Lucinda O'Sullivan's Ireland

Tuesday 16 August 2011

Between them you might say that Yannick Van Aeken and Louise Bannon have captured two of the most sought after jobs in the culinary world. Yannick Van Aeken is Sous Chef at the charasmatic Rene Redzepi’s Noma Restaurant in Copenhagen whilst Louise Bannon is the restaurant’s Pastry Chef. Redzepi currently is to the restaurant world what Christian Dior was to the post war fashion industry with his New Look, and Noma holds the title of the World’s No 1 Restaurant on the San Pellegrino World’s Top 50 Restaurants. He has revolutionised the style and ethos of dining out and stars like Pierce Brosnan, in between a few Kings and Queens, are flocking to Noma for this Nordic taste experience derived from the natural elements that bond together in the waters and the wild.

YannicK Van Aeken, a native of Antwerp, is 25 years old but already has been cooking for just over half of his life. At just 12 years old he went to a very prestigious Culinary College called Ter Duinem in a little place called Koksijde which was three hours away by train from where the young Van Aeken lived. It was a boarding school during the week returning home at weekends and Ter Duinem has produced most of the Michelin starred chefs in the Benelux countries. “You have to decide what you want to do in life by the time you are 13 years old in Belgium. My parents wanted me to choose myself what I would like to do so I tried a couple of jobs such as working in a Garage for a year but I was always helping my mother, grandmother and aunts, with cooking in the kitchen so I spent some time in a high end catering company helping out in the kitchen and I decided this was what I wanted to do”. Ter Duinem is one of the most prestigious culinary colleges in Europe with students mainly from Belgium but also from France, Germany, and Holland. During the holidays they would do Stages – a work experience placement in top restaurants. “There were 900 places around the world to do Stages. For the first couple of years it would be in the Benelux countries but as the progressed and were a little older they could be anywhere in the world – Japan, America, Vietnam.

In the culinary college they did of course do general education “but the whole lesson package is constructed around our industry, so, mathematics would be food cost mathematics, accounting would be for the restaurant business specific to hotels, restaurants and shops, so it was more interesting for the students.” Languages too were geared towards the industry and they did English, French, Dutch and German. Psychology was also covered as the course evolved – how to handle complaints. “Everyone is different so you learn how to react, to calm down a situation and let people go out with a good feeling.” Whilst doing Stages, they would experience all elements of the business from Front of House to the Kitchen and along with spending time in Michelin starred restaurants in Belgium, Van Aeken was three months at Alain Ducasse’s iconic restaurant in Monaco. “After College all of my friends were choosing to stay in the South of France and Spain but I thought why take the easy route so I decided to look the other way and go North. I could see that Rene Redzepi was doing something different, so I contacted him and did a trial. I jumped on a plane and I have been there now four years.”

Louise Bannon from Greystones trained in Cathal Brugha Street and then went to work for a while in Ballymaloe before working in Thornton’s in Dublin for twelve months. She then went to do a Stage at Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck Restaurant in Berkshire. “When I was on a day off I would always look at different restaurants and I was walking by Tom Aiken’s 2 Star Michelin restaurant in London one day and I though this looks alright”, she laughed. She went in and was asked to do a one day trial and was taken on immediately. “Aikens was incredibly inspiring, it was very tough with long hours but you learned a lot – the food looked amazing and tasted amazing.” She is incredibly talented and loves to work under pressure. When she returned to Ireland she worked with Dylan McGrath in Mint in Ranelagh. When Mint closed Louise took a plane out immediately to Noma to which she had applied for a job. Again having done a trial she was taken on immediately and is now there two years and loving it. The cuisine in Noma is completely Nordic – horse mussels, deep-sea crabs and langoustines from the Faroe Islands, halibut, wild salmon and curds from Iceland, lamb, musk ox, berries and the purest drinking water from Greenland. They are constantly smoking, salting, pickling, drying and baking on slabs of basalt stone. As others use wine in their sauces, at Noma they use beers and ales, fruit juices and fruit based vinegars for imparting a lively freshness and edge. Vegetables, herbs, spices and wild plants in season play a prominent role.

Commenting on where food is going in Ireland they both feel that many Tasting Menus in Ireland are too heavy – some starting off with too many carb elements. “They should be smaller lighter tastings, less is more in many cases. Many of the restaurants have seven or ten different things on a plate but if you have six dishes then to get through it can be too fussy and heavy.” In Noma you might go through twenty courses but it will all be light and you will not feel full and heavy at the end. “For instance we have a strawberry dessert with a hay parfait and camomile, just three ingredients, which was inspired by Rene when he was picking strawberries and he smelt the hay which was protecting it, and the camomile flowers which were growing in abundance around them. Rene roasted the hay in the oven and infused it in the cream and then made a parfait with a sort of smokey toasted flavour – and a very economical dish” says Louise. “The ethos and guidelines for our dishes are to use what is growing around a product in nature because if it works in nature why won’t it work on a plate.” Says Yannick. What they both find so inspirational too is Redzepi’s whole ethos of listening to ideas from young chefs. Every morning too he shakes hands with every chef in the kitchen – all 50 of them – and talks to them during the day as to how they are getting on. Louise says, “it really motivates you – he is a great communicator.” Here in Ireland Louise’s experience has been that most chef’s set the menu and she and other chefs just execute the dishes. She mentions one top chef who has the same desserts on his menu for five years and would never listen to anyone else’s ideas as he believes this delivers consistency. “Maybe they should listen to some of the younger guys in the kitchen – take one idea from one guy – because you might be a great chef but if you only have one mind…..if you have more minds and say one guy makes a good dish and Louise sees it and it inspires her she may be able to take it a step further.” Says Yannick. Every Saturday night, after service in Noma, each chef in the kitchen has to have come up and produce a new dish which they all taste and comment on. “Rene introduced the ‘products night’, it is like a brain storming about each dish, to let the chefs think about food and let themselves be inspired as he doesn’t want robots in the kitchen who just execute a dish. You can all think about one thing, about a dish, but every mind will think differently about it, and it can only get better. Rene might say it is very good but you could take it a step better with some other ingredient, or maybe for example if you had infused the tea more. Sometimes a dish might end up on the menu. Rene also wants us all to find out what we like so that when we open our own restaurants we know what we like and what we want to do. He helps you learn how to think for yourself which is very important as a chef.” Says Yannick. “We are still not using enough local and seasonal produce in restaurants.” Says Louise. She feels that it is a bit difficult here at the moment and that people are just copying the flavours of good places – they are not creative enough in Ireland with what we have here. “I have seen chocolate tarts on menus here with raspberries being used all year round, I don’t like to see that. A strawberry tastes good in June and July here – I don’t like to see them on menus in December. I never have desserts in restaurants in Ireland because I am always disappointed by them.” “When I was here at Christmas I was amazed at the vegetable markets and shops by how much stuff was imported. Surely there should be enough farmers here to sustain the demand here. It is a pity to see the money going out of the country rather than the farmers getting more money and it is supporting local products. In Belgium there was a similar problem with farmers going out of business but the Government brought in a fund, passed a Law, whereby if restaurants buy from suppliers within 50 or 100 kms they get a tax refund. It makes the product cheaper for restaurants and they are supporting local farmers. This is how they built up things again in Belgium.”

Yannick and Louise are an inspiring pair and it is their dream to open their own restaurant here in Dublin.

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THIS ARTICLE WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE SUNDAY INDEPENDENT ON AUGUST 14, 2011.