My first contact with Chef Wes Kuo started in an odd fashion. Highly recommended by my good friend Jeek, I spent nearly half an hour like a headless chicken looking for Chef Wes's restaurant, only to realize it's a hidden 'speakeasy' style bistro 2 levels above a popular Taiwanese hotpot shop at Shilin Night Market. Used to seeing similar modern bistro-style establishments in Thailand command an entire army in the kitchen, I was shocked to see Chef Wes pushing out equal quality with only 1 assistant in the open kitchen and 1 person on the floor, his wife Lucia.
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| Finally hanging out together in Taipei, December 2019 |
I enjoyed the meal tremendously. I guess deep inside me, I was yearning to dine at a modern bistro with a distinct Chinese (in this case, Taiwanese) soul running through the food regardless of its final form. Boogie Bistro would easily be one of my most frequented restaurants if it was here in Bangkok.
Then again, our first meet-up ended without speaking a single word to each other. Later in the week, we did speak briefly at Chefs Top and Michelle's pop-up at Jeek's Foodmaze Studio. It was only after I returned to Bangkok did we start communicating more online, and that was when I realised how much fire was buried within that quiet petite frame of his. Every inch of him was burning with the desire to showcase the unknown food wisdom on Taiwan's small but diverse terroir, and the energy to move towards having a louder voice to share his idealogies.
Subsequently, Boogie Bistro closed in view of opening a new restaurant that would communicate Chef's directions more effectively. During his break, I was glad to have spent a few days in Bangkok with him and Lucia to get to know them much better. I was a little taken aback when Chef Wes revealed his background in F & B management but actually got his success in the depths of Shilin Night Market selling 'premium' fried skewers. He then owned an equally-successful Kushiage restaurant before setting up Good Food Lab at Boogie Bistro (where I ate his food).
Without prior training in a fine-dining kitchen, he shared that all his inspirations come from ingredients from the land, and his infatuation with how to most-effectively present its story to the diners. If the best way is for the ingredient to be expressed as a mousse, he will then figure out how to make it into his perfect mousse for the dish. There is no emphasis whatsoever, on showing off how well he can cook, or how adept he is in a certain technique.
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| Chef Wes Kuo, focusing on a dish at 80/20 |
In this moment, a mere matter of days before the grand-opening of Chef Wes's new restaurant Embers, I would like to congratulate him and Lucia for obtaining a new platform which will hopefully amplify what he has always been trying to do, that is to share and spread the spirit of his land.
Chef Wes is the perfect personification of Embers, the glowing hot coal that remains after the fire, looking like the aftermath but packs more penetrative heat than you can ever imagine. I look forward to my first impression at his new restaurant. But damn, I wish he's here!
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