Talking to Chef Chandra Vongsaravanh is like attending a combined lecture on gastronomy, the environment, culture, history, linguistics and more. A veritable walking encyclopaedia, we were spellbound with his wide and diverse knowledge. Despite his unassuming demeanor, once you get Chandra started, his passion for taking Lao cuisine to the world is soon apparent.
While studying economics at Budapest University, he ran a restaurant during term breaks. After graduating he decided he liked cooking more than counting and found himself a job with the Marriott Hotel in the Hungarian capital, preparing a variety of Asian, French and Hungarian dishes. In 1996, he opened his own signature restaurant in that city. As his reputation spread, he was invited to take part in a number of European cooking forums and even served time as a TV celebrity chef. The Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. invited him and a number of other international master chefs to take part in cooking demonstrations spanning a month and a half.
He returned to Laos in 2000 with his Hungarian wife and opened his first restaurant the following year in Luang Prabang. A cooking school followed, which has seen around 30,000 enrolments. Chandra, who speaks six languages will be presenting a cooking show on Lao TV in the coming months and a cook book will be published later this year. A man of many interests, he is also the founder of the Luang Prabang Royal Ballet Theatre, Phra Lak Phra Lam.
Chef Chandra took time off his busy schedule to talk to Champa Holidays and started by emphasizing the relationship that Lao cuisine and culture has to the four basic elements: air, earth, fire and water. The Lao people were animists long before Buddhism came to the country and it is their belief in their belief in the spirits of the forest that influenced their cuisine. Lao cooking is very simple and only what is available, in season, should be used. “Nothing more than what is essential, should be taken from the trees or the earth,” he stressed.
Khao niaw (sticky rice) is the very soul of Lao food according to Chandra, and even Lao people are unaware of this. No other country has accorded such a central role to this rice. It, rather than steamed rice, is offered to the monks in the morning taak baat. At weddings, a ball of rice, divided in half and eaten by the bride and groom with arms intertwined, signifies two halves becoming a whole. Sticky rice is never thrown away but instead left outside for the birds, he said.
Our lesson in gastronomy segued into history. “Hundreds of years ago, large parts of northeastern Thailand were part of Laos. The food, language and culture were the same.” After the war on Vietnam, the Lao diaspora increased and many needed to earn a living in their adopted countries. Some opened ‘Thai’ restaurants, since Lao cuisine was unknown. While Thai food increasingly popular, diners were unaware of the difference between Isaan cuisine and Thai mainstream dishes. Chandra’s mission is now to rectify that misconception and see that due credit is given to Lao food.
“Anything that is not natural, destroys the organisms of the body”
Since the environment and the elements are so integral to Lao cuisine, we asked Chandra what he thought about the increased use of chemicals in agriculture and galloping global deforestation. “If you look around the region, China, Vietnam, Thailand, all their forests have gone. Here in Laos, we still have some forests. We must protect them.” He agreed that this was a matter of grave concern that needed to be addressed without delay. The indiscriminate use of agrochemicals worried him, as biodiversity is critical to food supplies. Every insect plays its part in rejuvenating the environment. He is also alarmed by the rise in fast foods and additives, something that is completely alien to Lao culture.
(Published in Champa Holidays, Feb-Mar 2014)
© Percy Aaron
Wow Laos 