Meet Vindex Tengker
Chef at The Dharmawangsa Hotel in Jakarta
A subtle and sophisticated fusion cuisine
For over 20 years chef vindex tengker, an avid preacher of fusion cuisine, has travelled the world looking for new flavours to skilfully infuse into his recipes. We meet this visionary creator, who is putting indonesian cuisine back on the map.
For over 20 years chef vindex tengker, an avid preacher of fusion cuisine, has travelled the world looking for new flavours to skilfully infuse into his recipes. We meet this visionary creator, who is putting indonesian cuisine back on the map.
- You are one of today’s most successful indonesian chefs. How did you get involved with cookery?
- It was through my grandmother that I discovered the flavours of Indonesian cooking and she taught me to appreciate them! After this introduction, I chose to enrol at a hotel management school, rather than a cookery school. over my three years of study however, I slowly but surely came to realise that the idea of being a chef held much more allure...I eventually began my first job in the kitchen in 1989. I began my career as a specialist chef in Indonesian cuisine at the “Amandari Resort” in Bali, then I left the islands in search of new influences, in los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia and Berlin – but the weather in the last three is definitely too harsh for someone used to Bali’s sunshine! I am really grateful for the opportunities to travel, more than anything because it has allowed me to discover ingredients that I didn’t know and to find out how to use them; in exchange, when I am abroad I teach Asian cooking to my colleagues. These exchanges and this sharing are the real jewels of our profession. I am convinced that you cannot claim to be a true chef without talking to others and tasting their specialities and without marrying ideas, influences and ingredients.
- How would you define what it means to be a Chef?
- Things happen extremely quickly in the kitchen, much more quickly than you can imagine. A team of 60 people with 5000 customers a day doesn’t leave any time for standing around....But that pressure and frenetic rhythm is the very essence of being in the kitchen: a chef must integrate his creativity with this strange relationship with time. My new hotel, the “Dharmawangsa Djakarta”, has two restaurants: the “Djakarta” which specialises in traditional Indonesian cuisine and the “Sriwijaya”, which makes classic French dishes and fuses the French techniques and training with Indonesian flavours.
- What is it that attracts you to french cuisine?
- In Los Angeles I worked for a French chef, who showed me the techniques and know-how of his country. French cuisine is considered the epitome of high standards and excellence across the entire world. And those are the values of my hotel. That is why you will find Elle & Vire products on our tables and in our bakeries! But my cooking is open to all kinds of influences. My travels are an inexhaustible source of inspiration. I am constantly creating new combinations, I mix flavours together, and I don’t worry about experimenting and trying new combinations over and over again. Fusion cuisine is born from creativity and improvisation after all! You have to know your ingredients perfectly to be able to harmoniously marry them, without spoiling the flavours.
- How do you reflect your country’s culture in your recipes? Which are your favourite ingredients?
- Indonesian cooking is very rich with thousands of recipes and regional variants, which makes it extremely inspiring!
It is full of influences: Indian, Arabic, Chinese and Malaysian, not to mention Portuguese and Dutch.... From the curries of Sumatra to the mild, spiced dishes of central Java, Indonesian cuisine holds such a wide palette of flavours and thousands of fragrances. My task, in this high-end hotel, is to showcase this incredible culinary history to our guests in a more refined way, to allow its subtleties to really shine through. Each dish s trives to reveal the quintessence of an ingredient, to unveil the finer points of a spice or herb. I particularly enjoy working with lemon grass, turmeric, ginger, tamarind and kaffir lime leaves. For example, on my menu there is a salmon steak with ginger and kaffir lime leaves, a rack of lamb with a tamarind crust, pumpkin puree served with a curry sauce...We use Elle & Vire’s cream and butter in many recipes and dressings, like our saffron and lemongrass cream sauce, kaffir lime and ginger butter sauce...Normandy influencing Indonesian cooking: globalisation isn’t all bad! - How would you define your own cooking?
- I have always tried not to attach a strict definition to my cooking. Because there are no boundaries in cooking, it is constantly evolving... Our language is universal, our gastronomic history is being enriched every day and new trends are constantly appearing: you have to be at the “cutting-edge”, whilst staying true to your roots.
Here, we train our young chefs in Indonesian cuisine, before teaching them worldwide techniques. Indonesian cooking is actually the basis for world cuisine. Indonesian cuisine is multi-cultural and already a fusion cuisine in itself. We need to promote it and make it known, like the Japanese, the Thai and the Chinese did: that is why, for example, I was on the judging panel for a reality television show. It’s our turn to show what we can do, both in Asia and beyond.