By Sourish Bhattacharyya
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| Heinz Rufibach, Zermatt's Alpenhof Hotel, will steer the Swiss Gastronomy Week at the Hyatt Regency New Delhi |
ZERMATT is a
little village in south-western Switzerland that owes its big reputation to
four neighbours — the four tallest peaks of Europe, including the majestic Matterhorn. In this village resides a
culinary star with a warm-hearted smile and his name is Heinz Rufibach. He presides over the restaurant Le Gourmet at the popular Alpenhof Hotel at Zermatt and the
eatery, which has notched up 15 out of a maximum of 20 GaultMillau points, the equivalent of a Michelin star. And Rufibach
is no stranger to those who have flown first or business class on SWISS, the airline that we knew as Swissair,
for he has designed the menu served to them at 35,000+ feet above sea level.
Why am I going on and on about
Rufibach? It is because the gifted chef is on his way to New Delhi to steer the
Swiss Gastronomy Week starting from October 14 at the Café, Hyatt Regency, Bhikaji Cama Place. The chef, who describes
his style of cooking as “creative, honest, market-oriented and
Alpine-Mediterranean”, will team up with the hotel’s Executive Chef (who’s also
Swiss), Marin Leuthard, to present
popular items such as raclette, fondue and bratwurst as well as Swiss classics. The Swiss buffet has been
priced at Rs 1,550 plus taxes (quite reasonable by five-star standards!) and
the Sunday brunch with free-flowing champagne on October 20 will be yours for
Rs 2,100 plus taxes per person.
Rufibach comes from a part of
Switzerland (Canton Valais) where French, German and northern Italian gastronomical
influences coalesce seamlessly to produce wholesome fare. Canton Valais is also Switzerland’s most important wine-producing
regions and critics rate some of its wines to be as good as the best of
neighbouring France (Rhone Valley, to be precise). Its pear brandy, Williamine, which comes with an entire
fruit in the bottle is also the stuff of modern legends.
What I like about the chef’s culinary
philosophy is that it is rooted in the market reality. People are increasingly
moving away from the complications of traditional French gastronomy. Modern
European cuisine is all about taste — extracting the most, and best, of it from
fresh, locally sourced produce. To his Le Gourmet guests, Rufibach gives a peek
into his cooking philosophy when he says, “Through regional and Mediterranean
cuisine, we want to pass on our pleasure to you, and to bring a holiday mood
onto your plate. Enjoy the moment, and the wide range of delicious food and
excellent wines.”
The critical words are: “Enjoy the
moment.” A great proponent of simplicity, the chefs says, “Genius lies in
simplicity, and, in cooking, everything starts very simply. An idea, a top motivated
team, and food of the very best quality.” His philosophy will now be put to
test at the Hyatt Regency.
Talking about the Hyatt Regency,
which I saw coming up in the months leading up to the 1982 Asian Games, the hotel is gearing up to celebrate the 20th anniversary
of La Piazza, one of the country’s
most successful and profitable restaurants (I have named it the “Bukhara of
Italian restaurants”) with a reunion of all those who worked there in all these
years.
The other day I met Sreenivasan G, Executive Chef of the
Radisson Blu Plaza, NH-8, New Delhi, and Vikas
Kapoor, General Manager of the Radisson Shimla, who started their careers
as commis and steward respectively at La Piazza. Sreenivasan was remembering
the restaurant’s first chef, an Austrian (who’s being located for the reunion),
who had banned Tabasco and chilli flakes from the restaurant. The stewards
therefore had to surreptitiously carry bottles of each items in their pockets and
offer them the banned items as if they were peddling drugs!
Those were the days when Sreenivasan
would start cleaning the pizza oven, square inch by square inch, from 5 in the
morning. “I have known every brick of that restaurant — literally,” he said, “and
I am so happy to see very little has changed in all these years.” The
restaurant then would produce 400 pizzas a day, Sreenivasan recalled, and ten
chefs would work in a relay to ensure that the guests did not have to wait for
too long for their order to materialise. Remember, that was a time when pizzas
were a genuine novelty. And the closest we came to one was the Pepperoni Pizza
that Nirula’s dished out with amazing
consistency of quality.
We’ll hear more about La Piazza in
the weeks to come. Till then, enjoy the flavours of Canton Valais.
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