The New Luxury

Beyond truffles and caviar

FRENCH INTERDISCIPLINARY social scientist Claude Fischler once said: “The way any given human eats helps to assert its diversity and hierarchy… and at the same time, both its oneness and otherness of whoever eats differently.” Such is the unspoken rule of every gourmand and foodie clocking in at the restaurant du jour and then posting it on social media.

Despite world economic and sociopolitical upheaval, consumer trends in matters of the palate, especially with regards to luxury food, don’t seem to be decreasing. In essence, the 1% will continue to order their oysters and champagne (and let themselves eat cake), while the 99% will try to keep up with the Joneses with reposts on Instagram.

Established European luxury ingredient icons such as caviar, foie gras and truffles will indomitably hold their share. Then comes the refined, quality produce from Japan—pristine preparations of raw seafood, marbled wagyu, heirloom vegetables from Kyoto—all dignified works of scintillating genius with a price point to match. However, I’ve also noticed a curious trend of kaiseki and kappo chefs adding heaps of caviar or shaving fresh truffles unsparingly onto a dish. It makes me shudder, not from orgasmic glee, but from a looming thought that this crass, very un-Japanese act is masking an underwhelming feature or somehow compensating for the chef’s lack of creativity.

I, for one, am sick of truffles being tediously added to everything. Chinese chefs, please stop; those truffles are wasted on wok-fried prawns. Unless it’s black Périgord or white Alba Madonna season, keep the glorious fungi to a minimum. And don’t get me started on “truffle oil”. Most of the options on the market don’t contain any actual truffle—just fragments of inexpensive truffle-adjacent varietals with no culinary value nor fragrance whatsoever. It’s the literal antithesis of luxury, as those cheap truffle flavours are just chemical compounds synthesised in a lab, not from a precious, rare perfumed tuber dug up by a cute dog in the wooded hills of Piedmont.

It doesn’t mean that there are no existent elixirs of truffle. Alcohol is actually the more superior carrier of the truffle’s complex flavours than oil. A greater variety of aromatic molecules in truffles are soluble in spirits, eliminating the need for synthetic flavourings. Marco Sacco’s Castellana in Causeway Bay, for instance, is serving up truffle-infused gin, vodka and bourbon cocktails alongside its Piedmontese haute cuisine. I quite enjoy Il Preferito, which is Sacco’s favourite—truffle fat-washed Bulleit Rye, freshened up with Fentimans ginger beer and lemon. Cocktails that take time and effort to craft are rather luxurious.

On another note, there’s a growing holistic approach to wellness, which includes all aspects of life, from sleep to eating. As most of us begin to realise that food companies and big pharma commit the most heinous crimes in straight-up lying about nutrition and health, a happy convergence between luxury food and informed, selective healthy consumption is becoming the result. People now prefer to indulge in epicurean experiences that promote well-being, going back to traditional foodways and ingredients.

Which is why “new luxury” may be the centuries-old luxury ingredients of Chinese haute cuisine, such as sea cucumber and bird’s nest. Besides, taste, texture and therapeutic properties have always been crucial components of the Chinese repertaire. Let’s face it, a daily diet of sea cucumber for a week won’t kill you—and might just be what the Chinese doctor ordered. (The same amount of foie gras consumption will undeniably be hazardous to your health.)

In English, the soft-bodied, slug-like echinoderm euphemistically called “sea cucumber” has been known as “sea ginseng” in China since the 14th century during the Ming Dynasty, thanks to its notable array of bioactive benefits. The best varietal, sold dry and fetching the highest prices, is the Liaoshen—the spiky sea cucumber from Liaodong. Halfway between Beijing and Pyeongyang, the pristine port city of Dalian on the Liaodong Peninsula gets fresh ones for three months during wintertime. At the bucolic Tiger Bay, I witnessed Dalianites wading out into the sea to pick fresh sea cucumbers—right next to a private yacht club resembling a European palace. Harvesting is strictly prohibited until they grow six rows of knobby spines, signifying adulthood, when they are four to five years old. The locals told me they consider sea cucumber to be a tonic, consumed to prevent colds before the bitter winters.

Its impressive profile of valuable vitamins (A, B1, B2, B3) and appreciable amounts of anti-everything (anti-microbial, antiinflammatory, anti-hypertension, anti-carcinogenic) is irrefutable; thanks science! Did I mention that sea cucumbers are low in fat and high in protein, with 70 per cent of its body wall composed of collagen, which converts further into gelatin by slow-cooking

(as most traditional Chinese recipes call for) to act as a functional bioactive substance. No wonder my mum craves this luxury diet food. Think about that next time you taste chef Vicky Cheng’s signature sea cucumber at VEA, with its beautifully blistered exterior and jubilant gelatinous crunch. It’s a nutrient-dense sausage of the sea, rich in protein and complex organic compounds and chock-full of medicinal value. Ancient luxury food is the new luxury.