Every year around mid October, an invite will appear from the Makan Fairy Godmother, for this annual seafood fest at the Mandarin Oriental, hosted by Hans Ola Urstad, Norway’s Ambassador to Malaysia. The foyer of the ballroom will be filled by the glitterati of the town, dressed up to the nines, with air kisses permeating the air with the same intensity of the french perfumes worn.
As part of the "media" we were allowed a sneak preview into the vast spread before the doors to paradise were opened, and the hordes of diners rush in.
Spectacular ice carvings, a viking boat, I presume, with raw seafood that ranged from beautiful to hideous, (by hideous I mean in a beautiful way,...ie beautifully hideous)
Ambassador Hans Ola Urstad giving his welcome address, with a tinge of sadness because this is his last year as Ambassador to Malaysia, having finished his 5 year term.
Dishes included Norwegian salmon done like 20,000 ways, Norwegian cod, king crab, lobster, crayfish, scallops, mackerel, Atlantic halibut and monkfish (that's the beautifully hideous fish I was referring to), among several other varieties done in both Western and Asian style,
The feast was orchestrated by renowned Norwegian chef Frank Naesheim and his team of culinary professionals from Norway, Malaysia and Singapore and one tonne of fresh seafood was flown in from Norway...Probably some of the marine life on the banquet table were still enjoying their meal of krill and plankton a day earlier in the Baltic....
Chef Frank giving his welcome address...
This year the emphasis was on sustainable seafood and Chef Frank introduced a line of smoked salmon with new flavours.
Salmon in every form imaginable...I've had my Omega Oil quota filled for the year I reckon
Salmon Jerky
See, I kid you not when I said there was Salmon done 20,000 ways...
This platter of lobster like creatures, but the size of a prawn, looked most tempting, but honestly, hardly worth the effort of peeling, for the end result is a mere shrimp....
King Crab ...I would have preferred it with salted egg or chilli crab style....
Salmon...
And more salmon...
This dish never fails to amaze me, because of the labour of love that must have gone into stacking these shrimp like this....the shrimp makes a lovely old school shrimp cocktail, drowned in 1000 island dressing.
This is the aforementioned hideous but beautiful fish alluded to earlier...I think it's a monkfish.
Ice Sculptures take on a different look, with these fish immortalized ..much like a scene from ICE AGE ....
The entertainment for the night was Rio Yamase, playing the Hardanger fiddle, a traditional West Norwegian musical instrument. Rio, who is from Japan, was born in Malaysia, and is also an accomplished violinist.
Rio Yamase studied the violin at the Toho Gakuen University in Tokyo. She learned to play the Hardanger violin under famous fiddle teachers in Norway and started to perform with it in Japan. She was invited to hold concerts and lectures introducing Nordic music in various parts of Japan and Scandinavia.
She also started concert activities in Malaysia, her birthplace. In 2015 she released her 10th anniversary CD ‘Love Song from the Fjords’.
And of course, to wash down all that seafood, a variety of desserts, but first you have to cross paths with this cutie Polar Bear.
1 comment:
how many salmon died for this!?
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