion in life – food. Perhaps that’s not so surprising.

The first cook in the family was a chef at the French royal court of Louis-Philippe around 1830. Since then, the art of cooking has been handed down from generation to generation without interruption. “You know, I hardly had any choice,” he says. ”As a kid I wore out my shorts in a kitchen, so to speak. I was lucky to grow up in an environment of big chefs, whether it was my father or grandfather.”

Coming from the Southwest of France – a region known for its foie gras, asparagus and truffles – might have helped too.  “I have benefited much from my situation,” Alain admits. “Being the son of a renowned chef, I have met and worked with pretty much all the French Grands Chefs from the previous generation.”  

A Culinary Journey

Alain’s passion for food is not limited to the final stages of preparation. He shows a keen interest in the route the food takes before it ends up served on a dish. “Like how to treat a raw fish,” he cites as an example. “The work of a fishmonger is not the same as that of a cook. Learning about the details of emptying a fish is interesting in order to understand the transformation of the product.”

He learnt how to work with white fish from the Japanese. Some Chileans taught him how to make empanadas. A baker showed him how to make bread and to understand its fermentation, and a butcher taught him how to cut a leg of beef. “I’ve always wanted to understand the entire journey of a product, because I’ve come to realise that the way the food has been treated, can determine whether the end product is good or bad,” he explains.

Technique, Technique, Technique

Taking this idea a step further ‘Papa’ demonstrates to the young cooks in Topaz’s kitchen how different working procedures on identical recipes can create contrasting results. “Technique is very important in food preparation,” he says.

A chef should not aim so much to produce a standardised taste, but to “regularise” it. “If, by coincidence, you prepare something excellent and next time the client comes again and the same dish is kind of similar to what he tasted before, that cannot pass,” he says. “That’s why, with my staff, I’m very demanding about technique.” To Alain, the actual taste of the dish – making it sweeter, saltier, more bitter – that’s just a suggestion. “But, on the other hand always using the same sugar, that’s technique!” he explains.

All the talk about food makes us hungry and before long Alain offers me some dishes from Topaz’s new menu. First come roasted scallops with caviar and basil flavoured butterfly pasta, together with a glass of Château de Fongrave – a crisp and dry white Bordeaux Entre-Deux-Mers. “The amount of caviar is important,” Alain explains. “If you add too much, you will actually taste the caviar but that’s not really the objective. On the contrary, the smoky flavour of the caviar should accentuate the flavour of the scallops.”

Don’t Use the F-word...

Alain hates even talking about fusion food. “It makes me sick!” he says. For him food is universal. “It’s up to you to call it à la Cambodgienne, à la francaise, à la Danemark or à la Topaz – I just use a Cambodian stuffing,” he uses his stuffed rabbit (râble de lapin) as an example. His intention is not to use a Cambodian stuffing, but a stuffing that can be married with and do justice to the rabbit.

He extends his argument further over sweet bread and foie gras ravioli with Périgueux sauce. “What am I looking for as a make-up man, as a perfumer, as a beautician – what is my objective?” he asks. “It’s not to change the personality of the person, but to make that personality stand out.” The sweet bread and foie gras ravioli makes the point perfectly for him.

Not that all Alain’s food is foie gras and caviar. For him, Khmer cuisine is one of the subtlest in Asia due to the variety of herbs used, but it is caught in a time warp. “It deserves to be ‘updated’,” he says. “Today we have fridges and many tools to conserve food – there’s an evolution in products and we should apply that to Khmer food too,” he explains. 

What does dining at Topaz mean to the chef? The answer comes quickly – to him it is people who spontaneously identify a product to a dish, and who remember the dishes they eat. “I love it when people tell me ‘Ah, this reminds me of so and so,” he says. “We convey something with our food. If people remain cold towards its taste, it means that we have not succeeded in our job. Cooking is like that, and Topaz is like that too.”

Topaz Restaurant and Piano Bar, 182 Norodom Blvd., Tel. 023 221 622.