The pink casing on the right-hand olive melts like cocoa butter as the pulp-free brine inside coats the tongue, a molecular sleight of hand that starts the new multi-sensory pop-up dining experience at Istanbul’s Raffles Hotel by Spanish Michelin Star chef Paco Roncero.
Recruited by the luxury brand to create a unique nightly experience that will last a little over a month, until November 3, 2019, the 13-course meal is equal parts international flavours and whimsy. With three options, including a six–course dining room option, a smaller tapas bar menu and an over-the-top private dining experience for up to 14 people complete with video projections of parts of the world or environments corresponding to each dish. The icing on the cake is the pairing of four Dom Pérignon Vintage Champagnes, for which Chef Roncero is the host chef for the launch of three, including the brand’s hit-of-the-year, its Plénitude 2 2002, which is exclusively available at Raffles Istanbul until the end of the pop-up.
The olive trick is just a warm-up, a premonition of things to come. It’s one of the avant-garde chef’s iconic dishes, along with the “garden” of raw baby carrots, green onions bottoms, hand-peeled cherry tomatoes and asparagus tips standing straight up in a “soil” of creamy Dijon-spiked tartar sauce. Topped with a crunchy crumble, it’s a dish that would make a satisfying meal on its own along with a heel of freshly baked bed to drag through the creamy sauce.
But let’s get back to that olive; rather, three different coloured olives – pink, black and green – which come on their own metal tree for each diner. Instead of chewy flesh inside, the chef has filled them with different artisanal olive oils, which coat the tongue and the stomach and play into the minerality of the first Champagne, the Dom Pérignon 2008 vintage. The video screens surrounding the dining table in the darkened private room are showing olive groves, presumably Spanish ones, an homage to the chef’s homeland, but a taste of home to which Turkish diners can relate.
Next comes more olive oil, but this time the chef freezes it in front of us in liquid nitrogen and spoons the frozen crumble over a segment of sweet orange while telling us a story of how his mom would give him olive oil on top of oranges after lunch as a child.
Then we start travelling. There’s an open city square with people gathered into cafés and lots of indecipherable conversation. The scene has so much bustle that when the ground starts to shake, we figure it’s part of the experience. “Wow, what an incredible investment in moving seats on the part of Raffles!” we think. “A multi-sensory experience, indeed. They truly bared no expense.”
Turns out it’s an actual earthquake. 5.9 on the Richter scale. Fortunately, the hotel has an exceptionally strong foundation and while the meal pauses as our hosts check to make sure their families are okay, we’re all a bit stunned that the ground shaking has nothing to do with the juicy, raw red mullet in a crunchy corn cracker with a touch of smoked paprika or chilli pepper and a hint of lemongrass. The chef says the other host of herbs are secret, so I stop being nosy.
Then we’re off to Mexico. The chef’s lamb taco is a variation on cochinita pibil, itself possibly originally inspired from lamb shawarma, though much sweeter, making this a thoughtful creation in Istanbul, which I’ve learned in the last week is much more European than I expected. It’s also world-curious and luxurious, which is why this pop-up is globetrotting in terms of flavours (and why the lamb is paired with the much rounder Dom Pérignon 2005 vintage).
The hotel wanted to offer a unique, luxurious dining experience by bringing in an international chef. The fine dining Istanbul public is hungry for new flavours, they feel, and ready for boundary-pushing techniques like Roncero’s. So they did a workshop with the chef a year ago and gave him free rein on the menu, which he turned into a globetrotting culinary tour of his favourite places, mostly Spain, Italy, Mexico, Asia and South America.
Then the hotel started looking for potential audio-visual and marketing partners. In addition to locals and hotel guests, reservations are filled with diners who know that there isn’t another experience like this in Turkey, or nearby the country for that matter. But why not integrate more Turkish elements into the meal, we ask?
“You can get great baklava on this corner, great köfte on that one. We can have long debates about which kebab house is best. And it’s very personal – people are loyal to their mehane [neighbourhood restaurants] – but this international cuisine from a Michelin Star Spanish chef is unique and appeals to a different audience,” says Deniz Met, Raffles’ director of marketing.
Guests even fly in on the weekend in private jets for the experience, says General Manager Christian Hirt…
…which makes sense when you taste the creamy miso sauce on the deep-fried nori ice cream cone filled with sashimi-grade diced salmon.
Then there’s a crispy pizza (Italy), that garden, a gazpacho with mussels and scallops from Bogotà (the chef was part of Master Chef there), tender grilled razor clams in intensely flavoured jus with stripes of green and white curries (Thailand and India), scampi in fried rice cracker with chilli sauce, peanut sauce and sweet coconut sauce (Thailand), and ultra-marbled beef short ribs in homemade chocolate mole sauce (Mexico).
The Prestige 2 comes in with the razor clams, a perfect balance for their natural sweetness and salinity, and the Dom Périgonon rosé 2006, with its delicate bubbles, hits with the first dessert of pandan-coconut ice with citrus, lemongrass and fresh ginger that hits your nose with an addictive tingle when you sip the elegant, dry rosé. The magic is that the pairing actually works, the wine have soft acidity that doesn’t make it taste sour next to the herbaceous dish.
It takes 11 chefs to cook this menu, which varies slightly every day and can be adapted to dietary restrictions. It takes at least five servers to perform the choreography of serving; every movement, from setting down each plate to presenting each bottle of wine, is practiced. I feel bad that I’ve dropped sesame seeds from the nori popsicle onto the black floor, which pop out like phosphorescent fish in the dark room filled with projections. But, trained as they are, the servers keep my secret.
Finally, the chef comes back. He’s checked in a few times to explain dishes and see how we’re doing with pacing each course, but this time we congratulate him on a meal well executed.
If you don’t have a private jet, Turkish Airlines* has three direct flights from Montreal and six from Toronto per week.
The pop-up continues until Nov. 4, 2019.
Rocca Restaurant, Raffles Hotel
Zorlu Center: Levazım, Zorlu Center, Koru Sokağı,
34340 Beşiktaş/İstanbul
raffles.com/istanbul/dining/rocca/
Reservations: +90 212 924 0200
*Disclaimer: Turkish Airlines provided my flight and had a hand in coordinating the itinerary for my trip to Turkey. Other airlines fly to Turkey, but none with Flying Chefs who serve your shrimp in tomato sauce, homemade hummus and fried eggplant babaganouj on board, along with Turkish wines and fully reclinable seats in business class. Some things are worth the splurge.
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