Two Michelin star chef PAUL LIEBRANDT speaks with Lara Zammit about the many nuances of food and its cultural significance.
Maltese Michelin Star restaurant Ion Harbour, situated on the rooftop of Iniala Harbour House in Valletta, recently brought to Malta New York-based chef Paul Liebrandt to prepare an eight-course meal in collaboration with Ion’s executive chef Alex Dilling. Liebrandt is the first of a series of internationally acclaimed chefs Iniala intends to welcome to our shores over the coming months.
Liebrandt starred in the Sally Rowe directed documentary film A Matter of Taste: Serving Up Paul Liebrandt (2011) which follows Liebrandt’s New York career over the course of a decade.
Speaking with Times of Malta about the documentary, Liebrandt notes what had brought him to New York at that point in his career.
“I went to live in New York in my mid-20s after working for some time at the three Michelin star level in London and Paris. I wanted to bring to New York the same level of energy and engagement, but I tried to transfer this into the American way of working,” he began.
When asked what might be the driving force behind the successes of his career, Liebrandt said, “a lot of it has to do with the fear of failure”.
“I don’t want failure… I don’t think anybody wants that… so I’m always pushing myself to keep going no matter what, always trying to push a little further than others may want you to.”
He went on to posit how he might have pushed further than others in the culinary realm, saying that New York in 2001, when the documentary starts off, was a very different place.
“When I first arrived in New York in 2001, the food area there and in America as a whole was still very much French-dominated. The scene in Europe was changing as gastronomy-wise things change a little quicker there than in other places in the world.
Chef Paul Liebrandt recently came to Malta to prepare an eight-course meal at Ion Harbour with chef Alex Dilling.“That was the time when the chef Ferran Adrià of El Bulli was becoming more well-known outside of Spain around 1999-2001. That gentleman was 20 years ahead of everybody on earth – the way he thought of and approached cuisine. I admire that because I admire people who can see things others can’t see.”
Liebrandt flew to Malta from New York to prepare a meal for 100 guests at the Michelin Star restaurant Ion with Dilling. Speaking about his collaboration with Dilling, Liebrandt said they shared many of the same approaches towards food and cuisine.
“I love Alex. He’s a fantastic human being,” he said. “We have a lot of the same ideas with respect to food. He invited me to do this and I was happy to. Culinarily, it’s always such a joy to get to use ingredients we don’t usually get in America – all the things that are very special to this part of the world.”
Indeed, Maltese ingredients featured prominently in the menu prepared by the chefs for the occasion, including local produce and fish.
“We tried to include nuance in all the dishes we prepared for the menu, using the wild Maltese oranges to make a beautiful tartlet, the local fish, the local sepia, the lovely pink prawns… all those things you get here that Maltese people love.
It’s always such a joy to get to use ingredients we don’t usually get in America- Paul Liebrandt
“I felt I had to use these ingredients because I had to be respectful to where I am, and you’re an island in the middle of the sea which is blessed with what you can get here. I’m not bringing in Japanese beef or anything like that. It’s all very local and there’s a joy to it.”
Experimentation is often the main tenant of molecular gastronomy – where flavours are deconstructed and reassembled in ways as yet unexplored, or where classics of cuisine are reconfigured to elevate what is already appraised about them. Sometimes, ingredients are so common as to go unnoticed.
When asked how Liebrandt intends to showcase these common ingredients in such a way as to make them special, the chef said his task is to take these and present them in his own style.
“Given the style of the food and the price point, the guests are coming for the experience – to see what a British gentleman working in New York is doing with food.
“It’s my job and my task to take the beautiful oranges and create them in a way that is my style, using the symbolism of who I am and what I do – preparing a local ingredient with my touch and my sensibility. I take things that are common and add some of my personality. I’m not trying to produce Maltese food, nor am I trying to make a Japanese dish using Maltese ingredients.”
Liebrandt went on to say that food is a great binding force for everybody across the whole planet, which is why it’s such a joy cooking for people. When faced with the suggestion that food and eating today seem to occupy a place in our culture which is very value-laden, with food being eroticised and problematised and made a source of enormous anxiety, the chef said he cannot stand the fetishisation of food.
“I cannot stand fetishising things that don’t need to be so. Some things should be left as they are and should be enjoyed as they are, like a beautiful view. You look at it for what it is,” he maintained.
When considering the pitfalls of diets like veganism, for example, where individual identities are strongly linked to what we consume, Arleene Oconitrillo, Liebrandt’s girlfriend and a restaurant director and entrepreneur also speaking to Times of Malta, maintained that some people have turned these diets into holier than thou positions.
Arleene Oconitrillo“It’s also indicative of the generations we live in,” she said. “Everyone now wants to impose.”
Liebrandt maintained that the core of such diets is noble but the element of fetishism they inculcate is ruining them for other people.
“The core of veganism is great,” he said, “but the fetishism of the making it popular for the sake of making it popular is terrible because its not the way it’s meant to be and it puts it in a position that is hard to deliver to people. You take the elegance out of it.”
At last came the question about whether Liebrandt feels he inhabits the world of the celebrity chef, to which he answered succinctly, “I am not a celebrity chef. I cannot stand it.
“A celebrity chef is based on personality not ability. Your job as a chef is to give customers what they came for every evening.”