Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten must have a separate pantry at home just for storing all his awards.
Alsatian-born and classically French-trained, Vongerichten is the kind of chef for whom the critics who count reserve their highest praise; a standard-bearer variously described as "ground-breaking," "innovative," "visionary," "New York's most prized possession." His name appears at or near the top of practically every culinary "who's who," and, in 1998, he enjoyed the unprecedented honor of receiving both the James Beard Foundation's Outstanding Chef award (which he shared with Wolfgang Puck) and Best New Restaurant award (for New York eatery Jean Georges).
The wizard in a toque behind Mercer Kitchen and Jo Jo in New York, Prime Steakhouse in Las Vegas' Bellagio Hotel and Vong in New York, London and Hong Kong, is coming here soon, in partnership with Lettuce Entertain You - get ready for Vong Chicago.
Often quoted as saying, "I spent all my youth in the fridge," Vongerichten is fond of recounting his cooking lineage. "My parents and grandparents had a coal company, and my mother and grandmother were cooking for the entire staff every day, about fifty people, so I grew up with lots of food around me. It was like a little restaurant. Waking up in the morning, all the smells in the house - the cellar was filled with potatoes, the fridge was loaded with food. I grew up bringing in the coal and eating great food." Five years in Asia, followed by time spent in New York, helped hone Vongerichten's signature style. "I was sent [to Thailand] to do the kind of French cooking where we cook our stocks for twenty hours. When I arrived, the first thing I ate was tom yum kai, the shrimp soup with lemon grass that they put together in ten minutes. A pot of water, smashed lemon grass, chili, mushrooms, shrimp and fish sauce, and I tell you, I had the best soup in the world, with this incredible fragrance. It changed my life."
Later, when Vongerichten brought his French techniques to New York, "People were scraping the rich sauces off their food, or asking for sauce on the side, and I was very frustrated," the chef recalls. "In France it's different, people cook a lot, and they eat very well at home. When they go to a restaurant it's for an occasion, and they want something elaborate that they can't do at home. In New York it's the opposite; people may go to a restaurant six or seven times a week, and they don't want all that butter and richness."
To accommodate the popular demands, Vongerichten returned to his roots. "Real French food is not only Escoffier style, but everyday, regional cooking. So I went back to my roots," he says. "My mother would do a roast chicken, and ten minutes before it was ready she'd throw a glass of water on it, and you'd have the best sauce. So I threw my old things away, and I started from scratch, using salad vinaigrettes, vegetable juices and flavored oils." (Vongerichten is credited with starting the revolution in innovative flavored oils, going far beyond Italy's classic herb-infused olive oil.)
Vongerichten's cuisine has been described as "Thaioise" and Thai-French fusion, but the chef prefers "French-Asian. When we opened Vong with this kind of blend, we had a sort of identity crisis. When something is new, people need a handle, so we called it French-Thai. For the first six months, people laughed, 'This is not Thai food, and this is not Chinese food.' It took a little while for people to just accept it for what it was. It's sixty percent Thai, in terms of ingredients: curry paste, lime leaves, galangal, the rest a blend of other Asian, including Japanese, Chinese and Malaysian. All the techniques we are using are French; roasting, sautŽing, braising, etc. We don't use any woks. The spices, vegetables and herbs are Asian; most of the other ingredients, like the black sea bass and the lobster, are American." He also understands the important role of cooking as a sensory experience. "I think my nose is my best tool. I found in the late eighties and early nineties, with everything plated and so many hands touching the food, there was no smell to restaurant food any more. It's like stealing from customers. I wanted to bring smell back to the dining room. We do things to finish dishes at the table, scooping them out or shaking spices onto the plate at the table to get the aroma of the spice mix. At Vong, you have lot of aroma coming out of the plate."
Signature Vong dishes include lobster with Thai herbs and foie gras with ginger and mango. Muses Vongerichten, "I'm looking for new things all the time. The role of the chef is to bring new techniques and new flavors. Like in my lobster and daikon roll - cooked lobster, pickled ginger and daikon sprouts are wrapped in thin leaves of daikon, dipped in a ginger-rosemary sauce. It's Provence meets Bangkok."
Vongerichten is confident Chicago diners will welcome his eponymous endeavor. "Like New York, people in Chicago are very open to food. It's a busy city, and food is very important; there's a grand variety of different restaurants and different styles," he says. "I love Chicago, and I think there's a niche for us. You have a great Thai restaurant, Arun's, which is the best in the country for me, but what we offer is totally different."
"We're in the business of creating cravings. I want people to remember one thing, to crave one thing," Vongerichten says of his goal. "If you taste these spices once, you're going to come back." Get your sensory organs ready for an extraordinary dining experience, as Chicago is going, going, Vong.
copyright 1999 New City Communications, Inc.