Roland Trettl meets Nicolas Schneller & Supanut Khanarak

The interplay of distinct flavours

The perfect blend of traditional and modern: "The Spice Market", Bangkok.

Please give me a spontaneous, off-the-cuff answer to this question. Name the world's great cuisines. Of course you'll say French. And Chinese. And don't forget Italian. And of course Japanese. They're all correct, all great cuisines and I'd agree, so long as you quickly add Thai to the list.

Does that surprise you? Almost everyone likes Thai food, but most people don't give much thought to it, and that's a mistake. There are few other cuisines that rely so heavily on accentuation of hot, sweet, salty, sour and sharp. Perhaps Thai cuisine is lacking a little in contemporary aesthetics compared to other cuisines of the world, but you can work on that – and that's how we end up in the kitchens of "The Spice Market". the restaurant at the "Four Seasons" in Bangkok.

This is where executive chef Nicolas Schneller, who grew up in France, and his Thai head chef Supanut "Anne" Khanarak, cook side by side. And it is precisely this mix of people that have turned "Spice Market" into perhaps the best Thai restaurant in Bangkok. Take its rice noodles with fried, smoked catfish, for which a catfish stock is used in the preparation. I can already hear you objecting that preparing a stock is completely untypical of Thailand. You're right, but only half right, because this recipe is very, very old and this style of cooking was also used in Thailand in the past.

And so we come to our colleagues in the kitchen. It is Anne's job to ensure absolute authenticity. Every meal that she happily serves is genuine Thai. We have Nicolas Schneller to thank for the fact that her dishes also emphasise elements of classic, European cuisine, as in the case of the catfish, and for the expanded horizon, even if it's only dusting off historic recipes that were thought long since lost. The result is great, paradoxical gastronomic art. Although you would expect fusion cuisine from the duo, that's not what results from their collaboration. Instead they focus in depth on Thai cuisine.

If you watch both of them in the kitchen, it's a throwback to the dark days of stereotypical gender roles. Nicolas is the well-travelled top chef who has worked in Europe, Japan and Argentina. "Home-loving" Supanut, on the other hand, has never left her homeland. She consciously cooks her native cuisine, which Nicolas then even more consciously, in an almost macho way, "refines" from the point of view of contents and appearance. A glance at the dishes illustrated here will show what I mean. The presentation is not really Thai any more, but the taste is 100% Thai. Take the squid stuffed with pork, for example, which sits on a sensational pool of fish sauce, chilli, soya and tamarind which, and this is the trick, is superbly bound with salted, soft boiled duck egg yolk. Thai cuisine is suddenly elevated to Michelin star level. With such great acts, I'm almost grateful that the pair has left one of my favourite desserts on the menu. The simple, but absolute classic kab mamoung – sticky rice, coconut milk, and ripe mangos. Of course it isn't a high-tech recipe, but if I were to ask you again over this dessert about the great cuisines of the world, I know exactly what you'd say first. Thai – what else? chatting with it for weeks.

Recorded by Christoph Schulte • Photos: Helge Kirchberger / Red Bull Photofiles and Kurt Heck / Red Bull Photofiles