Along with five other Michelin-starred chefs, Jean-Michel Lorain was in Bangkok this week to cook the Bt1-million-per-person gala dinner for a select group of Thai and international guests at the ultra-luxury lebua Hotel.

"I started cooking in 1977, when I was 18, with an apprenticeship in Roanne in Pierre and Jean Troisgros' restaurant. In 1979, I also spent one year with Claude Deligne in the kitchen of Taillevent restaurant in Paris. Currently, I run my family restaurant and hotel business, called La Côte Saint Jacques, in Burgundy [France]," said Lorain, who earned the coveted title of a three-star Michelin chef in 1986.

"I represent the third generation of the family, as my grandmother started the business back in 1945," said the 48-year-old chef, who also likes Japanese and Thai dishes in addition to his native French and European cuisine.

Lorain prepared a special lunch for guests at lebua's Breeze restaurant on Thursday before he joined the five other visiting Michelin-starred chefs to cook last night's gala dinner, which the hotel has billed as the second gathering of Epicurean masters of the world in Thailand.

The six chefs were invited here to prepare a total of 14 special meals whose prices, including wines, start from less than Bt10,000 to Bt1 million per person.

The lunch at the Breeze cost Bt8,900 per person. The menu started with a French champagne, then a dish of blue-fin tuna and smoked salmon, gelées, horseradish-infused cabbage and radishes with light wasabi cream. Later there were scallops with Belgian endives and wild mushroom foam as well as roasted wood pigeon, quinoa and green asparagus, asparagus cream and pistachio oil.

The use of wasabi cream over raw tuna and smoked salmon, which Lorain started about two years ago, may represent a little bit of fusion between Western and Oriental gastronomy.

Lorain likes the ingredients of Japanese food, as well as the taste and presentation style. However, he feels the trend of fusion food is probably more relevant to New York or Bangkok than the French countryside, where he comes from.

New York or Bangkok are like melting pots where many nationalities, cultures and people are present, he notes, adding that many things in such a society tend to be mixed and food is no exception since it's an expression of society over a time period.

"As for Thai cuisine, my favourite dish is the spicy chicken soup in coconut milk. I also like lemon grass and other Thai spices, even though not to the same degree as the locals," says Lorain, who was named France's Chef of the Year in 1993 by food critic Christian Millau.

Lorain said La Côte Saint Jacques got its first star in the Michelin guidebook during his father's tenure back in 1971.

The second star was awarded in 1976 and the third was given a decade later to both his father and himself, who had trained at three prominent restaurants in France and Switzerland prior to returning to the family's business.

Lorain was also a partner in a French restaurant in Bangkok in the mid-1990s, but it went out of business in the 1997 economic crisis.

Looking back over the past half century since his family's restaurant was founded, Lorain noted that chefs worldwide have responded to calls for more healthy

food.

"It's an international trend since people want to eat healthier meals with less creams and fats. Over the past decades since my father's generation I'd guess we've doubled the use of vegetables,

cereals and seeds in the dishes," he said.

"We also use new techniques and higher-speed mixing in preparing ingredients so that we can retain the same flavours while using fewer fats. Secondly, the portion of servings has also been reduced. I guess it's now 20 per cent less when compared to my father's generation. Unlike half a century ago, people today tend to eat less because they need less energy for physical activities.

"In the older days, they worked as many as 12 hours a day and six days a week in France. Today, the work hours are only seven per day and they work only five days a week, mainly in offices and indoors with the help of machines, etc. A century ago, we were also used to having a 15-set course lasting five hours. Now, it's a four-set course in two hours," said Lorain.

Nophakhun Limsamarnphun

nop1122@yahoo.com