Auguste Escoffier was the Heston Blumenthal (of Fat Duck fame) of his day. No, he didn't practise scientific gastronomy but his contributions to cuisine were considered startlingly modern back in the 19th century.
Born in 1846 near Nice, Escoffier started his culinary career at the age of 13. He went on to become a legendary chef who updated the stuffy, overly elaborate French cuisine of his day, lightening it, modernising it and codifying it in books that included the 5,000-plus recipe tome, Le Guide Culinaire, which is still used as a reference in cooking schools in western countries.
Yet many young chefs today, eager to embrace molecular gastronomy or be discovered as the next big television cooking show host, consider Escoffier old-fashioned and dull.
If a group of Hong Kong-based chefs have their way, however, Escoffier will once again take his place in the pantheon of great chefs, not necessarily for his recipes, but for his philosophy about the transmission and evolution of cuisine.
The three chefs, Jaakko Sorsa (of Finds, in Central), Philippe Orrico (Pierre at the Mandarin Oriental) and Oyvind Naesheim (Nobu InterContinental at the InterContinental hotel), are so enthusiastic it's difficult to keep up with their conversation. Wearing chef's jackets and red sashes trimmed with yellow, they have just been 'knighted' (with a huge wooden spoon) as president (Sorsa), vice-president (Orrico) and secretary (Naesheim) of the Disciples Escoffier Sub-Delegation Hong Kong. The local branch of the organisation is part of a Greater China Delegation, which includes the mainland and Taiwan and which is in turn a division of the international Disciples Escoffier body, with chapters in Europe and in North and South America, Japan and Russia.
Sorsa says he and others have been working since July last year to get the sub-delegation started. 'Robert Fontana [chairman of Disciples Escoffier Greater China, executive chef at the Kowloon Hotel and Master Chef of France] has been looking for the right candidates to do this in Hong Kong. I wouldn't become a member of just any organisation. The biggest reason I wanted to do this is because Disciples Escoffier has the noble cause of training young chefs.'
