Maison Dali deserves two Michelin stars

What makes a chef who runs a three Michelin star restaurant so different from the rest?

What is it about his cooking that so impresses the Michelin inspectors?

 

Unless you operate within the top level of the global restaurant business it is almost impossible to get an insight into what it is that makes a three restaurant and its chef so different.

 

   I know a fair number of restaurateurs and chefs in India but each time I have wanted to tackle this issue (we have no Michelin guide so I would have used the Ultimate Restaurant Ratings instead) I have been hit by the obvious doubt: will it seem like too much of a plug?

 

   I decided I would track a chef and restaurant abroad, in a city where nobody gives a damn what I write so there is no concern about a plug. But how? I do know chefs abroad but not well enough for them to allow me access to the secrets of a restaurant and its kitchen.

 

   Eventually Sameer Sain solved my problem. Sameer is CEO of the multi-billion dollar Everstone group but likes to open restaurants (in his personal capacity) because he understands food.

 

   Along with individual partners, he runs three restaurants in Singapore: Hamamoto (Japanese: one Michelin star) Araya (international: also one star) and Revolver (Indian roots but evolving).

 

   I have been to Revolver and to Hamamoto but never to Araya. I really liked the two restaurants I ate at which was just as well because Sameer is my co-founder at Culinary Culture and it would have been awkward if I had hated them. (Sameer and Everstone have hundreds of enterprises but Culinary Culture is insulated from all of them to avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest.)

 

   Last year Sameer told me he was going to work with the Scottish chef Tristin Farmer. I had met Tristin and been surprised by his humility given that Zen, the Singapore restaurant whose kitchen he headed, had won three Michelin stars.

 

   Then Sameer told me that Tristin was leaving Zen and they were planning to open a restaurant in Dubai together. I came to the obvious conclusion: they were hoping to run the first restaurant in Dubai that would win three Michelin stars.

 

   I was wrong. It turned out that Sameer and Tristin wanted to open a casual brasserie-style restaurant with prices that were even lower than that old Dubai war horse, LPM and much lower than the city’s many celebrity-chef restaurants.

 

   It got more complicated. They wanted to call it Maison Dali after the artist Salvador Dali and give it a slightly surreal twist. They would not open in a hotel (the usual location for this kind of restaurant in Dubai) but would open on the first floor of a Zaha Hadid-designed building.

 

   It took much longer than planned but last week when I finally went, they were serving friends and media in preparation for the opening.

 

   The Dali touches were most visible in the supper club area which is basically a room that serves small plates and drinks.

 

   The cynic in me wondered: with his three Michelin star background, can Tristin possibly do bar snacks?

 

"Maison Dali works on numbers. The food cost in some dishes comes to 60 per cent so the restaurant needs volumes to flourish given how reasonable the prices are."

   Well, he certainly showed me what he could do. There was an Uni Toast, fresh Japanese sea urchin on a bed of truffles on toast. In which world is this bar food? I thought to myself.

 

   A smoked caviar Japanese-style hand roll came next. I was not particularly surprised: the idea of smoking caviar probably originated at the influential Extebarri restaurant in Spain and the dish became internationally famous when the Australian chef Lennox Hastie cooked it on Netflix’s Chef Table.

 

   Except that Tristin’s smoked caviar was nothing like that version. It was subtler: high quality N25 caviar that had been lightly kissed by a curl of smoke.

 

   The next canapé seemed like the currently fashionable combination of fried chicken and caviar. Except that it wasn’t. The chicken had been replaced with the tenderest quail, the frying was perfect and the caviar was top notch.

 

   The following day, when the restaurant was shut, I went over to chat to Tristin. He gave me some insights into how a chef of his calibre can take simple dishes and elevate and transform them.

 

   Let’s take his riff on chicken-and-caviar. He replaced the chicken with farmed quail from France’s Loire Valley. Once the quail arrived it was dry-aged in the restaurant for four to five days. Then it was marinated in Japanese Shio Koji. Next it was steamed in honey, then lightly smoked and allowed to cool.

 

   The pieces of quail were fried in rapeseed oil after being battered in a mixture of corn starch and flour.

 

   The deep fat fryer had a Japanese attachment called Dr Fry. This is used for frying tempura in some Japanese kitchens and creates an electric field in the oil while the frying is in progress. This helps prevent the moisture from leaking out during frying (these leaks are the reason so many foods can be dried out while frying) and greatly reduces the oiliness of the finished fried products.

 

   And after that they add caviar!

 

   All this for a small piece of fried poultry? Yes. That was typical of Tristin’s style. Very complicated dishes made to look deceptively simple. Even the caviar hand roll that I liked so much had been elevated by Tristin’s new smoking technique that was quite different from the Chef’s Table version.

 

   And those were just the canapés!

 

   The meal itself, served in a warmly elegant dining room was Daliesque in its humour. It professed to serve brasserie classics but all of them had been given the Tristin treatment. The tartare was made with carefully sourced Japanese beef. The Fruit de Mer platter was not the traditional tower but three plates of exquisitely seasoned seafood including the best Alaskan Crab I have ever eaten. Turbot in a cream sauce sounded like a brasserie dish but could easily have been served in a three Michelin star restaurant. Steak Diane was flambéd at the table and it was the subtle touches (replacing the button mushrooms with fresh morels, the refined sauce and the quality of the steak itself) that made it memorable.

 

   I asked Tristin that if this was his idea of brasserie food what would he do when he finally opened another place which could win the three stars he had walked away from In Singapore? This food was hard to top. He hummed and hawed but I guess he will just open another kind of restaurant.

 

   Maison Dali works on numbers. The food cost in some dishes comes to 60 per cent so the restaurant needs volumes to flourish given how reasonable the prices are.

 

   My guess is that it will get them. The positioning is shrewd. In a city where many successful restaurants reek of vulgarity, this is an island of good taste; food that easily deserves two Michelin stars but is served at brasserie prices. It will become a destination for knowledgeable foodies who want to avoid the tourist hordes.

 

   Tristin has also worked with the respected Indian chef Jiten Joshi whose Revolver is stunning. But that will have to wait for another piece!