Text 11632, 119 rader
Skriven 2007-02-10 10:13:34 av CAROL BRYANT (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av MICHAEL LOO
Ärende: ELECTRIFYING 40
=======================
 
-> I enjoy pretentious cooking just as much as any other cooking,
-> if the results are good. I even enjoy pretentious eating, if
-> I am being paid for! But making fancy stuff out of the rarest
-> ingredients just 'cause they're rare doesn't call to me: shaving
-> truffles over everything so you can charge double while camouflaging
-> second-rate ingredients, forget it. 

Coincidentally, this was in USA Today this morning:

Epicureans pay $25,000 each for 10-course culinary extravaganza
 
By Jocelyn Gecker, Associated Press
BANGKOK, Thailand — It's been billed as the "meal of a lifetime," a
10-course dinner concocted by world-renowned chefs for the most
discriminating palates and — at $25,000 a head — the fattest wallets.

And that doesn't include tax and gratuity.

Few expenses were spared in putting together Saturday night's culinary
extravaganza in Bangkok.

But at this price, even the most talented chefs can find it challenging to
give diners their money's worth.

Antoine Westermann of Le Buerhiesel, the famous restaurant in Strasbourg,
France, says he plans to shave 3 1/2 ounces of Perigord truffles — worth
about $350 — onto each plate.

"For $25,000, what do you expect?" he said.

Westermann is one of six three-star Michelin chefs — four from France and
one each from Italy and Germany — commissioned to fix dinner at the Lebua
luxury hotel for 40 "Epicurean Masters of the World." That's the title for
the event, organized by the hotel to promote Thai tourism.

The menu features complicated creations like "tartare of Kobe beef with
Imperial Beluga caviar and Belon oysters" and "mousseline of 'pattes
rouges' crayfish with morel mushroom infusion."

Guests jetted in from the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
Deepak Ohri, the Lebua's managing director, declined to reveal their
identities but said they include Fortune 500 executives, a casino owner
from Macau and a Taiwanese hotel owner.

"It's surreal! The whole thing is surreal," said Alain Soliveres, the
celebrated chef of the Taillevent restaurant in Paris.

Soliveres was preparing two of his signature dishes, including the first
course: a "'creme brulee' of foie gras" to be washed down with a 1990
Cristal champagne — a bubbly that sells for more than $500 a bottle, but
still stands out as one of the cheapest wines on the menu.

"To have brought together all of these three-star Michelin chefs, and to
serve these wines for so many people is just an incredible feat," Soliveres
said ahead of the dinner. "It's fabulous!"

Chefs submitted their grocery lists to organizers and the ingredients were
flown in fresh: black truffles, foie gras, oysters and live Brittany
lobsters from France; caviar from Switzerland; Jerusalem artichokes and
white truffles from Rome.

Diners will sip their way through legendary vintages, like a 1985 Romanee
Conti, a 1959 Chateau Mouton Rothschild, a 1967 Chateau d'Yquem and a 1961
Chateau Palmer, considered "one of the greatest single wines of the 20th
century," said Alun Griffiths of Berry Bros. & Rudd, the British wine
merchants that procured and shipped about six bottles of each wine for the
dinner.

The wine alone cost more than $200,000, Griffiths said.

"Just to have one of these would be a great treat," he said. "To have 10 of
them in one evening is the sort of thing that people would kill for."

Whether this is the world's most expensive dinner is difficult to
determine. Wine lovers regularly organize exorbitantly expensive tastings
with fine food in New York, London and Japan. Hedonistic hedge-fund
managers are known for dropping outrageous sums for a single night of
partying after bonuses are handed out.

One difference here is the location, some critics say. In Thailand, the
average schoolteacher would need to work five years to make $25,000. And
for many, it would take longer than that.

Out on the street, where much of Bangkok's best food is served, the dinner
generated talk of over-the-top excess and unfathomable indulgence.

"That is a waste of money," said Rungrat Ketpinyo, 44, who sells Phad Thai
noodles for 75 cents a plate from a street cart outside the hotel. "I don't
care how luxurious this meal is. It's ridiculous."

Organizers said most of the profits will go to two charities — Medecins
Sans Frontieres and the Chaipattana Foundation — a rural development
charity set up by the king of Thailand.

"Expensive is very relative," said Ohri, the Lebua director. "Some of the
world's best chefs will be cooking their best dishes with the finest
vintage wines."

"It is an experience of a lifetime."

Organizers scrambled to fill seats at the last minute after 10 Japanese
people canceled their reservation, citing safety concerns after the New
Year's Eve bombings in Bangkok that killed 3 people.

To ensure discretion, diners will be escorted to a restaurant on the
hotel's 65th floor in a private elevator, and all staff in possession of
cellphones with cameras will have to check the devices at the door.

The chefs confessed they were astonished by the $25,000 price tag. A meal
at their own restaurants costs about $260.

"It's crazy," Westermann said. "The fact that one meal could be this
expensive," he shrugged. "After this, nothing can shock me."

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may
not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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