Roland Trettl meets top chef Didier Corlou

Roland Trettl meets Didier Corlou

Roland Trettl in Vietnam

Didier Corlou puts the finishing touch to Vietnamese cuisine by adding a dash of France. The result is fusion cuisine of the very highest quality.

Fusion – not one of my favourite words! Nowadays, fusion is everything and nothing. These days, anyone who sets off a Bresse chicken with a dusting of madras curry, or who serves a slice of sashimi before a main dish of roast pork, tends to call the result “fusion”. At best, in such cases, this fashionable phrase runs out into boundless seas of indifference. In the less favourable – and sadly more common – cases, fusion is nothing more than a failure of my colleagues to commit themselves to a single path – one they have developed themselves! When this happens, fusion is unfortunately nothing more than a lack of character and a failure of originality.

Having said all this, now I’m going to tell you when I AM a red-hot fan of fusion. I’m standing in Hanoi on one of those crazy streets, besieged by thousands of moped riders and cyclists running amok, whose sole aim in life seems to be my complete and utter annihilation. The rattling of the bikes, the literally uninterrupted bell ringing and horn tooting by each and every other rider, the utter chaos and helplessness that takes over when all you want to do is cross the street - all of this makes you ready to embrace fusion. Just at that moment you might get to know a hyper-talented Frenchman who, with his skills, could choose to live and work anywhere, but who has called this place – chaotic Hanoi – home for over 15 years, who found the love of his life here and who manages, with their two children, to combine cultures, religions, history and, yes, taste too, day after day. This is what fusion means to me, what “blending” means, and this is Didier Corlou from “La Verticale” in Hanoi.

The man simply belongs in this northern Vietnamese city. Anyone who thinks he has found refuge from the chaotic streets in his oasis-like four-storey restaurant will immediately find that he has exposed himself to a new barrage. As a welcome, Didier bombards his guests with dozens of home-made spices and condiments. And it’s all accompanied by a never-dwindling torrent of words, as if the Frenchman was afraid of being unable to pass on everything that he knows, that he has seen and that he has tasted, in a single, short human life.

For me, the following days were a tasting marathon that was almost enough to bring me to my knees. Every time that we thought our Hangar-7 menus were complete, Didier had another suggestion to make, a new idea, or a truly different dish to offer.
I’m glad that I was able to prevail when it came to a few things. For example, a marinated yellow-fin mackerel, served on a hot stone, accompanied by a pineapple soup and tuna tartar. Another revelation: tuna marinated in soy sauce and honey with passion fruit. The passion fruit sauce can be considered to be representative of Corlou’s creative abilities. Lightly sauté shallots in oil and add fish stock or (!) green tea, chilli, honey, fish sauce and fresh passion fruit. These are the kind of stocks that Didier has mastered so expertly. And it is precisely these stocks that frighten me a little, as there are no definitive recipes for them. OK, so we all know what the ingredients are, but the fine tuning is more of an instinctive thing. On this point, we will really need to stretch ourselves here in Salzburg.

Anyway, let’s stay with the stocks, since they demonstrate Didier’s approach to fusion so well. Starting with sautéed shallots is pure French cuisine. Almost completely dispensing with cream, butter and olive oil whilst revering fish sauce is, of course, the total renunciation of French cuisine in favour of Vietnamese. Or let’s take Didier’s stuffed calamari with mussels, which, when you look at the basic concept, is very Mediterranean. However, when the filling consists of scallops, fatty pork, shiitake mushrooms, lotus, spring onions, ginger, fish sauce and rice noodles, then all of a sudden the Mediterranean definitely seems to be washing the shores of Vietnam.

Didier has cooked in Africa, the Caribbean and in many parts of Asia. Now in Vietnam he is fully integrated into his wife’s extended family. These days, the ubiquitous Pho noodle soup, the indispensable fresh herbs and omnipresent fish sauce, Nuoc Mam, make up Didier’s culinary home. In his kitchen he blends “ingredients and techniques” for his two small children, “so that neither of them will forget their dual, equally Vietnamese and French origins”. Once again: this is Fusion with a capital F – and in this case we at Hangar-7 can hardly wait to celebrate Didier’s very special blend.

Recorded by Christoph Schulte • Photos: Kar Fai Tong / Red Bull Photofiles