The world at your table

David Thompson

Take 10 celebrated chefs, add 1,000 Fin de Claire oysters, 346 lobsters, 127 kilograms of foie gras, 340 quail eggs, and a few truckloads of lamb, venison, veal and beef, and you've got the beginnings of this year's World Gourmet Festival.

The WGF returns from October 5 to 11 for its 10th anniversary with more Michelin-star chefs from more continents than ever before.

The line-up includes two-Michelin-star chef David Kinch of California, and one-Michelin-star wonders Kazumi Sawada of Tokyo, Fulvio Siccardi of Monticello d'Alba, Italy, and David Thompson of London. Thompson, the only Michelin-starred chef specialising in Thai food, will also lead a morning market tour, as will Michael Ginor, the co-founder of Hudson Valley Foie Gras and a fixture at all 10 WGFs.

Also returning is Francois Payard, the French-born, third-generation patissier who will serve his most popular sweets and savouries from Payard New York at afternoon teas in the Lobby Lounge on October 9 to 11. Payard won't be holding a master class, but all other guest chefs will be sharing their secrets at lunch and dinner cooking classes.

This year's wine tasting highlights Chateau Le Pin whose Pomerols are consistently ranked 97-99 by Robert Parker and other leading critics.

Corralling 10 celebrated chefs is a formidable task. It's Nicolas Schneller's job to get them to divulge the ingredients of their most beloved recipes, as well as the techniques to produce them.

Schneller is the Four Seasons Bangkok's executive chef. He reviews the recipes, calculates the number of people who will be eating each meal, and compiles a master list of ingredients - topping Bt3.4 million (wholesale) this year - so that items are delivered just in time to ensure freshness.

Through hundreds of e-mail messages, Schneller also orchestrates the Gala Dinner, balancing ingredients and egos, so that the chefs' hallmark dishes and all the food groups - lobster, foie gras, oysters and micro-greens - are represented in their proper proportions.

"Ten chefs, 10 collections of recipes I've never seen. It would be impossible without a system," says Schneller, who has organised the last six World Gourmet Festivals and reduced its operation to a science.

This year's Gala Dinner is on Friday, October 9. Schneller has scheduled a huge delivery on Thursday to ensure freshness - and a rigorous schedule for the prep chefs.

For the Gala, Graham Elliot Bowles, of Graham Elliott in Chicago, will prepare his deconstructed Caesar salad. Christine Manfield of Universal Restaurant in Sydney, will follow with a salad of smoked ocean trout, tea-smoked oysters, blood sausage, celeriac and apple. Sawada will present skewered fried pike conger with chrysanthemum sauce. Ginor will serve citrus-butter poached lobster with sea beans and potato cream. Kinch will expand diners' culinary horizons with pumpkin veloute potimarronand nasturtium ice cream. For the main course, Siccardi will shun the Gala standards - lamb and beef - in favour of goose leg drizzled with caramelised vinegar. For dessert, Payard is planning to prepare a palat d'or with hot and cold hot chocolate.

"Each year, you can sense a trend that's capturing the imaginations of the world's leading chefs," notes Schneller. "One year it's a particular cuisine or technique. Another year, it's a return to tradition. This year, it looks like there's a bit more fusion created by chefs who have travelled and cooked around the world."

Luke Dale-Roberts, the executive chef of La Colombe in Capetown, South Africa, was born in Britain, schooled in Switzerland, and cooked in Sydney, Singapore, Seoul, Manila and Malaysia before moving to Africa. He integrates classic and modern French cuisine with Asian spices, creating such dishes as "miso yaki" with carrot-and-ginger emulsion, warm scallop sushi, and char-grilled asparagus, which he'll be serving in Madison on October 5 and 6.

Bowles, who will reign over Biscotti on October 5 and 6, was christened in 2004, at age 27, as one of the top 10 best new chefs in America by Food & Wine magazine. His food at Graham Elliott is what he calls "bistronomic," emphasising fresh ingredients, minimalist preparations and a relaxed atmosphere.

Culinary anthropologist Thompson, cooking at Spice Market on October 6 and 7, specialises in traditional Thai recipes gleaned from the funerary texts of celebrated chefs or taught to him by grey-haired grannies in the provinces. The native Australian's dinners include such favourites as steamed quail eggs with Chiang Mai chilli relish and grilled chicken and banana blossom salad, and more intriguingly, a soup made of roast duck, shitake mushrooms and coconut, and geng dtaparpnam, a pork curry with salak and maeuk. Thompson's London restaurant, Nahm, was awarded its Michelin star in 2002.

Argentinean-born Paola Carosella, at Biscotti on October 7 and 8, blends her family's Italian roots with Brazilian ingredients to cook classical wood-fired Brazilian dishes at Arturito in Sao Paolo.

Manfield, at Madison on October 7 and 8, presents tiny tasting dishes that mix Mediterranean and Asian flavours, such as jasmine-tea-smoked duck breast, venison tataki, and smoked ocean trout, eel and pomelo salad. Her creations at Universal Restaurant in Sydney have made her one of Australia's most celebrated chefs.

Ginor, the largest producer of foie gras in the world, will hold his annual bacchanal - foie gras, lobster, striploin, pigeon, venison - in Monthathip Court on October 8. It will feature Piper-Heidsiek Champagne.

Siccardi takes new approaches to traditional dishes, as exemplified by his vertical egg with truffle-perfumed milk-and-parmesan sauce, which will be part of his five-course Biscotti dinners on October 10 and 11.

Two-Michelin-star chef David Kinch, cooking October 10 and 11 at Madison, is a proponent of seasonal American cuisine, which he enhances with French and Catalan influences at Manresa Restaurant in Los Gatos, California. His dinners here include roasted fish in onion-marrow broth with chervil cream and slow-roasted rack of lamb with a blend of exotic spices.

Sawada, at Shintaro on October 10 and 11, is inspired by the changing seasons. His Michelin-star Tokyo restaurant, Banrekiyukodo, is celebrated for its modern, visually dazzling take on the kaiseki (traditional) cuisine he learned as a young chef. Watch for lobster simmered with autumn berries and skewers of taro, Wagyu beef and truffles.

The World Gourmet Festival's events range from Bt950 to Bt7,500. For details and dinner reservations, e-mail wgf.bangkok@fourseasons.com. For hotel reservations or additional information, contact the Four Seasons at (02) 126 8866 or reservations.thailand@fourseasons.com.