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Mark of the best

ALL THE BEST: The chef adds finishing touches before presenting the dish to guests.

At the Westin hotel in Kuala Lumpur, EU HOOI KHAW gets a taste of fusion flavours and a chat with the chef.

FABULOUS: Potato paper with foie gras and liquorice.

AWESOME: Chocolate salted caramel, a delight beyond words.

IT is a rare opportunity indeed to watch a great chef at work, putting the finishing touches to your lunch, and the counter table that surrounds the open kitchen in the Eest restaurant at the Westin Kuala Lumpur was certainly conducive to having an intimate chat with chef Mark Best from Sydney, as he presented the food, course by course.

This is the second time Best has been in Kuala Lumpur, this time bringing modern French flavours with an Asian twist, the cuisine of his restaurant, Marque, in Sydney.

“I’m using fantastic local ingredients which I encountered on my last trip here. I’m influenced by the textures of Chinese and Japanese cuisines, especially Chinese. Then there are the aesthetic elements of Japanese cuisine where everything on the plate is edible, and not just purely decorative.”

If you concentrate on what you are eating, you become aware of texture, as there are lots of nerve endings in the mouth, said Best. Of course what you eat has to be absolutely delicious, and then there are the aesthetics that would please you.

There were plenty of all three from the start. The Chaud Froid Egg, a half cooked one, had both warm milk and cold cream in it. The chef mentioned chives, then maple syrup, a surprising ingredient in a savoury starter.

We were invited to dip in, with thin, crispy salted breadsticks. The smooth, rich creaminess stood out, then the saltiness of the breadstick, a little sweetness, and a little tartness. “It’s sherry vinegar,” he said. It worked rather well. The egg encapsulates his philosophy about flavours and textures.

Wonderful aromas wafted up from the Blue Swimmer Crab with Almond Jelly, Gazpacho, Corn Custard and Avruga, a signature dish at Marque, an assemblage of the sweet, silky flesh of the crab on a corn custard thickened with its own starch.

“Things should be what they are,” said the chef. There was tomato-based gazpacho, almond jelly on top and a sprinkling of almond powder. I bit through soft, then smooth: there was a sweet element to it, assuaged by the salty tang of avruga, or smoked herring roe, deliberately added for colour and seasoning. Superlative in every sense.

Best drizzled the Carpaccio of Local Octopus with Leek and Marigold with extra virgin olive oil, then sprinkled Murray River salt over it. It’s the chef’s favourite salt, pink with the minerals in it, and so flavourful.

Fried leek strips gave a lovely aroma to the octopus carpaccio. We were moved to ask the chef how he cooked the leek. “It’s fried in oil, at 70ºC.”

Potato Paper with Foie Gras and Liquorice made me curious how Best achieved that thin, fragile, almost transparent sheet that was potato paper.

It’s potato juice, cooked, then spread out on a plastic sheet to dry, and deepfried. Kalamata olive, almond milk, palm sugar, star anise and Dutch liquorice (because it is more salty, said Best) were brought together in the sauce for the foie gras, and the potato paper.

It was a fine balance of sweet and salty, with fragrance from spice and liquorice. The foie gras was superb with it; I liked the feel and taste of the potato paper.

Mandagery Creek Venison with Mushroom Salad and Smoked Potato Puree was presented with aplomb. Everything on the plate had been matched for flavour and texture.

The venison, from west of Sydney, had been roasted and drizzled wth a sauce of venison stock and chocolate sauce! It worked very well with the meat.

I enjoyed the mushroom salad, which was a mixture of enoki, champignon and a local one called kei yook koo or chicken meat mushroom that was thick, silky and bursting with flavour.

It had been put in a pickling liqueur in a vacuum bag and cooked.

I couldn’t get enough of the smoked potato puree: it was just so good. The potatoes had been first smoked with hickory wood.

The Sauterne Custard in a Cup was ambrosial: the sweet fragrant wine embraced the creamy custard, leaving a wonderful mouth feel.

The Chocolate Vermicelli with Lychee and Yoghurt is a black and white dessert, white mostly from yoghurt mousse and lychee sorbet, with flat, sticky bittersweet dark chocolate strips.

I especially liked the last, and the contrast with the light mousse and sorbet.

We put in the Chocolate Salted Caramel with Lime Powder, a round chocolate ball that threatened to run off the plate. One bite, and we couldn’t speak for our delight. There was a salty crunch on top, with a runny soft centre.

“Cooking is a theatrical experience: it’s about the food,” said Best. “My favourite is the blue swimmer crab. I love the substantiality of flavour. It best represents what I’m trying to achieve at Marque.”

His biggest challenge is remaining fresh, keeping the ideas flowing. “When you look back it should be a straight line behind you instead of going all over the place.”

It’s his second trip to Kuala Lumpur. “I appreciate what you have here. I have eaten a wonderful fishhead curry and mud crabs cooked with black pepper and curry leaves.”

Cooking was not Best’s first calling. He was an electrician until he was 25, when his interest in cooking was sparked when working in the gold mines in West Australia. “You would do anything to escape.”

He wanted to start a cafe with his wife, an English teacher then in Sydney, but then he would have to be a chef. He started working in a well-known bistro there, loved the job, and after just four years he won an award for the best up-and-coming chef. By the fifth year he had opened his own bistro.

Two years later he took off for France where he spent a year honing his skills in French cuisine at L’Arpege in Paris and Gastro Temple, then off to another well-known restaurant in Britain before going home to open Marque.

Best may yet come this way again; his two dinners at Eest at the Westin were a sellout.

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