The Man who made Sex on the Beach

If you’re wondering what’s the first thing I’m going to do after Star Awards tomorrow, it will be to indulge in local delights!

That’s because I will be filming a regional food programme early next morning, where I take Alvin Leung, aka Demon Chef to taste some of Singapore’s local delights.

Demon Chef Alvin Leung

He doesn’t look like your typical chef, but that’s because he really isn’t your typical chef. He’s a chef who is also a food deconstructionist. From what I’ve Googled, that means he breaks the dish down into its core ingredients, and then using those key ingredients, whip up the same dish in a different form. This is a purely theoretical explanation I derived from what I’ve read so far. I will probably get a better idea when I meet him next week.

Now take a look at one his most famous dishes:

Sex on the Beach

Alvin unveiled this dish at a prestigious culinary congress, Identita Golose in Milan.

This unique dish features a sweet edible condom, made by dipping a cigar tube into a kappa and konjac mixture. Using a pipette, Alvin then squeezed a few drops of a honey and Yunnan ham mixture. The ‘condom’ was then placed onto powdered shiitake mushrooms, made to look like sand.

At one time, Alvin also recreated this dish into a dessert at his restaurant Bo Innovation, in support of AIDS charities.

Dessert: Sex on the Beach (HK$68)

The strawberry flavoured condom constructed out of gelatin contains condensed milk, served with berry coulis, vanilla creme and biscuit beach ‘sand’.

Now Sex on the Beach seems more like an invention than a deconstruction. Which brings me to the question: When does deconstructed food become a new dish altogether?

Before I meet him, here’s my idea of deconstructed food. If you’ve been to The Cookie Musuem, you will find cookies in local flavours, such as Hainanese Chicken Rice and Hae Bee Hiam (Spicy Dried Shrimps).

Photo: The Pleasure Monger

In other words, instead of having Chicken Rice and Hae Bee Hiam consumed the usual way, all the ingredients are put into a cookie.

Am I right or am I confused? I’ll find out from Alvin soon.