Text/Jiang Meijuan
Photo courtesy of Beijing Manfu Banquet
Secluded on the chaoyang park side of Beijing's East Third Ring Road, the quiet Manfu Banquet has been star-studded since its opening.
The restaurant not only invites Zhao Yinyin, the world's leading pianist and international food and wine connoisseur, but also has a great deal of influence in its menu and wine list: Chinese culinary master Yu Bin takes care of the dishes, and the food and wine pairing is handled by Lu Yang, the world's only Chinese sommelier master. Li Xiaolin, the heir of Li family cuisine, Lin Zhenguo, the "head of Cantonese cuisine", Xu Juyun, a veteran registered Chinese culinary master, and Peng Shuting, a famous gourmet, have exchanged and collided with different cuisines here.
The reporter of this magazine conducted an exclusive interview with Mr. Zhao Yinyin, asking him to talk about why he crossed the food circle from the music circle, and how to present the diversified integration of art and life with Yu Bin and Lu Yang. (Extended reading: Zhao Yinyin: Everyone is a collector of art life (video))
In order to gain a deeper understanding of the art of feasting and drinking in the Mansion banquet, the reporter of this magazine successively talked with Yu Bin and Lü Yang, and asked them to talk about how to play the perfect melody of food and wine from their respective perspectives.
Yu Bin
Fresh expression requires solid roots
In 1990, he entered the business in the outer building of Hangzhou's long-established building, and in 2005, he joined Hangzhou Zixuan Resort as general manager. Yu Bin's vision is not limited to the ingredients and cooking techniques of Chinese food, but to draw on the world's excellent ingredients, drawing on the techniques of Western food and Japanese food, to create its own creative Jiangnan cuisine.
Chinese Cuisine: From Hangzhou to Beijing, what is the special attraction of the Manfu banquet to you?
Yu Bin: When Mr. Yin Yin called me, he said that Beijing lacked a more innovative restaurant, especially in the field of high-end catering. At that time, I talked about the cross-border collision with the Ullens Art Center and other cultural and artistic fields in the future, and I thought it was particularly interesting, so I agreed.
"Chinese Cooking": Can you introduce the cuisine styles of the two restaurants of The Manfu Banquet and OPUS Pin?
Yu Bin: Manfu Banquet is a modern Chinese food that integrates many elements, and we will add excellent elements from various places we have traveled to. OPUS is actually an international manifestation of Chinese food, and we do not treat it as a concept of French or Western food.
"Chinese Cuisine": The international expression of Chinese food is a topic that has attracted much attention in the industry in recent years, how do you understand it?
Yu Bin: After communicating with many famous chefs overseas, I have been thinking about what the future of Chinese food should be, especially how Chinese food should be presented more internationally when it goes overseas. Each dish of the chef is not a traditional dish, but contains the chef's thinking, from the ingredients, sauces to techniques have a coherent idea, and will introduce the regionality of the dish and the regional characteristics of the ingredients. When we try this, foreign diners will be surprised and feel that Chinese food is not only delicious, but also quite thoughtful and distinctive.
Chinese Cuisine: Dish innovation is an eternal subject for chefs, where do you think chefs should get inspiration?
Yu Bin: When I shared with the team, I said three very important points. One is the ingredients, the terroir and seasonal ingredients of different cities are one of the innovative inspirations of the chef; the second is the technique, we will introduce some techniques of foreign catering into Chinese food, such as charcoal burning, low temperature slow cooking, combined with Chinese ingredients, presentIng Chinese dishes; third, the sauce in foreign cuisine is worth learning from Chinese chefs, and different sauces have to take time to boil and bring fresh expression.
Gangnam Wenhuo veal
"Chinese Cooking": From the chef's creativity to the restaurant's dishes, how to land?
Yu Bin: First, you should make good use of ingredients from various parts of China and use more advanced cooking techniques to cook and make it bring a different taste. The second is to use high-quality ingredients from overseas, and then use the traditional techniques and flavors of Chinese food to do it. For example, a West Lake vinegar fish, we fried the sweet fish, poured a West Lake vinegar fish sauce, very delicious. This opens another window.
For example, truffle sweet and sour crispy wagyu beef at the Manfu banquet, Japanese mountain pepper crispy chicken, OPUS tea smoked river eel Italian black vinegar, are the embodiment of this thinking on the table.
"Chinese Cooking": Food and wine pairing is becoming more and more important in the field of fine catering in China, how do you consider the combination of food and wine when designing dishes?
Yu Bin: Chefs and sommeliers go to communicate wine pairing, which is a trend in the future. At present, the wine list of the top restaurants in many first-tier cities is very attractive. I usually communicate with professional sommeliers, such as working with Mr. Lu Yang. Let's eat my dishes together and then we'll discuss which wines are suitable because they know more about wine. I also like wine myself, and sometimes I have dinners with some famous wineries, and I will taste the wine first and then arrange the menu.
Chinese Cuisine: How do you find and form your own style of cuisine?
Yu Bin: I chatted with celebrity chefs at home and abroad, and found that everyone's ideas are actually similar: the soil you grew up in was your roots, which determined your understanding of food, taste type, and texture. For example, I am a hangzhou native, and my understanding and liking of the food from snacks determines that the dishes I create are also a little sweet and sour, which is the taste that people in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai like.
I learned to cook traditional Hangzhou cuisine, and I know the taste type of Jiangnan cuisine, and the final taste is the taste of Jiangnan. We use a lot of local specialties in Zhejiang, and every year we go to relatively remote cities, such as Lishui and Quzhou. You'll find that every city has something they're proud of. Every time you go out to collect wind, you will find some very different ingredients, and you can learn a lot.
Lü Yang
Pairing with food and wine is the only way, but it is not the only way out
Born in Xinjiang, raised in Shanghai, studied in Canada, studied astrophysics at the University of Toronto to transfer to Niagara College to study viticulture and winemaking, joined The Peninsula Shanghai as a sommelier in 2009, joined Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts group in 2012 as a wine director, managed and trained a team of sommeliers with the name of "Xiangjun" in the industry, and passed the Master Sommelier Exam (CMS) known as the "world's most difficult exam" (currently) in 2017. Became the world's first Chinese master sommelier and served as a wine consultant for Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts in 2019. This beautiful resume comes from Lu Yang.
Chinese Cuisine: From five-star hotels to social catering, what factors do you consider when designing your wine list?
Lv Yang: The content of the hotel wine list and the selection of wine should be more inclusive and diverse, because the guests of international hotels come from all over the world, so the wine list will be larger and more complete. This is very different from social catering, and a good social catering wine list should be more personalized. I want to consider the restaurant's cuisine and the positioning of the service crowd, not necessarily large and complete, but must be personalized and precise.
Chinese Cooking: What are the characteristics of the wine list you designed for the two restaurants, Manfu Banquet and OPUS Pin?
Lu Yang: There are more wine parties in France, such as Bordeaux and Burgundy, which are relatively more in line with the needs of the restaurant's customer base and more suitable for the cuisine. Compared with some large hotels, there is less wine in the New World. Can't say which is good and which is bad, but the wine list must be in line with the positioning. When making a social catering list, there are many things to consider.
Truffle sweet and sour crispy crust and beef grains
"Chinese Cooking": In the past decade, the development momentum of domestic food and wine collocation has been very fast, do you think that meal and wine collocation is an essential configuration for restaurants?
Lv Yang: The domestic catering industry is now paying more and more attention to this piece, after all, this is a very new thing. However, not all restaurants and all occasions need to be paired with food and wine, which is a must-go, but it cannot be seen as the only way out.
Table wine pairing has been developed in the field of Western food for a long time, but Chinese food should make wine culture, and table wine pairing is only part of it. A restaurant's wine program includes making wine lists, training staff, table wine pairings, etc., and I may only spend 20% to 25% of the time with dinner wine pairings. Cultivate employees, do a good job in service, let everyone have an international concept and standard of wine service, make the wine list more reasonable, and be closer to the operating concept of the restaurant and customer needs, which is equally important and even more important than the combination of table wine.
Now some table and wine pairings are too formal, and the concept and method of Chinese food and Western food are different.
"Chinese Cooking": What are the similarities and differences between Chinese and Western food and wine pairings?
Lv Yang: The concept of Chinese food and Western food is different, and the tastes of Chinese are also different. China has a population of 1.4 billion, and the dishes that each place likes to eat are different, and the wines that are liked are different, so the combination of food and wine must not only be considered from the perspective of the chef and the dish, but also from the perspective of the guests. This can take a long time to explore, and there is no most accurate answer.
There are more Jiangsu and Zhejiang dishes in the menu of the Manfu banquet, there are the imprints of Cantonese cuisine, and there are now very popular Sichuan and Hunan cuisine, we will recommend Jiangsu and Zhejiang cuisine, Cantonese cuisine, Sichuan and Hunan cuisine in the first three pages of the wine list, let the guests choose themselves, and at the same time narrow their choice. For example, Cantonese cuisine is accompanied by seven or eight kinds of wine, champagne, red wine, and white wine, which are more diversified. We will also adjust the wine list according to the feedback of customers, often with small updates, may be based on new dishes or seasons, or it may be because some wines are sold out of stock, accumulate a few models to replace together.
Chinese Cuisine: After working in the wine industry for many years, how did you maintain your passion for wine tasting?
Lv Yang: Drinking alcohol every day is not necessarily. For us, when your hobby becomes your profession, it's important to keep it fresh and passionate. The previous method was very simple, that is, to go to foreign production areas and wineries, and constantly learn, taste wine, and absorb new things. Now because of the epidemic, every two or three months, I will still try new wineries, new wines and new vintages at home and abroad, and learn new things, which is nutrition for me, not only continuous input, but also let me maintain enthusiasm, curiosity, progress and learning mentality. At the same time, I also have to do a good job of self-regulation, and I set a fixed time a week to learn wine, whether it is reading or tasting, or teaching students, about three hours.
Chinese Cooking: What qualities does a good sommelier need to have?
Lv Yang: We must love catering, and we must not resist or even like the service people. This is very important. Because service is not a simple word, when you have the heart, other things are not difficult things. Now the number of domestic sommeliers is relatively small, the quality is not particularly high, if young people are willing to work hard, work hard for a few years, learn more, learn more, learn from experience, relatively speaking, the career development path will be faster than other industries.
Proofreading | Yujin
Responsible editor| Jiang Meijuan
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