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| Sunday, 10 August 2003 |
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Food his business By Jayanthi Liyanage
Food is his business. It is a business he likes to take head on with consummate ease dynamited with an ignited culinary passion, which is not surprising when one considers his artful encounter of 24-years in the scene of European, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai cuisine, to name a few in his repertoire. German Kitchen master Ralf Vogt, or the new Kitchen Director of the Mount Lavinia Hotel Group, is already a brimful of ideas for "kitchen innovation." In the suburban residence of a British governor turned into a colonial beach resort, now known to us as the Mount Lavinia Hotel, he has taken on a "product" different to his globe-trotting tenure at the Intercontinental chain spread across Europe and Asia, and later, at the Colombo Hilton. "This very local-run hotel is a new challenge for me," says Ralf, almost forcefully pressing his point that "Cooking is not only cooking." The 100-year-aged hotel kitchen plays a crucial role in his blue-printing for the re-positioning of the hotel's image as a high-class colonial product in the international and domestic travel market, to be on par with the best of the kind offered in Singapore. "This kitchen needs to get a major renovation and we can even do our own sausages and cold cuts. This is a kitchen which still operates a 100-year old oven in which we cook Ambul Thiyal and Watalappan!" Ralf's kitchen plans are parallel to his plans to bring in an international streak in the cuisine which is catered to the rising numbers of international traveller expected at the hotel with the boom of tourism. "We have already started this pattern in our breakfast and lunch buffets and our selection of Western, Chinese and Sri Lankan items are becoming quite popular," he is hopeful. Among the hotel's leisure and tourist markets of Germans, English, Austrians, Chinese, Japanese and Koreans, the Indian factor is quite substantial. "Indians don't even try Sri Lankan food," says Ralf, adding that we should adjust our market strongly to accommodate Indians. "While the Europeans like Asian cooking, they like to have something European as well. Somehow, seeing a foreign chef here, makes them feel more trustful, which is quite fair. We have to see it from their perspective." The recently-concluded Editors Guild Awards ceremony at Mt. Lavinia Hotel was a harbinger of what Ralf hides up in his sleeves for the local palattes fancying new tastes. To build a new range of tastes to capture the new world order of cuisine, which is the fusion cooking, he livened up the predominantly Sri Lankan fare, usually dished out for hotel functions, with the masterful fusion of a few international dishes. He plans to introduce the same strategy to the hotel's local wedding market, which is the hotel's biggest segment of business, taking up almost 70% of its overall operations. "Since I came here, I haven't seen a single day when we didn't have a wedding at the hotel," says an enthralled Ralf, adding, "We can do eight to nine weddings in a day!" If you spot mutton lassangna or fish fillet with Korean flavours, a dash of Thai or Italian cooking next to "Ala Beduma" or "Kola Melluma" at a wedding spread at Mt. Lavinia Hotel, feel reassured that the Ralf's culi-novating skills are busy behind the scene. "Food has to be tasty, fresh and good-looking," advises Ralf, who when at 26, was the youngest chefs to have done a Master degree in Cooking back home in Germany, and gives this tip from the insights gained from his Executive Chef stints in Japan, Maldives, India, Sri Lanka and South Korea. |
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