Food That Travels (Asia)
Written By Wessam Massoud
In 2020, Japanese Chef Natsuko Shoji was recognized as Asia’s Best Pastry Chef. Two years later, she scooped Asia’s Best Female Chef 2022 award.
That same year, Emirati Chef Sahar Al Awadhi was awarded the MENA’s first-ever Best Pastry Chef accolade, setting her sights on expanding her culinary influence beyond the sweet kitchen and into the savory. But how can one navigate such a course without a guiding star?
On a warm sunny day in June, Shoji, who had tread this path before, joined Awadhi for a very personal lunch; both chefs drew on their past experiences and future aspirations to craft a unique menu that showcased their formidable talents.
The setting for the first lunch of this edition of Cairo Food Week was The Dinner Club at Bouy. Envisioned by its founders Ahmed Ganzoury and Kareem Nabil to be an intimate dining experience, one that brings Egypts’ creative and intellectual minds in conversation with a different chef each time, it was the ideal venue for this collaborative meal.
Both chefs sought to integrate the flavors of the United Arab Emirates and Japan in a single menu: The result was as bright and refreshing as the setting we inhabited. Unsurprisingly, seafood featured prominently on the menu due to both nations’ historical reliance on the sea as a main source of protein. This common ground allowed the back and forth to be cohesive, leaving us to
The entree was ‘Mehyawa Churros,’ a tongue-in-cheek reference to a fried egg breakfast. The crisp churro dusted with mint powder was used to sop up the faux egg yolk and lemony “whites,” with flourishes of a tangy fermented Iranian fish sauce that were deeply delicious. As an opening dish, it stated clearly that alongside the delicious food, we would be treated to the culinary conversation; each dish would contain a backstory of a personal nature to each of the chefs.
The next dish came covered in gold: citrus fruit arils in a bowl arranged in the shape of a flower, adorned with smaller sunflowers to the right and left. Underneath the flower, inside a hollowed-out pomelo was a sea bream tartare. Shoji appeared at our table, lifted the flower and spread the arils onto the fish, demonstrating that it takes only two seconds to destroy something that took 30 minutes to assemble. She flashed a shy smile, thanked us for listening and left us to ponder the intricacy of her composition.
This dish was created specifically for the event, drawing on the sun being an important icon for Ancient Egyptians.
What followed was Shoji’s signature dish ‘Caviar Mille-Feuille’: caramelized layers of pastry sheets with sweet-tart golden berries and briny caviar. Arguably, it is this dish that earned her the Asia's Best Female Chef title, and rightfully so; it’s both daring and inventive. It also perfectly encapsulates the blending of flavors and techniques from both the sweet and savory kitchens.
After the mille-feuille, Awadhi served ‘Malleh Tacos’ featuring cured mackerel. Accompanying the composition was a tomatillo and lemon confit that delivered a profoundly satisfying accent, while the green, barely-steamed tortilla guaranteed tenderness with every bite.
“For me, the image of Cairo is the sun. I wanted to create something custom and emotional that reflected the sun over Egypt.”
“There was a lot of cohesiveness. We have sort of similar backgrounds and I guess our thought process was the same, and without even deciding, somehow it became a seafood menu.”
