Thai food festival at Nikko
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Lunes, 8 de Febrero de 2010
By THÉRÈSE MARGOLIS
The News
The Royal Thai Embassy, in cooperation with the Nikko Hotel, hosted a weeklong festival of traditional Thai food inside the hotel’s El Jardín restaurant from Thursday, Feb. 4, through Wednesday, Feb. 10.
“This festival, which constitutes our embassy’s first project to help in the celebration of the bicentennial of the Mexican Independence and the centennial of the Mexican Revolution, also commemorates the 35th anniversary of Thai-Mexican diplomatic relations,” said Thai Ambassador to Mexico Charuwan Thiemthad, during the festival’s inaugural dinner.
“Food is one of the easiest – and most delicious – ways, to bridge bilateral understanding, so this event is both a gastronomic fiesta and a way of fostering closer binational friendships.”
The lavish buffet of more than 30 Siamese haute cuisine delicacies was prepared by Thai chef Srichai Pangsri, owner of Bangkok Restaurant, and the Nikko’s own executive chef David Sánchez with ingredients brought in Asia just for the occasion.
“We have strived to present truly authentic Thai food from four separate regions of our country,” Thiemthad said.
“Surprisingly, Thailand and Mexico have many similarities when it comes to food because we both love spices and chilies.”
Nikko Hotel director general Seikichi Saito later noted that the five key flavors of Thai food – sweet, hot, sour, bitter and saltiness – are also present in most Mexican cookery styles.
“A strong affinity for zesty piquant food is something that bonds the people of Mexico to the people of Thailand,” he said.
For the unindoctrinated, an initial tasting of Thai food is extremely fiery, and there is no denying that Siamese people have an uncanny fondness for chilies peppers – especially the small, blistering ones – which were introduced to the Southeast Asian country by European traders during the early 16th century.
But Thai food is a lot more than sweltering curries and scorching peanut sauces.
Once you get past the preliminary, first-bite, burning assault of your tongue, you can begin to appreciate the subtle interplay and harmonizing of carefully balanced tastes that are the Thai chef’s secret mastery.
The brilliant interchange of spices and flavorings – of sweet with sour and hot with cool – are sparked by the various nam priks (dipping sauces) studded with peanuts, breathy with lemongrass and incendiary with chilies, and all are infused with a aromatic blend of faint undertones that make enjoying a Thai meal an exercise in orchestral culinary symphonies.
Like the people of Thailand themselves, Siamese food is a happy marriage of diverse ingredients and cooking techniques borrowed from a multitude of cultures that migrated to and influenced the country throughout its 4,000-year history.
The end product is gloriously Thai: deep-fried fish paste fritters assimilated from Western cooks but “nationalized” by dousing them in lemongrass and basil sauces; Chinese rice noodles metamorphosed into a Southeast Asian delicacy through simmering them in a Kaffir lime and galingale root broth; tiny, new-born sparrows speared and barbecued whole in a delectable baste of saffron brought from the island of Ceylon.
Thai food is a superb blend of meats, vegetables, fruits, condiments and herbs that, by definition, should reflect a harmonious balance of sharp flavorings with subtle undertones, creating a veritable concerto of tastes and smells, where seasonings overlap and meld and each morsel has a primary essence, followed by a secondary taste that merges to form a progression of flavors.
Throughout the festival, presentations of classical Thai dance and music were performed by the Somapa Dance Troupe flown in from Washington, D.C. to spice up the event.
While the authentic Thai food festival at the Nikko might have been too brief to satisfy the palates of all those who would have liked to attend, there are, thankfully, a few Thai restaurants throughout the city that offer a fairly good substitute for the real thing.
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