[Synth Music Playing]
[Zor Tan speaking] The concept of the RAW is about nature and craft.
So, everything that we do here is the....
....about the artwork....
Over here we have 25 kitchen staff inside.
All the staff is from Taiwan and you have, like....
more Taiwanese flavors.
[Alain Huang] When we start with the restaurant, we try to find out the sound special ingredient from Taiwan,
especially like a mock-up paper, we just try.
And some good vegetables,
and we also picked a lot of a herbs from our garden.
[Zor Tan speaking] I work with Huang Jay. He's a very, very strict guy in the kitchen.
I worked for him for like eight years, and....
Now I understand what.... One — he's right.
He wants something or he don't like something,
he just....
....One side-eye or one movement and you can understand,
"Okay, what should I do next? Okay, what should I....?"
"Okay, maybe it's not taste good, maybe it's something's not right...."
We're gonna fix this every time, and....
For me, what I learned form him in the kitchen is common sense.
I think this is basic for every chef, that you have to know,
because if you don't have common sense, you don't know what tastes good,
what it should be a purée look like, what should the soup look like.
So, today we're going to make our dish all about duck.
Okay, so what we basically use, we use all parts of the duck,
including the heart, the breast, to the tongue, and the leg.
So, everything is about duck.
And at the last, we serve with the liver soup from the dark liver.
Okay, first is a barley and quinoa.
It's same kind of the grain that we give duck to eat.
It's their food. Okay.....
We mix them together.
First, we torch it.....
....to have a charred flavor.
[Ambient Noise]
Some pecan — also part of the duck food.
[Ambient Noise]
Olive Oil.
And we mix all the duck inside.
The idea of the dish is to appreciate all of the ingredients,
so we use every part of the duck.
And in our main menu, we call it "......"
Is something about what the duck eat, and now we eat the duck.
Every part of it. So we won't waste anything
and we use everything of it.
Now pouring the duck liver soup.
[Ambient Noise]
There you are.
Here's our dish. "All about duck."
Every time when I create the menu, is like....
So, I'll shift, like.... What you want? What you like?
What you want to eat this menu, you know?
So, okay, maybe do something like taco.
You like taco a lot and I say, "yeah, we...."
"Why don't we use, like, a pancake?" The scallion pancake — it look like a taco,
and you say, "yeah" and then we.....
We play a bit with the words, like Taco, Tako, and T.A.C.O.S....
So, I'll make [...] sauce and we mix with the taco.
The other ingredient of the taco.
I will put seaweed.
We put in the octopus, because it "Takos" in the Japanese.
We added a small quail egg.
[Ambient Noise]
So, inside we have cabbage, avocado, taco, and the cream — sour cream.
And of course, we garnish this with herbs, very freshly-picked from our garden.
The idea of this dish — we try to do the....
....The "Taco Takos T.A.C.O.S." And it means, uh, the "taco" is like a Mexican burrito.
And the second word, "Takos" is the "octopus" in Japanese word.
And the last taco is "t-a-c-o-s."
So, it means the, "T" for the....
Teriyaki Sauce. "A" for Avocado.
"C" for the cabbage.
"O" is for the......
....Onions! And "S" is the Sour Cream.
So, it is a funky, funky, like, word play on the word.
[Ambient Noise]
Okay, this our Taco Takos T.A.C.O.S from RAW Taipei.
When you eat it, is that, "Oh, this is a special taco. A special scallion pancake."
It's fun to trace back all the memories of the Taiwanese people.
Even the ingredient that they used to eat everyday but
we try to give them a new life, a new message, or new meaning for it.
Next, we're going to do the next dish — is "onion onion onion."
Is basically all about an onion.
And we use big onion, yellow onion, scallion, chive, and baby pearl onion.
So, what we do now — this is the zucchini purée.
And we add in the smoked fish.
The smoked fish very popular in Taiwan and it's very local snack food.
So, we decided to end it with a purée, to have a touch of the umami flavor.
And on top we sprinkle with a crispy [...],
....to have a texture of crispiness.
And here we use a Taiwanese, very famous, Black Bean.
It's a fermented Black Bean. We do — it tastes like tapenade.
And this pearl onion, we cook with apple juice.
So, adding some sweetness.
And we put on some Uni.
And this is scallion oil that we make from the spring onion.
Balsamic, for a hint of the acidity.
And then a smoked.... A very small chive.
And last is the Macau.
Macau is a typical — is a mountain pepper, is from Thailand.
And if you have a hint of the spiciness,
you almost think that it's a Szechuan pepper, but it's very original from Taiwan.
You can find it anyplace.
So, we put it on top, you have a spiciness and very nice smell at the end part.
So, this our dish from RAW Taipei.
Onion Onion Onion.
Our dessert is "Mangoes Snow Ice."
So, first of all, we do mango tartare.
So, this season we have a very good mango.
And we tossed with some mint, and some [...] candy.
[....]
So, we do tartare.
And [...]
And the frozen cube of the mango.
So, we fill the meringue....
....with a mango purée.
And our frozen mango cubes. Fresh mango cubes.
So, now we got a very beautiful snowball here.
So, what we represent is something like icy snow.
So, we put a milk skin, we do the milk skin.
And some meringue. So, in between, you have a crunchy taste and some sour/sweet.
And icing in the middle.
What he's doing now is the milk powder.
So, we have more, like, milky flavor.
And the last is the "milk snow."
So, here we have a "Mango Snow Ice."
When we create the menu, every time we.... uh.....
We not only find out the ingredients, from what we can get,
we also ask about some memory,
because we believe the memory is also now kind of an ingredient or seasoning.
[Piano Music playing]