Q&A: Philippe Labbe

"You just need to have a look and find what's best for your principal ingredient, and then you look for which ingredients will taste best with it. It can be very simple but you must have sensibility, and you must have heart in what you put on the plate. We test two to three dishes every day, all year round. New ideas, new spirit, new fashion - cuisine always moves like this. It's very difficult to do a great dish, and sometimes it's a long [process] to make one. Sometimes you try something and you say, 'No, it's very bad, it's not my way,' so you stop it. You have one idea now, but perhaps you'll find a [better] way to do it after two years."

"Yes, we do 50 per cent Asiatic foods, from Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia. We do authentic street food, so we pay attention and use the same ingredients; we don't change it at all. I know about dim sum - in [restaur-ant] Shang Palace, we adapted a dim sum truffle menu. We've used woks since I arrived at the Shangri-La; it's a new fashion in France, everybody wants to use woks in the kitchen for fusion food. It's a good idea but you must use a good traditional wok, not an electrical one."

"Each time I travel, I have a look at that [country's] culture to see if I can find something. You must travel with empty luggage, and come back with your luggage full. I like Chinese, Japanese, Italian cuisines - I like all good cuisines. Bad cuisine is when you don't do your job well."

"Sometimes, but not very often. We try dishes every day. It's always a long [process] to try, think and organise [new dishes], so it's not necessary to try something new at home."

"You must always keep moving, and you can do a lot of things. If you work for yourself or for a company, you must always develop the best for yourself or your company. We work in this way."