The fingers on his right hand read “Rock;” the left: “Roll.” The words are in a bold black gothic font. Above the lettering, there are tattoos of a circus curtain with incoming waves, a large blossoming rose and two metal wrenches crisscrossing over each other on his thumb.
Both hands work quickly, making the letters dance and only stopping once in a while to wipe the sweat off his brow. Ignoring the crowd of people swaying hungrily before him, he looks over his shoulder and sees his assistant. The man behind him nods and passes him a gleaming silver instrument, which he uses to finish plating bites of blackened cod on individual Japanese soup spoons.
Nikos Skamnakis is the chef finishing his guitar solo. The kitchen is his stage. Bites of blackened cod punctured with sweet plum and dashi are a source of newfound excitement, and food culture has been rearranged to reflect these values. Where chefs were once confined to the steaming enclaves of the kitchen, they now have their own PR managers and TV shows.
Tonight’s party is a reflection of this trend: a sprawling basement kitchen at Badrutt’s Palace Hotel in St. Moritz has been transformed into a full on spectacle. A woman hangs from a swing bolted to the kitchen ceiling and a live band plays in the background to set the tone for the real rock stars: a dozen world-renowned chefs who have been flown into the ski resort town to participate in the St. Moritz Gourmet Festival.
The attendees to this annual event aren’t your typical rock-and-roll crowd: 200 hungry diners, along with photographers and a full TV crew, clutch champagne flutes in branded chef aprons strewn over their cocktail attire. Yet there is a noticeable air of fandom in the kitchen as party-goers, each one having paid 330 Swiss Francs – $435 CAD – to sample amuse bouche sized bites at the night’s event, shove their way through each chef’s tasting station.
Ron Silver of Bubby’s Diner in New York City is making a giant hamburger, which he cuts into generous bites. The James Beard award winning Melissa Kelley, executive chef of Primo in Maine, is making grilled prawns with bacon wrapped leeks. Michelin-starred chef James Kent of The Nomad in New York City and Gero Porstein, executive chef of the Restaurant Romanoff at The Carlton Hotel in St. Moritz are instructing a transfixed crowd on how to eat a scotch olive made of Meredith feta, lamb sausage and Panko breadcrumbs.
The five-day festival promises to provide attendees with something beyond a traditional dining experience. It offers a behind the scenes look at the some of the world’s best chefs in action, with many events centred around eating inside a bustling kitchen rather than the comparatively bland public dining area. Like a music festival, there is a schedule with different acts each day, and wristbands are often required.
Because St. Moritz is one of the most luxurious travel destinations in the world, everyone attending the festival is spectacularly wealthy – an assortment of financiers from Hong Kong, real estate moguls from Spain and Russian women who live in Monaco and wear mink fur coats. One woman, in a kind attempt to relate as we pass two crackling wood-burning fireplaces, a live pianist and a bright orange painting in The Carlton’s lobby bar, asks me, “Don’t you just love the modern art displayed at the best five-star European hotels?”
This is not the crowd one expects to find in the sweaty confines of a professional kitchen where the foul-mouthed tendencies of line cooks and screaming head chefs reverberate. But there are no meltdowns; no sliced fingers or grease fires. Everything is decidedly tame, and each guest seems thrilled just to be there.
As chefs continue transcending the world of gastronomy into their own breed of rock stardom, an invitation to meet the chef or see the kitchen has become a sought-after privilege, much like scoring a backstage pass to a concert. For the truly dedicated and financially solvent foodie, simply dining at popular restaurants is no longer enough.
This is why a serious looking 40-something-old man named Nial, who works in real estate, bought a ticket to the evening’s event. Nial has refused to wear the gimmicky apron supplied to us, instead sporting a tailored suit as he thumbs through pictures on his phone. “And this is me with Massimo,” he says proudly. “You know Massimo Bottura, the best chef in the world?”
I nod, noticing what I suspect is a red wine flush on his face in the picture. I decide it must have been taken after service, once Nial had ordered a notice-me bottle of wine, tipped generously and asked for the picture. “I’ve met all the famous chefs,” he boasts. “We are friends,” he almost certainly exaggerates.
I have no pictures with famed chefs to show him. But earlier that morning, when I had finished interviewing the three-star Michelin chef Daniel Humm of Eleven Madison Park in New York City, he asked if I’d like “any pictures.” I assumed he meant professional pictures to run alongside the article I had interviewed him for, and so explained that no, pictures weren’t necessary for the piece I was writing. Only after saying goodbye did I realize that Humm had asked if I wanted any pictures with him.
The St. Moritz Gourmet Festival is not the only culinary event that promise patrons the opportunity to meet famous chefs. Countless others like the Puerto Vallarta Gourmet Festival and the Roots, Rants and Roars Festival in Newfoundland also offer attendees the chance to watch chefs in action and steal a picture with them after the show.
And it doesn’t always cater to the ultra wealthy. The Bocuse D’Or culinary competition, where 24 young chefs meet in Lyon, France and are given just over five hours to prepare a winning dish, offers ticket holders who did not manage to snag a seat in the culinary showdown stadium the opportunity to sit in the restaurant area, where they can watch the event unfold on big screen TVs – much like those in the nosebleed section of a concert.
Related
- Why do we prefer food culture over actual cooking, and what does that say about the future of food?
- Busy and broke: Why even the best neighbourhood restaurants are here today and gone tomorrow
Like the music we listen to, what we eat has become intrinsically linked to our identity – whether it’s a badge of honour from dining at the world’s best restaurants or the self-satisfaction we might feel from avoiding gluten for recreation. Demand for events like the St. Moritz Gourmet Festival proves that diners are hungry for something more than a simple sit-down dinner service. They want an experience that can help inform how they’re perceived by others.
This makes it an exciting time for those in the strange business of feeding people. However, it also prompts an uncomfortable question: what happens when the food becomes less important than the newly minted rock stars preparing it?
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